It’s all about Groove and SharePoint Workspace

Hommes & Process announced today the availability of GrooveIT! Backup. 

A new product in the GrooveIT! line

Aligned on GrooveIT! line philosophy, Hommes & Process delivers a new application focused on Groove and SharePoint Workspace. This new one is focused on workspaces archiving: GrooveIT! Backup helps users to archive their Groove and Shared folder workspaces on both Groove 2007 and SharePoint Workspace 2010. 

Market was awaiting for such a solution since Groove DataBridge Server (and its embedded Backup Service) was removed(*) from Office V2010 line. GrooveIT! Backup is built as an application but manage workspaces archives the same way that the former Groove DataBridge Server did: Workspaces are periodically and automatically saved as compressed and encrypted files. 

The fact that GrooveIT! Backup is proposed as an application (and not a server) is an approach that allows small organizations (SMBs), that hadn’t means and resources to set up and support a dedicated server, to easily get access to workspaces backup capabilities. 

Why do we need a backup solution?

As you already know, Groove and Shared Folder workspaces contents are automatically synched between members. If a device crashed or is stolen, it’s quite easy to restore user’s account and then get workspace content from other members. In this context, if each workspace is shared at minimum by 2 members, there’s a simple efficient mean to get data back. 

So, why do we need a backup solution? 

The answer is that, if content is synched, involuntary deletions are also synched. Thus, if a member deletes a file, a tool or a workspace, there is no mean to restore it. SharePoint Workspace is designed to support hardware failure… but not, human failure! 

It’s why, GrooveIT! Backup was created.
By archiving workspaces, members have the ability to restore a former version of a workspace and get its content back. 

GrooveIT! Backup features

There are 2 ways to use GrooveIT! Backup:
- On-demand archiving lets user choose workspaces to backup and archive files location. Then, archiving is launched.
- In another hand, user can also create archiving rules: user chooses workspaces to backup, archive files location and also a frequency. Archiving is then automatically launched according to the chosen frequency. This second approach is particularly interesting because it allows to define backup scenarios based on workspace content criticality. 

In both cases, archive files can be locked with a password to avoid unauthorized restoration. 

2 GrooveIT! Backup versions are available based in targeted uses: GrooveIT! Backup – Personal Edition for individual usages and GrooveIT! Backup – Enterprise Edition for centralized archiving. 

To learn more

You would like to give a try, learn more or buy a license. Choose one of the 2 links below: 

GrooveIT Backup – Personal Edition 

GrooveIT Backup – Enterprise Edition 

(*) Groove Databridge Server 2007 is still available but do not support V2010 workspaces.

If you carefully follow Hommes & Process news, you may already know that the team was finalizing a new product included in the GrooveIT! line.

GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office SharePoint is now available!

What’s that?

 GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office SharePoint is designed to provide SharePoint users with a simple, effective and secure way to extract SharePoint documents and rework them.

By “rework”, I mean: Have the ability to read and modify these documents from outside of SharePoint (so being offline) , the ability to add new resources, but also have the ability to share documents with people outside of the company: customers, partners, etc.

More than a simple download, GrooveIT! for SharePoint uses Groove 2007 functionality to achieve synchronization and security.

How does it work?
 

GrooveIT ! for SharePoint adds a button in your IE toolbar. This button is automatically activated as soon as you navigate to a SharePoint site containing a documents list.
 
Users only need to click the button, choose the source list and a name for the workspace and finally validate. And that’s all! This solution really is “idiot-proof”!
 
SharePoint and BPOS
 
The good news is that GrooveIT ! for SharePoint not only works with corporate SharePoint sites but also support BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) sites. Using GrooveIT! for SharePoint, Groove 2007 become the natural and efficient offline client for your BPOS documents!

2 versions… 2 ways to use it!
 
To comply with corporate policies, GrooveIT! for SharePoint is available in 2 distinct versions.

The first one allows users to extend the workspaces created by GrooveIT! for SharePoint by inviting members or adding new tools.

•  If corporate policies allow invitations to be sent to people outside the company then this approach is the right one to support cross-organization collaboration. It’s a way to extract controlled and limited information from SharePoint and enable a team to work on it.
•  But GrooveIT! for SharePoint also permits users to work with colleagues on the same content in  “draft” mode before publishing finalized versions to SharePoint websites.
•  Finally, GrooveIT! for SharePoint helps mobile workers by providing a way to take documents with them, in a secure and easy way, when they are away from the company.

