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Project Colletta will install on 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7. It requires Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer (IE) 7 or 8 (it does not yet work with IE9). The hard disc footprint is quite modest but, as this is a managed suite of tools, at least 1GB of RAM is recommended.

It is also recommended to install the latest drivers, particularly graphics drivers, for your PC (from the manufacturer’s site if necessary) before you start the install.

A number of applications support the addition tags to specific document types, but there is little that brings the different applications together. Project Colletta spans multiple document types (including email items and URLs as well as file system objects) and exposes the tags outside of the applications.

Project Colletta consists of two main components that enable tag creation, editing and access, called the DeskBar and the DocBar:

The DeskBar is located at the top of your primary screen. Its main purpose is to provide access to the complete list of your tags and their associated resources (documents, emails, web pages) as well as to host shortcuts to tags.

The menu showing your complete list of tags is called the Manager. It provides access to all the tags you have defined and is also the means for managing those tags. Clicking the triangle icon on the DeskBar will display or hide it.

When you click on each tag, a documents window will appear to the right listing documents associated with that tag. Hover over a document to see its thumbnail and some metadata. Double-clicking on the tag (or clicking the pin on the documents window) will cause the documents window to be pinned to the desktop.

When you click on a tag you also “select” it to be able to perform a subsequent operation via the right-click or context menu: the available options change slightly depending on whether you selected one or more tags or documents. You can select a group of tags by pressing the control key while clicking other tags.

On the DeskBar itself a list of pinned tags gives you quick access to selected tags. Clicking the system icon on the left end of the DeskBar pops up a short menu of system related options.

For a range of supported applications, namely Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Acrobat Reader and IE, we have designed a toolbar called the DocBar that sits at the bottom of the application window (note that the DeskBar component of Project Colletta has to be running for the DocBar to appear). From here you can quickly add and remove tags and access related documents.

The triangle icon is used to open the Editor, a lightweight tagging mechanism that allows you to link documents with existing or new tags or to break that link.

The Editor has two views: RECENT, which is a summary, indicating currently linked tags and a set of most recently used tags; and ALL, which provides a full view of all your tags. You toggle between these using the and button at the bottom of the Editor window.

If you start typing in the text box at the bottom of the Editor, the view switches to all tags automatically and filters the tag list based on text matching. Hitting Enter here will associate the document with the selected tag, creating a new tag with the specified name if no others match. Within the Editor, hovering over each item shows a or graphic which indicates that the tag can be linked to or unlinked from the document. Clicking on the Tray tag, a placeholder tag, or any of the icon tags, called functional tags, will attach/detach those tags from the document.