METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROPAGATING ANNOTATIONS USING PATTERN MATCHING

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for propagating annotations created for data objects appearing in a variety of different application types are provided. Some embodiments present users collaborating on a project with an indication of data objects in a current document that have been annotated, or that related data objects have been annotated, in other documents. Users may then review the annotations and selectively associate the annotations with the related data object in the current document, thereby spreading the tacit knowledge reflected in the annotation about related data objects across many documents in an enterprise network. Further, an annotation management system may maintain a thesaurus of related terms and corresponding annotation points to find annotations for data objects that exist in other documents without having to inspect the data object(s) associated with each existing annotation.