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
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.
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
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
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
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
J. Peter Abruzze has just posted the first of a two part Groove review. He does a good job explaining when you need Groove Enterprise Services, and when you need Groove Server 2007.
Check out the full article at: Getting into the Groove, Part 1: Outsource or in-house?
--abbott
Last fall, we launched the Groove MVP program and requested nominations from Microsoft full-time employees. Microsoft's MVP team performs an extensive review of all candidates nominated for this prestigious award.
The primary criteria to be awarded MVP is the nominee having voluntarily engaged in creating, aggregating, and proliferating content that provides real world answers to customer and partner issues in support of the community. The MVP candidate has unselfishly shared his or her expertise via Microsoft or third party blogs, newsgroups, user forums, events, and other venues.
We are pleased to announce Groove's first four MVPs, who were notified in January:
Fabrice Barbin (France): Fabrice works for Hommes & Process and has actively shared his Groove expertise via multiple community sites and his own French and English language blog. He has presented Groove sessions at many third party and Microsoft technical events in EMEA and North America over the past 2 years, including DevCon, TechDays in France, TechEd, and to the French user group “Club MOSS France”. Fabrice has also authored articles and whitepapers about Groove which have been featured in the French magazine “Programmez!” and on Microsoft’s TechNet French site.
Supriyo “SB” Chatterjee (USA): SB has been an active contributor to the Groove community since 2001 in the support forums on groove.net (prior to acquisition by Microsoft) and in Microsoft newsgroups, and has contributed over 1,000 discussion posts about Groove. Beginning with Groove’s 2.5 release, SB administered and contributed to several Groove workspaces catering to the developer community. In addition, he actively participated in Groove workspaces providing logistical support for the Tsunami Relief Effort. SB is an experienced developer in C#/.NET, ASP.NET, SQL Server 2000/2005, SharePoint, & Groove, and has been Acting Director of the Connecticut .NET Developers Group since 2004.
Mark Smith (UK): Mark is a skilled developer who has built and delivered a variety of unique Groove solutions over the past 5+ years that leverage Groove Forms, Groove Web Services, and the Groove Data Bridge. Mark was one of the top contributors to the Groove.net forum (prior to acquisition by Microsoft), and now regularly shares his knowledge about Groove developer topics via his blog. He currently works for Microsoft partner Information Patterns.
Elisabeth Vanderveldt (Canada): Elisabeth works for Conamex Intl and has been a strong Groove advocate in Canada. She is VP and international chair of IAMCP, a global network representing over 3,000 Microsoft partners in over 24 countries. Elisabeth helped drive getting IAMCP to use Groove to run the entire Canadian board. In addition to delivering seminars on SBS, Office, Vista, MOSS, and Groove integration, Elisabeth maintains her own multilingual English/French blog. She has provided 1:1 technical support for new Groove users and helped route them to appropriate technical resources to help accelerate their ramp up on Groove.
We are now plugged in to the quarterly nomination cycle that all Microsoft MVP programs follow, and are currently reviewing nominations received this quarter. We hope to be able to announce additional Groove MVPs in early April. Stay tuned!
We hear the request all the time -- "How do I search my workspaces?"
You've probably noticed that there is no indexed search solution inside of Microsoft Office Groove 2007. Fast forward a couple years to the next release, and I hope we'll provide you a Windows Desktop Search integrated feature. In the meantime, though, there are some solutions available by our partners such as Toucan File Finder (http://www.infopatterns.com/products/ToucanFileFinder.aspx) or Groove Search (http://www.apwiz.com/details.aspx?id=258 ).
For developers and system integrators looking to provide search as part of their overall solution, Paresh Suthar and Bob Novas have recently published GrooveDataExportsProjects on codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/gwsv12helpers).
Summary
Groove Workspaces persist data in encrypted databases, making it difficult to expose mechanisms to snap into search products like Windows Desktop Search. The need to be able to search content has increasingly grown to the point that some folks can’t wait for the product to be modified to add this functionality. As a result, this utility was created to export data from Groove workspaces and produce XHTML files that can be easily searched as well as viewed from within a browser.
GrooveDataExportersProjects.zip contains the sources for the relevant projects to create this Windowed app that runs in the systray icon and exports running spaces to disk on a periodic basis.
Notes
1) All content is exported/copied to the specified [local] hard drive – so if security is of utmost concern, either don’t use this or make sure your drives are somehow encrypted.
2) This is a makeshift solution that is by no means elegant, especially when compared to what might be coming from the Groove product in upcoming releases.
3) This utility can only export data from those tools that support Groove Web Services (e.g. calendar, discussion, files, forms)
4) The exported content is in essence a mini-website, where you can open the index.html file and traverse all exported contents
I'm very interested in hearing the feedback, or seeing a solution, based on the codeplex project. Show me what you've got!
--abbott
link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/02/06/searching-for-a-groove-search-solution.aspx
Learn about Groove 2007 Auditing
We've just released a new whitepaper that discusses the Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 Auditing feature. It provides information about Audit requirements, a description of how the feature works, and guidance about when and how to deploy it.
