Groove Advisor: The Groove Blog

Three new technical articles about Groove 2007 available on TechNet & MSDN

2008-11-21T03:14:49Z

We wanted to let you know about three new technical articles we recently published. One is geared towards IT Pros deploying Groove:

Impact of Groove on a Network

This paper presents information about how Groove communicates on the network, provides some best practices for running Groove on your network, and introduces some basic communication troubleshooting steps.

The other two articles are for developers building custom forms solutions and available on MSDN:

Preparing Microsoft Office InfoPath Templates to use in Groove 2007

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 includes a variety of form template samples. You can use any one of these sample templates as the basis for a Groove InfoPath Forms tool. You can add your own customization, or use them without making any design or layout changes. You can also create a new form template in InfoPath starting with a blank form, customizing it in InfoPath, and then importing the newly-created template into Microsoft Office Groove 2007.

Optimizing Groove Forms Tool Performance

The Microsoft Office Groove 2007 Forms Tool and the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 Forms Tool are customizable and programmable general-purpose tools. If you are developing a complex solution that handles many documents, you must understand the performance effect of your design decisions. In general, Groove 2007 Forms tools and InfoPath Forms tools have the similar performance tradeoffs.

Thanks to SteveF, JoshG, MollyY and others on the Groove product team for contributing their expertise to these materials.

Groove Summit in France

2008-09-22T18:24:48Z

Another quick, get the word out moment here at the Groove Advisor Blog. One of our partners has a scheduled event around Groove in Paris. Here are the details:

cost	FREE
Date	September 25th, 2008
Time	2 to 6 PM
Location	148 rue de l'Université at Paris

Please visit the web site here for details and registration.

link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/09/22/groove-summit-in-france.aspx

Upcoming Webcast on Tips and Tricks for Groove 2007

2008-09-10T01:41:00Z

Just a quick post to alert you to an upcoming Webcast:

Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks for Groove 2007, Provide Anywhere, Anytime Access to People and Information (Level 100)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032383098&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/09/09/upcoming-webcast-on-tips-and-tricks-for-groove-2007.aspx

Solution Development in Groove 2007

2008-06-04T08:29:00Z

In our last blog post we talked about our overall goals for future releases of Microsoft Office Groove continuing to better inter-operate with and complement Office SharePoint. This post will summarize the solution development options available today in Groove 2007 and some of our early thinking about solution development in Groove longer term.

Releasing Groove 2007 for the first time as a new member of the Office suite was a lofty goal with a very tight timeline. With a relatively fixed amount of development resources, tradeoffs had to be made. And as the Groove team put on their Microsoft hats, the availability of technologies from across Microsoft required rethinking certain features in Groove and how they were implemented.

John Milan, a Microsoft SharePoint MVP who has developed Groove and SharePoint solutions, laments about one particular Groove 3.1 extensibility feature removed in Groove 2007 in this post on his blog:

Fundamentally this is a powerful architecture because it can centralize data on your desktop-- the flip side of SharePoint powerful architecture centralizing data on your server. In fact, it used to be Groove could house the .NET framework in its environment and thereby give developers a rich user experience with sophisticated peer-to-peer networking for gathering and updating all this data. I'd even go so far as to argue that Groove, because of its ActiveX and then .NET support, was a compelling vision of a Rich Internet Application framework.

Yes, I did say 'was', for you'll notice that the .NET framework is no longer accessible within Groove and their forms environment is too primitive for robust development. As a developer, I would love to see .NET reappear within Groove and give me the ability to integrate with desktop applications and the powerful peer-to-peer workgroup synchronization.

We definitely understand the pain that removing support for running "in-proc" .NET apps in the Groove 2007 client has caused some partners and customers, and are exploring options on how we might again address this need in the future. Like most software products, it typically takes several releases to fully implement the product vision. This will certainly be true for Groove’s platform capabilities as we continue to align with SharePoint and leverage other Microsoft technologies.

However, it is important to remember that there are options available today in Groove 2007 for solution development:

Custom Forms using the Groove Forms Tool
Custom Forms using the Groove InfoPath Forms Tool
Groove Web Services
Groove Data Bridge

Customers and Partners have built a range of solutions using various combinations of these options. Let’s talk about each option and identify real world solutions that use them.

