Synchronous collaborative shell integrated instant messaging

摘要

A collaborative shell program links the capabilities of a command line interface (CLI) shell program on a user computer system to the collaborative capabilities of an instant messaging system on an IM server computer system over a network. The collaborative shell program permits one or more users to issue commands to one or more target computer systems through a chat window by preceding the command with a predefined command character. Users can inter-mix commands (delimited by the predefined command character) with standard chat text. Any authorized participant in the chat can issue commands to a target computer system from a chat window and the response is relayed to all the participants.