If your organization is subject to compliance regulations, the ability to audit business processes is a key part of your risk management strategy. When those business processes span company boundaries, crossing the firewall to include partners, customers, and suppliers, it can be difficult for IT to maintain adequate controls. Office Groove 2007 provides a secure way for teams to work together, while the Audit feature provides a mechanism for collecting specific information about Groove user events into SQL databases. IT administrators can interpret the stored data and process it using SQL queries, or format audit output using external SQL reporting tools.
The Audit feature is only available to organizations that have deployed Groove Server 2007 on site (in other words, it is not available to Enterprise Services customers). The Audit feature requires a separate installation of the Groove Server Manager, so if you need Audit, you will need at least 1 Relay and 2 Manager servers, each installed on separate hardware. More detail on the requirements are provided in the paper.
Many thanks to Mena, Bill, Ravi, and Leon for getting this paper together!
--abbott
link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/01/04/office-groove-server-2007-audit.aspx
New Solution Accelerator just released: Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint | Do you need tools to collaborate securely with others across the Internet? The Beta for the Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for Sharepoint has just been released. Inside you'll find "Choosing a Collaboration Solution", a paper focused on helping you get the most out of the Office System collaboration tools, including Office Groove 2007 and the "Deployment and Operations Guide" for detailed instructions on setting up SharePoint for the extranet. I found the criteria for choosing the collab solution to be especially helpful. I know many people are looking for guidance on when to use Groove, when to use SharePoint, when to use email, etc. This paper looks at a number of criteria, and offers an analysis of where each app has its strenght. Also included is information on how the apps can be used together to achieve more powerful results. The paper looks at a number of criteria, such as Frequency of Collaboration, level of confidentialtiy, the project duration, and amount of data that is shared. Offine requirements, and specificty of Access Control are also considered. Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint is now available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106070. --abbott |  |
| | |
link to this article:
http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2008/01/03/groove-and-the-extranet-collab-toolkit.aspx
Welcome to 2008! I've been off on vacation for a bit -- enjoying a great new england winter with plenty of skating and sledding with the kids, and racking up some running miles as well. I got a slick running toy under the Christmas tree: a Garmin 305, which tracks all my running data, and keeps me well informed as I huff and puff up the hills.
Now, if I wanted to share some of that geo-spatial data for business purposes, I might look for something a little more robust and customizable than the mashup offered at www.motionbased.com. Alistair Speirs has a good description and review of InfoPatterns TouCanNavigate app that runs on Groove. You can read all about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/archive/2007/12/31/the-geocollaboration-toolbox-groove-and-toucan-navigate.aspx
For those of you that are coming to TR6, be sure to sign up for the Groove Certification Exam prep that we're running on Sunday, February 10th! Check your mail for the registration details!
happy trails!
--abbott
Are you familiar with the Groove Web Helpers? They're designed to help you get the most from the Groove Web Services API. Though not officially "supported" they are available on CodePlex. the latest update to the Web Helpers is now available:
http://www.codeplex.com/GWSV12Helpers
This release:
- Fixes the problem with the SharepointFilesTool class’s SetInitialConfiguration method. This method was calling the SetWSSProperties web service operation using the wrong posting URL.
- Adds the GrooveSPFiles command line utility, which invokes the SharePoint Files Tool SetWSSProperties web service operation using the above class method and passes command line arguments to it, making it possible to demonstrate that the fix works.
Using this release, you can now set the initial configuration of a SharePoint Files Tool, from a client or a GDB, programmatically or from the command line.
GrooveSPFiles
Sets properties on specified WSS Space
Parameters:
/Tool= The Web Services URI for the Groove SharePoint Files tool
/DocumentLibraryURL= The URL of the SharePoint Document Library
/SynchronizerIdentity= The Web Services URI for the Synchronizer Groove identity
[/Account= The Web Services URI for the Groove account]
[/Identity= The Web Services URI for the Groove identity]
[/RequestKey= Token used to communicate Groove host]
[/Host= The remote Groove host name to issue commands to]
[/Port= The remote Groove host port to issue commands to]
[/Timeout= Timeout (in ms) for Web Services method execution]
[/X= Configuration file to use for parameter input]
--BN
link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2007/12/14/groove-2007-update-to-the-groove-web-helpers.aspx
Did you know that Office Groove 2007 has Spell Check?
Although it may seem hidden, you can use Spell Check during many of your Groove activities. All you need to do is press F7 on your keyboard and Spelling will pop up! Try it when creating an Instant Message to a colleague, adding a discussion item, creating a note in the notepad, any place where you can enter in Rich Text. It is that easy.
![clip_image001[4]](http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/groove/WindowsLiveWriter/DidyouknowGroove2007hasspellcheck_AD36/clip_image001%5B4%5D_thumb.jpg)
--AW
link to this article: http://blogs.technet.com/groove/archive/2007/12/14/did-you-know-groove-2007-has-spell-check.aspx
Yes, Virginia, there is a Groove SP1!
If you have installed Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 or Microsoft Office Groove 2007 the SP1 build number for Groove will show as 12.0.6215.
You must refer to Help-->About Microsoft Office Groove to find the Office Build Number. 12.0.6215 = SP1 for Office Client, and includes all SP1 fixes for Groove 2007.
The Groove 2007 client and Groove Server 2007 fixes are documented here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/C/F/BCFBEC81-ED9E-40A3-BBF0-1410B67A365A/2007%20Office%20Servers%20Service%20Pack%201%20Changes_all.xls .
--abbott