The Groove Forms Tool enables building custom DHTML forms and has been available for more than 5 years. This tool supports record hierarchies (parent/child records) because it includes an embedded (lightweight) database and supports both Java & VB scripts. Partners, customers, and Microsoft have built customized forms to track data and support the collaborative process happening in Groove workspaces.

Groove 2007 introduced the brand new Groove InfoPath Forms Tool to enable InfoPath 2007 forms in Groove workspaces. Since InfoPath is Microsoft’s strategic platform for enterprise forms development, providing Microsoft customers who have deployed InfoPath solutions the ability to extend them to Groove workspaces was a logical extension of that strategy. By making a few simple changes to the InfoPath 2007 form, you’re ready to use it in Groove 2007. We will continue to improve the support for InfoPath forms in future releases of Groove.

Custom forms built using either forms tool can be saved as a Groove tool template (.gta) for re-use. In addition, you can package those tool templates along with out-of-the-box tools (like the Files and Discussion tools) and even documents together as a workspace template (.gsa) for additional flexibility and reuse.

Groove Web Services (“GWS”) provides an interface for pushing data to, or pulling data from, Groove workspaces. Custom applications can be developed which reside on the desktop along with the Groove client or on a server. The Groove Web Helpers, built by several of our development experts including Bob Novas and Paresh Suthar, provide enhancements to the capabilities offered by GWS and the opportunity to save development time through re-use. The Groove Data Bridge (“GDB”) is an optional component of Groove Server 2007 that provides a server platform to host custom Groove apps built using GWS. GDB acts like an “always-on” member of a workspace and provides a way for Groove workspaces to interface with enterprise systems. GDB also provides other capabilities such as workspace backup. Information about all of these options can be accessed on the Groove MSDN Developer Portal located at www.msdn.microsoft.com/groove .

Groove partner Hommes & Process built an interesting client-side app called GrooveIT! which enables Outlook 2007 email, contacts, and calendar items to be pushed to Groove workspaces along with support for configuring rules in Outlook to do this automatically. GrooveIT! was built using Groove Forms and Groove Web Services.

Team Direction (where John Milan works) re-architected their .NET-based Groove Project Edition solution that was bundled with Groove 3.1. Team Direction’s Intelligant Plus solution for Groove 2007 smartly bridges project data tracked in Groove workspaces with the enterprise project plan tracked using Microsoft Project 2007. Using Groove forms, Team Direction built a custom task tracking form for Groove, and they use Groove Web Services to connect task data in Groove with Intelligant Plus or their add-in for Microsoft Office Project 2007. We think Team Direction made a very sensible decision by designing Intelligant Plus to utilize and bridge the unique capabilities of Groove 2007, Project 2007, and SharePoint 2007. Team Direction is a great example of a Microsoft partner who has embraced the “better together” relationship between Groove and SharePoint and leveraged their skills with both products to deliver a unique solution for customers.

With Groove continuing to integrate with SharePoint, what are the implications for developing customized collaboration solutions that leverage both products? We already know that SharePoint will continue to evolve as the central hub for enterprise data. Groove will continue to be the decentralized client-based location for a synchronized copy of that data as well as the place to capture content not intended for publishing and distributing via a central server solution like SharePoint.

How can custom solutions utilize the best capabilities of each product? How does this product evolution impact how you will design and implement your collaboration solutions? What extensibility options would you like to see available in future releases of Groove and SharePoint? What other Microsoft technologies should Microsoft consider enabling or supporting to enhance the customizability of Groove and SharePoint?

We are interested in your feedback.

Matt and Abbott

MVP's discuss the future of Microsoft Office Groove

2008-04-21T22:15:00Z

We've just wrapped up a very productive exchange with the Office Groove and SharePoint MVP's who attended this week's Global Summit which concluded yesterday. The experience of the Groove MVP's along with the SharePoint, InfoPath, and other MVP's who attended our sessions resulted in many lively discussions about collaboration in the enterprise.

Many of the MVP’s were asking about Groove, and SharePoint, and how the two would play together in the future. In fact, at both Ray Ozzie’s keynote, and Steve Ballmer’s keynote, the MVP’s brought their Groove questions to the microphone.

