Groove 2007 also integrates with Microsoft Office InfoPath forms, which makes
Groove a natural platform for data-gathering applications. You can fill out
instances of a form in Groove, then sync them back to a central server to aggregate
the data you've collected with the work done by others.
Although Groove's decentralized nature remains, Microsoft has made an important
concession to organizations that want to maintain total control of their Groove
environments by creating the Groove Server 2007 applications. If you want to
deploy Groove without depending on Microsoft's servers for coordination, you
can deploy your own servers from which you can control which users get access
to workspaces, what they can do with the workspaces, and what information you
see and share with others. Groove Server 2007 integrates with AD for provisioning,
so you can easily grant access using the same set of directory information you
use for other types of provisioning. The Groove Server product line includes
the ability to back up and restore workspaces from the server (a nice disaster-recovery
feature), and the Groove Server Data Bridge lets you integrate other line-of-business
applications with Groove workspaces and their tools.
Using Groove
Groove workspaces are a good example of cellular design: You can create workspaces
for different projects, and each workspace can be thought of as a unique cell
whose contents are completely separate from other workspaces. For example, I
used Groove extensively during the creation of my two security books for Microsoft
Press. I created one workspace for sharing documents with my editors and another
for passing out drafts of chapters to technical reviewers. As I completed new
versions of each chapter, I dropped them into the appropriate folders and let
Groove take care of transmitting the updates to each team member. I didn't have
to log on to a VPN, remember credentials, or do anything else beyond dropping
the file into the correct workspace folder. Synchronization was automatic and
worked well even over the dial-up lines I often had to use while traveling at
the time. As editors or reviewers marked up chapters and artwork, their revisions
automatically appeared in my workspace whenever I went online, greatly simplifying
the process of exchanging and coordinating updates.
Another major benefit of Groove's approach is that workspace members don't
have to be part of the same directory namespace. You can have a workspace
whose members are all from the same AD forest or domain, but you can just as
easily have a Groove workspace whose members are all from different organizations.
This capability means that collaborating with people outside your organization
is just as easy as collaborating with those inside: Invite the members you want,
and after they sign up for Groove accounts, they'll be able to start sharing.
Groove's collaboration capabilities lend themselves to remarkable uses. For
example, John Morello, the deputy chief information security officer at Louisiana
State University, and a team of Microsoft engineers quickly built a Groove-based
system for operating LSU's Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The LSU EOC program
takes advantage of Groove's synchronization infrastructure to allow disparate
agencies (e.g., parish sheriffs, local ambulance companies) to federate with
the EOC's systems without the overhead or maintenance of a VPN. By using SharePoint
as the basis of the EOC's system and Groove to provide synchronization of SharePoint
and InfoPath data, the EOC team can keep up to date.
From an IT perspective, Groove offers some interesting possibilities. Many
users use Groove instead of the built-in Windows Client Side Caching (CSC) functionality;
to do so, you set up a Groove workspace on your work computer, then use the
built-in Export command to export your Groove account to a file. When you use
the exported Groove account to log on to a different computer that has the client
software installed, you'll be able to synchronize to your workspace and work
with it locally. Of course, you can also invite others to the workspace—a
key advantage over CSC. This simple method provides work-at-home capabilities
for users who might not want to, or be able to, use VPNs to connect to your
internal network. The decentralized nature of Groove workspaces is also a boon
for geographically distributed teams; if you frequently find that you or some
of your colleagues have to travel for implementation work, a Groove workspace
might be a useful addition to your travel toolkit.
For end users, consider how you can use the synchronization and sharing features
built in to Groove to improve the business processes you already have. Any process
that depends on mobile or intermittently connected users should be evaluated
to see whether adding a synchronized, P2P shared workspace might improve its
timeliness or accuracy.
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