How I use Groove

Groove is used very differently by different organizations and different people. I saw a statement recently that Groove workspaces won’t synchronize once they are over 2 GB – that’s not accurate, incidentally. Larger workspaces will continue to synchronize, but at that size, you cannot invite new members, or extend the workspace to an additional computer. However, in an attempt to find an example in my own current workspaces, I discovered that none of them come close to that size. I recall testing the scenario to see it in action, but now that I think back on it, I was searching my hard drive for suitably large files to bulk up a workspace. Customers do sometimes hit this limit, though. Considering that discrepancy, I decided to offer a summary of how I use Groove.

Excluding workspaces that exist entirely for testing and research purposes, my Groove usage divides into roughly four categories:

· Data replication – I use Groove File Sharing workspaces to synchronize certain folders between my work desktop and my laptop. These workspaces have no other members, so simultaneous changes are not an issue. Not only do these workspaces provide convenient access to my folder on both PCs, but because of them, a hard drive failure on my old laptop didn’t take out anything I couldn’t replace.

· Information sharing – When Microsoft acquired Groove Networks, those of us acquired with it had to learn where everything was in the Microsoft structure. In my group, we created a Groove workspace so members could record pointers (organized by topic) to things they had found, and the second person looking for newsgroup participation guidelines or the download for Live Meeting didn’t need to search beyond the workspace. Now we invite new employees to this workspace, giving them access to that accumulated information right away.

· Project coordination – The Groove Support team uses several workspaces to coordinate operations. In addition to information sharing, these workspaces are used to discuss issues, track schedules, schedule and document meetings, and store files that everyone needs access to. Similarly, the office that we are in has a workspace for combined business and social use. It has a Calendar tool, a Files tool, and several Discussion tools. If you came to work without the power cord for your laptop and want to know if you can borrow one, that is the place to ask!

· Social interaction – I see a lot of these! For example, we have a workspace for people who want to share pictures of their pets, and one for discussing home renovation projects, and one for the softball players to schedule games. Invitations for most of these spaces are saved as files and made available through the Files tool in the office workspace.

Because my work does not involve a lot of graphics or other content with high storage requirements, the social workspaces with photographs tend to be the larger ones. However, my largest workspace (767 MB) is actually one of the team workspaces. It contains a four Files tools and has been around since December 2006. Some material in it was migrated from an earlier workspace because we wanted to switch to using the 2007 workspace template.

My oldest workspace (excluding test workspaces) is my primary File Sharing workspace, created in July of 2004. The oldest one with other members is the social workspace for sharing pictures of pets. That was created in December of 2004.

Keep in mind that this is specifically my usage. The size of any workspace depends on the type and quantity of data shared, so if your project includes graphics design or video snippets, related workspaces are likely to be a lot larger than projects that require text files and Word documents. I'd expect a Marketing team to have larger workspaces than a Support team, for example.

So, what about you? Does anyone have a usage pattern or a favorite use of workspace to share?

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Mark! I'm hoping to build this up into a customer resource, especially for new issues and solutions. Thanks for dropping by! Frances (Wow, the non-hierarchical comment structure will take some getting used to.)

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2008
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• Anonymous
  September 19, 2008
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• Anonymous
  February 06, 2009
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