Among the many informational artifacts knowledge workers create: e-mails, messages, notes one kind sticks out: files. Files are computer-based informational artifacts that are created by the programs listed under tool patterns.

Files can represent reports, books, architectural designs, software programs, movies, artistic works, business plans and many more. They are the most widely used "hard" asset of the knowledge society.

As the individual work of knowledge workers becomes more and more specialized, it is neccessary to share files with other team members in order to exchange the information embedded in the files, in order to allow reviews and quality control of the work or in order to allow contributions in work.

 The most widely used way of file sharing is sending e-mail attachments, which can lead to a number of organizational problems because e-mail attachments

• have no way of enforcing a directory structure, e.g. of exchanging the organizational information embedded in files and folders
• often have size limits
• put additional load on the network
• are often insecure

Dedicated collaborative file sharing software like the file sharing section of the Mindquarry Collaboration Server helps teams to overcome the limitations of e-mail based file sharing and allows for faster, more secure and organized file sharing, which leads to higher productivity among knowledge workers.