It’s all about Groove and SharePoint Workspace

Sorry, this entry is only available in french.

“Groove – Step by Step“,

written by Rick Jewell and John Pierce. Available in english. 

“Microsoft Office Groove 2007 – Das Handbuch“,

written by Helmut Reinke, Andreas Strothmann and Dirk Diestelhorst. Available in german.

Microsoft published few days ago a document describing how Groove can be used to improve post-merger integration process. The author highlight issues usually encountered….

Here are 2 interesting quotes :

“   The post-merger integration planning team must work with the deal team to understand the projected synergies, and then create a road map to achieve them. This task is challenging because employees from the merging companies may be located in multiple geographic regions and work on separate networks. Integration team members cannot share documents and information through their network and often must depend on e-mail to work collaboratively.
Collaborating via e-mail and sending highly valuable, business-critical documents raises serious security concerns, including the potential loss of intellectual property. Recent research in high-tech manufacturing has shown that close to 80 percent of workers have used nonsecure public communications tools to collaborate with partners, and only 27 percent of business users and 37 percent of technical decision makers surveyed consider their collaboration tools to be “definitely” secure.  “

 and

” The acquiring company often has a standard plan for post-merger communication, but in almost all cases, effective internal communication requires collaboration between management, human resources, and other departments of both companies.
With so many internal decisions to be made and a significant amount of time spent communicating with employees, some companies going through post-merger integration lose focus on their external communication to customers, clients, vendors, the community, and the media. As with internal communication, it is critical for the management of the two companies to work together to effectively communicate to its external stakeholders and customers.  “

And, of course, this document also describe benefits provided by Groove to improve team collaborative in this context.

Spend few minutes to read this document…
It’s very interesting!

Announced at the end of 2007, GrooveIT! for MyDocs is a new product in the GrooveIT! line and currently available in Beta.

Product leitmotiv is : Explore. View. Publish.

Dedicated to document integration, this new application allows users to easily find and choose documents whatever they come from and, then to publish them in Groove. Connector-based, GrooveIT! for MyDocs is currently provided with 3 source connectors – File System, SharePoint, Groove – and one target connector : Groove. (New – source and target – connectors will be added in the future)
 
For example, you will be able to use GrooveIT! for MyDocs to :

- Easily send documents from a Groove workspace to another
Example : In a project use, send documents from an internal Groove workspace (your team) to an external one (you and your client).
 
- Easily send documents from a SharePoint site to a Groove workspace.
Example : In a P2P Business use, send documents from an Intranet site (your enterprise) to an external Groove workspace (your enterprise and a partner)
 
- Connect your legacy applications or office equipments such fax or scanner to Groove
Example : Publish in a Groove workspace all scanned documents – invoices, contracts, … – related to a specific project.
 
For each connector, you can also define favorites. A quick load for often used environment !
 
To note that new elements will be shortly added to this main application to provide :
- advanced search capabilities in Groove,
- document integration with Groove from within Word, Excel and PowerPoint,
- document integration with Groove from your Windows desktop.

Beta Program is already started but feel free to register now to be involved and give a try to this new application !

Sorry, this entry is only available in french.

I got the nice surprise this morning to receive a Microsoft MVP – Most Valuable Professionnal – award on Groove technologies.

 A great way to begin this new year 2008!

Thanks!

My MVP profile : MVP Profile – Fabrice BARBIN