Microsoft Office Groove 2007 and SharePoint differ, but also work together
By Rich Freeman
microsoft office groove 2007
Many people have trouble determining which of Microsoft Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is the better fit for their collaboration needs. Though the two products have similarities, they serve different purposes. Here are some tips to help you decide when to use each of them, alone or together.
In Summary:
| • | Microsoft Office Groove 2007 is best for small virtual teams and short-term projects. |
| • | Office SharePoint Server is best when you need to publish information permanently and distribute it widely. |
| • | You can use Microsoft Office Groove 2007 and Office SharePoint Server together to take intranet content offline or share that content externally. |
If you're unsure when to use Microsoft Office Groove and when to use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, don't worry. You're not alone.
"I'm guaranteed to be asked about it at any presentation I do," says Abbott Lowell, a technical product manager and Office Groove specialist at Microsoft. Both Office Groove and Office SharePoint Server are considered collaboration technologies, he explains, and they share some similar features, such as calendars and group discussion functionality. Yet Office Groove and Office SharePoint Server are in fact quite distinct products with different uses. Read on to determine which is right for your specific needs.
Questions to consider
Because it is a new product, many people are unfamiliar with Office Groove. Essentially, Office Groove is a dynamic collaboration environment for short-term projects with concrete deadlines, such as a product launch or bid preparation. An Office Groove "workspace" gives project team members a central place to store and update documents, presentations, and other essential information.
Office SharePoint Server, by contrast, comprises a larger set of technologies with a wider range of uses. Like Office Groove, Office SharePoint Server helps project teams store documents and other information centrally. But it also includes robust workflow capabilities for managing structured business processes, such as expense report approvals and document reviews. Powerful search features and sophisticated content management functionality also make Office SharePoint Server an ideal tool for building rich intranet and extranet sites.
To decide which suits your collaboration needs, ask yourself these questions:
1. | Are you and your colleagues highly mobile and often offline? If so, Office Groove is probably the better choice. An Office Groove workspace doesn't reside on a server. Instead, every team member has a complete, identical copy of the workspace on their desktop. Anytime someone makes a change, Groove automatically distributes it to the other team members, keeping everyone's information synchronized. The upshot of this "peer-to-peer" architecture is that project team members can view and update documents even when they don't have Internet or network access. Office SharePoint Server, by contrast, is a traditional client-server application that requires connectivity. Office Groove is still your better option when connectivity is available but slow, as its synchronization engine distributes only changes to files rather than whole files. If a colleague edits one label on a 10 MB blueprint, for example, Office Groove will send you just the few altered bytes instead of the entire massive file. |
2. | Will you be working with people from outside your organization? If the answer is yes, choose Office Groove. The same peer-to-peer architecture that keeps team members productive when they're offline also enables people from different organizations to collaborate without having to worry about network permissions. "It's a relatively cheap and easy way to work with your partners, customers, and vendors," says Owen Allen, a technical specialist at Microsoft. |
3. | Is your main goal to produce information or to distribute it? Office Groove is an effective tool for completing a team project, especially when team members are offline or from different organizations, but the document management and search features in Office SharePoint Server make it a more powerful tool for publishing information broadly. |
4. | Will team members be using different client operating systems? If your project team includes people who use operating systems other than Microsoft Windows, choose Office SharePoint Server. Office Groove uses specialized client software that works only on computers that run Microsoft Windows. To access an Office SharePoint Server site, all you need is a Web browser and an Internet or network connection. |
5. | Is the appearance of your collaboration space important? If it is, use Office SharePoint Server, which provides rich design tools. "You have a lot more layout control with SharePoint," says Nick Stillings, an information worker specialist at Microsoft. "You can dictate what the site looks like and even use HTML tools if you really want to get fancy." Interface customization in Office Groove, by contrast, is limited to data entry forms. |
Using Office Groove and Office SharePoint Server together
In some cases, your best course is to use Office Groove and Office SharePoint Server in tandem rather than either one alone. "They're not mutually exclusive at all," says Bob Barnes, a senior specialist at Conchango plc, a Microsoft Gold Certified solution provider headquartered in London. For example, Office Groove lets you import Office SharePoint Server document libraries into your workspaces. Thereafter, if someone adds or edits a file in Office SharePoint Server, it appears in Office Groove, and vice versa. Thus, team members can use Office Groove as a tool for taking Office SharePoint Server files offline, or as a simple way to give vendors and partners access to Office SharePoint Server content on your company's intranet.
You can use that same functionality to link field teams with the head office. An insurance company can create an Office SharePoint Server document library for its claims inspectors at headquarters, for example, and include it in an Office Groove workspace that its mobile claims adjustors use. As adjustors complete claim forms on their laptops during the day, they can store them in Office Groove. As soon as they reconnect with the Internet, Office Groove automatically uploads those forms to Office SharePoint Server for later review by managers at headquarters.
Allen encourages people interested in learning more about Office Groove and Office SharePoint Server to download trial versions of both products. Evaluation copies of Office Groove are available at www.trymicrosoftoffice.com, and a trial version of Office SharePoint Server is available on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web site. Spend a little time exploring how the two products work alone and together, and it won't be long before you identify a variety of distinct but useful applications for both of them.
Rich Freeman is a Seattle-based freelance writer specializing in business and technology. He has more than 14 years of strategic marketing and communications experience in the IT industry.
