Best way to collaborate (chat-like) within in the office?

[superboyac]

I'm trying to streamline my interaction with my supervisor because we work at a fast pace.  I am constantly having to have him proof read documents, emails, etc. before sending them out.  What is the best way to do this kind of collaboration in the office over our intranet (LAN)?

If possible, keep the recommendations to freeware or to the MS Office suite.  It won't be easy for me to get shareware.  Everyone has the Office applications.

Ideally, I'd like to write an email or some text...then I can quickly shoot it over to him in over a chat-like interface where he receives a notification.  Then, he reviews it, quickly comments, and sends it back to me.  Then I can send it out formally.

Is this something the Sharepoint Workspace can do, or something similar to that?  The only other way I can think of is to send him emails, and have him email me back.  I don't like that because instead of one formal email going out, there will be many drafts going back and forth and then a formal one.  It's too much.

Any suggestions?  Thanks, as always.

[techidave]

I remember looking at these about 7 years ago when I first started at the school.  I don't remember which ones I tried but I do remember settling on Windows Messenger just because it was already installed.

In searching the only familiar ones were Bopup Messenger.  I will see if I can remember though.

[app103]

Small, lightweight, and portable, you might want to try Martin's IDE3. It does have file transfer capabilities.

I posted about it here (near end of that post) and a few posts down from that I attached a copy of it, in case you want to try it out.

[superboyac]

Small, lightweight, and portable, you might want to try Martin's IDE3. It does have file transfer capabilities.

I posted about it here (near end of that post) and a few posts down from that I attached a copy of it, in case you want to try it out.

I posted in the thread.  I'm excited about this one.  If it works, it can really streamline some of our work.

[vixay]

I have a similar requirement, but it needs to be cross-platform. I've looked at jabber, but haven't found a decent cross-platform client yet. It's a mess to try and use them. Do you know of any program that doesn't require user registration/passwords ...etc. Just use the hostname?

[jaden]

If you don't mind separating chat from file transfer, IRC and HFS would work.  There are plenty of free IRC servers to use or you could install a local one and HFS makes file sharing easy.  I use Pidgin at work for IRC and it can notify you in various ways when someone says your name in a room.

[electronixtar]

IpMsgr http://ipmsg.org/index.html.en