The second version (called “Special” Edition) ensures that documents stored in SharePoint will not be shared. Workspaces created by GrooveIT! for SharePoint are closed. No one can be invited to these workspaces. This version is the perfect tool to provide users with a secure Offline SharePoint Documents Client!
 
 To learn more…

You will notice that GrooveIT! for SharePoint is completely aligned with Microsoft’s strategy, that plans to link more closely Groove and SharePoint in next year’s major release (Office 2010). Finally, with GrooveIT for SharePoint, Hommes & Process provides you with a kind of preview of what Office 2010 will be made of!
 
You would like to learn more or give GrooveIT! for SharePoint a try?
Please visit: http://solutions.hommesetprocess.com

Few weeks ago, Hommes & Process released a new GrooveIT! product : GrooveIT! for My Calendars. This product is designed to provide users with a single consolidated view of several Groove calendars. User can choose which calendar he would like to add in his view, choose a specific color for each calendar, and also add new information to a calendar event (such a location, people involved…) and benefits from reminders and filters.

The good news is that an Outlook connector is now released!
You are now able to add your Outlook calendars in this single consolidated view!

You would like to give it a try? Visit : http://www.grooveit.biz

Few weeks ago, I announced GrooveIT! for My Documents Beta Program launch. The Beta program is now closed. The GrooveIT! Team spend time during this period exchanging with Beta testers, collecting their feedback, and trying to integrate their remarks and suggestions into the finale release of GrooveIT! for My Documents.

V1.0 is now available !

As a reminder, GrooveIT! for My Documents is :
- An application to publish into Groove workspaces documents coming from several sources : local file system, sharepoint sites, groove workspaces,
- Some add-ons for Word, Excel and PowerPoint to manage – open and save – documents in Groove directly from within Office tools.
- A search tool to quickly and easily find documents in one or several workspaces

A 30 days free trial is available.
Details and download there : http://www.grooveit.biz

Few days ago, I register with Brainsonic a short video (in french) to present Hommes & Process and GrooveIT! for Outlook. This video is now available.

As a reminder, GrooveIT! for Outlook is an application, developed by Hommes & Process, embedded in Outlook, that allows users to send – automatically or on demand – emails, contacts, calendars, tasks and RSS feeds from Outlook to Groove workspaces. This tool allows user to go from a personal work method to a team work method, without any difficulties or data lost. Un “Must Have” for Groove-Outlook users !

At the end of this video, I also speak about GrooveIT! product line development and mention GrooveIT! for My Documents currently in Beta. I will write a post dedicated to this new product in a near future and provide more information than in the one already available. For example, i will present the add-ins available with GrooveIT! for My Documents that enable to open or save Groove documents from within Word, Excel and PowerPoint… 

GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office Outlook
By HommesEtProcess

Sorry, this entry is only available in french.

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.

As said in a previous post, I demoed last Wednesday GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office Outlook Release 2 during the session dedicated to Groove development.
 
Demonstration use case:

I just received an email from one of my customer asking me to start a new project with him and who would like to set up a collaboration workspace to share project documents and follow-up. Using GrooveIT for Microsoft Office Outlook, in Outlook, i click on the “Send to Groove” button, choose a Groove identity. I can then choose an existing workspace or create a new one. As we are starting a new project, I decide to create a new workspace. I enter a name and choose emails recipients I would like to invite to join this new workspace. I’m also able to select contacts coming from my Contacts list in Outlook. I then customize invitation text and validate. A new workspaces is automatically created, invitations to join are sent by email to selected contacts and 2 new tools are added to my workspace : The first one will be dedicated to emails management – threads of discussions, filtering… – and the second one will allow me to store attachments. I finally choose attachments I would like to publish and validate.
That’s all it take!…
In few seconds, I new workspace dedicated to my project is ready to be used…
 
As i guess I will probably receive other emails related to this project, I aslo choose to create a

GrooveIT! rule. A create an Outlook folder and launch the “New GrooveIT! rule” wizard to map this folder to a Groove workspace. When new emails will arrive in my Inbox, I will only need to drop them into my mapped Outlook folder to have them automatically sent to Groove.
 
Finally, I would like to share some news related to a specific technology and useful for my new project. I subscribed to a RSS feeds in Outlook. I create a GrooveIT! rule to automatically publish new RSS articles into my workspace. Only few clics to transform my personal competitive watch to a team one!

If you would like to discover extra use cases or give a free trial to GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office Outlook, visit GrooveIT! website

You will also find below few photos taken during the presentation (Thanks to Nay for these photos)

 Do you know FrogZ ?
This french well-known froggy attended this week at TechED and visited the Groove booth.
A good opportunity for her to discover Groove and GrooveIT! solutions…