Patent ID: 7774406

Claim:
A method for the establishment and maintenance of a collaborative computing community including one or more collaborative components and one or more community members having membership data corresponding to their membership stored in a database, the method comprising: using a membership adapter interface to facilitate an exchange of information between the database and the collaborative components; and storing a community template, the community template indicating which collaborative components are accessible by the one or more community members; storing data defining a string user interface, the string user interface being used to provide a user interface in a predetermined language; wherein the community template provides an abstract description and constituent parts of a community instance for use in constructing community instances and includes: a community role table of roles within the community; a collaborative component table identifying one or more collaborative components and API locations corresponding to the one or more collaborative components; and a role map defining a mapping between the community roles in the community role table, named permission sets and the one or more identified collaborative components.