When an MVP asked Steve Ballmer for his views on the future of Groove, Ballmer responded:

“SharePoint offline, I’ll just make a name up. That shows I’m not going to get any marketing awards, but would you like the design center for Groove to evolve to be much more SharePoint offline, or would you be happy to continue to see the two proceed with related, but independent, design points?”

Another MVP asked about Microsoft’s future plans for Groove during Ray’s keynote.

Q: “Is Groove the future UI (user interface) for SharePoint, because that would be just — when you talk about your software as a service and talk about exposing services in new ways and in new UIs, there’s a lot of overlap there? It seems like Groove really ought to be the way to leverage SharePoint on the desktop.”

<Ray> “You asked if Groove is the future UI of SharePoint. I might ask the same thing, is SharePoint the future UI of Groove…. They (Groove and SharePoint) are very, very complementary, and you will see in 14 and beyond increasing association with the things that you can do in SharePoint, and the things that you can do with Groove and the client, increasing levels of connections, both specific functions of the UI that are designed to work seamlessly with one another, increasingly the semantics underneath being brought together and so on. So, it’s a good observation, and, yes, that is the strategy.”

ZDNET News writer Mary Jo Foley was there and describes her view of what transpired: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1347 .

Here’s our take on this: Given where we are in the development cycle, it’s too early for us to be anything BUT cryptic in our response about futures. However, there is one aspect of the story that we have been discussing quite openly every chance we get: Groove’s relationship to SharePoint. Groove has an innovative client architecture. SharePoint has a powerful server/services architecture. It is easy to see the potential there for a great “better together” story.

We scratched the surface of this potential with the Groove SharePoint Files tool, part of Groove 2007 (more on this). Groove’s heritage is in extending collaborative workspaces, across networks, with strong security, By connecting Groove 2007 to SharePoint, real world project teams can work together across organizational and network boundaries, on or offline. Consider how Allianz, a global insurance and financial services company, uses Groove and SharePoint together to provide a business continuity solution for its customers (http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001736).

The future of Groove? Well, clearly we aren’t done with the SharePoint integration. Some of the more noticeable limitations of the current solution: we sync files, but no lists. We support versions and check in and checkout from SharePoint, but there is more work to be done there. And although you get the files to sync to Groove, you don’t get the metadata, or extended attributes, of the file. And don’t forget (no one lets us forget) search.

What we hear from customers, and what we hear in this question to Ray, and in the questions directed at SteveB is some frustration that we haven’t gone far enough, fast enough with delivering on the potential of the Groove/SharePoint integration. But in the questions, and in the responses, we also hear support for a strategic use of the Groove client architecture coupled to the infrastructure of SharePoint technologies.

Make no mistake, we’re excited about the future of Groove as part of the Office system. Stay tuned.

--abbott and Matt.

link to this article:http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/04/21/mvp-s-discuss-the-future-of-microsoft-office-groove.aspx

Say hello to our new Groove MVPs!

2008-04-16T00:57:00Z

The Groove MVP community expands once again. Congratulations to our new Groove MVPs who were notified on April 1:

Jean-Michel Davault (France): Jean-Michel has been involved with Groove since 2001 and works for Hommes & Process, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He is General Secretary for France of the IAMCP partner association which promotes Microsoft technologies and business opportunities. Jean-Michel has delivered presentations about Groove at events in France, Poland, Bulgaria, and Croatia. He blogs regularly and is currently working on French-language book about Groove.

Ashok Hingorani (India): Ashok has 20+ years experience creating complex business solutions and is currently with Computact Software Services. He’s is a longtime member of the Groove partner community and has evangelized Groove throughout India. Askhok was a prolific contributor to the groove.net newsgroups, having posted 2,600 entries. He’s a participant in the National Security Panel for Cyber Safety, a member of the Indian Merchants Chamber, and a founding Member of the Bombay Technology Club.

Jeroen Jansen (Netherlands): Jeroen is an IW Principal Technical Consultant at Getronics Consultancy, and has been working in IT since 1994. He was actively involved in helping review and improve the Groove IT Pro deployment content recently released as MOC-certified content along with the new Groove certification exam. Jereon is gearing up for a 12 city road trip through Europe to help train Microsoft partners on how to deploy Groove. He’s delivered presentations about deployment topics at Tech Ed Barcelona and other Microsoft events.

