Office knowledge

Advanced research projects in office automation are described in this volume. The representation, management and utilization of office knowledge is an area of research which extends and integrates techniques from artificial intelligence, data base management systems, communication systems, programming languages, user interfaces, and organizational behaviour. Two invited papers are included: one is from W.B. Croft and L.S. Lefkowitz describing the Polymer project, which uses activities, domain-objects and agents to represent office knowledge. The other is from P.G. Cook, C.A. Ellis and G.L. Rein, who discuss the project Nick, which aims to support cooperative work by investigating the content, structure and protocols of meetings.