Communicating editing context between users to initiate collaborative editing of electronic documents

An article of manufacture comprising:

• at least one computer storage medium,
• computer program instructions stored on the at least one computer storage medium which, when processed by a processing system of a computer, the processing system comprising one or more processing units and storage, configures the computer to comprise:
• a network interface configured to connect the computer to a computer network, the computer network being connected to a shared storage system, the shared storage system comprising a file system configured to store a plurality of electronic documents and to make the plurality of electronic documents available to a plurality of users;
• and
• a communication application configured to communicate messages from a first user to other users of other computers;
• an end user application configured to process user input from the first user to modify an electronic document, the end user application comprising a graphical user interface configured to present indicia of other users associated with the electronic document, the end user application configured to, in response to user input associated with indicia of a second user in the graphical user interface, invoke the communication application including providing an indication of the second user and context information from the end user application to the communication application;
• and
• the communication application configured to, in response to the invocation by the end user application, generate and transmit a message to the second user including context information from the end user application.

A computer-implemented process comprising:

• an end user application processing user input from a first user to modify an electronic document;
• the end user application presenting indicia of other users associated with the electronic document;
• the end user application, in response to user input associated with indicia of a second user, invoking a communication application including providing an indication of the second user and context information from the end user application to the communication application;
• and
• the communication application, in response to the invocation by the end user application, generating and transmitting a message to the second user including context information from the end user application.