Aaron Saikovski (Australia): Aaron is a Senior Solutions Specialist with Strategic Data Management, and has 16+ years experience consulting for and training developers and IT Pros locally in Australia and internationally. He is an enthusiastic evangelist of Microsoft’s Groove and SharePoint collaboration solutions and an MCT for SharePoint training content. Aaron is a regular speaker on Groove and SharePoint at user groups in Sydney and at Microsoft conferences. He’s also a frequent blogger and active contributor in the SharePoint online community.

Evan Venn (UK): Evan is a co-founder and lead developer at Activity4 Ltd, which focuses on developing and implementing Groove collaborative solutions. He has been a strong advocate of Groove to developers for 5+ years and is a subject matter expert in building forms solutions in Groove. Evan was a key member of a team which created forms training content which Microsoft will make available to developers. He was a regular contributor on forms topics to the groove.net newsgroups and now blogs on his own site.

Learn more about our MVPs in their own words from their profiles on microsoft.com by clicking here.

These new Groove MVPs join our first group of MVPs awarded last quarter: Fabrice Barbin (France), Supriyo “SB” Chatterjee (USA) , Mark Smith(UK), and Elisabeth Vanderveldt (Canada) who we profiled in this blog post.

We're going to the MVP Global Summit...

This week the Groove team will participate for the first time at the MVP Global Summit in Seattle and Redmond. The Summit is an opportunity foe MVPs and Regional Directors to engage directly with Microsoft product teams and exchange ideas. To learn more about the Summit, click here here.

Infoworld's Abruzze talks about Groove

2008-04-11T22:36:01Z

J.Peter Abruzze continues his discussion of Microsoft Office Groove 2007. In this post he talks about Groove Server 2007, and the different components.

--abbott

Microsoft Office Groove-tube

2008-04-03T19:04:00Z

Not sure if you have seen this quick YouTube video from Mike Agerbo, of Get Connected fame. He gives a two minute review of Groove 2007 and OneNote 2007. Its a good pointer if you are trying to explain Groove 2007 to someone for the first time. Although it implies that you need Communicator in order to use instant messages, its a good quick review.

--abbott

link to this page: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/04/03/groove-tube.aspx

link to this page:http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/03/26/updates-to-groove-web-services-helpers.aspx

Groove Server Certification

2008-03-27T18:40:00Z

If you had a chance to look at J. Peter Abruzze's blog entry on Groove Server and Enterprise Services (Getting into the Groove, Part 1: Outsource or in-house?), you might be interested in digging a little deeper into learning about Groove.

You can start with the material on http://office.microsoft.com/groove, but there is more technical detail available on http://technet.microsoft.com/groove .

We have new training and certification material available on the details of Groove Server and Enterprise Services. These courses can be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6452.mspx

Collection 6452AE: Implementing Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007

v Course 6453AE: Installing and Deploying Microsoft Office Groove 2007

v Course 6454AE: Configuring and Administering Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007

v Course 6455AE: Managing Microsoft Office Groove 2007 Accounts and Workspaces

v Course 6456AE: Using Advanced Microsoft Office Groove 2007 Workspace Tools

v Course 6457AE: Deploying Microsoft Office Groove 2007 Data Bridge and Disaster Recovery

v Course 6458AE: Securing and Maintaining Microsoft Office Groove 2007

--abbott

link to this page: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/03/27/groove-server-certification.aspx

Updates to Groove Web Services Helpers

2008-03-26T21:02:00Z

Bob Novas is one of the frequent contributors to the Groove Web Helpers. He recently posted an update to address some of the problems he has encountered in his projects. In his words:

"...I’ve been troubled by the behavior of the code – sometimes web service operations fail (with a message like “The request was aborted: The request was cancelled”), or take a long time to complete, and it’s not clear why. I finally stumbled across a description of a problem that seemed pertinent and that suggested a solution. "

If you want to see the solution, you'll need to check out his post: http://bobnovas.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!30AB2D2627148CB8!152.entry

Got feedback about the web helpers, or examples of web services applications running on Groove? I'm eager to hear it!

--abbott

link to this page:http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/03/26/updates-to-groove-web-services-helpers.aspx