Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Groove 2007 [Old Version]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After struggling with shared folders, Intraspect, FTP and file synchronization, I've come to the conclusion that Groove is simply a better idea. It works best when you have a group of users who need to interact frequently around a set of topics. Groove workspaces make it easy to share files, to hold threaded discussions, to manage task lists and calendars, and to chat with colleagues in the same workspace.

The technology is peer-to-peer - that means there's a copy of everything on the machines of every user invited to participate in a workspace. This has many advantages - automatic backups, and the ability to work offline are two of the most important to me.

When I started working with Groove (beta), I was in the UK, with a colleague in Bangalore and one in San Jose (CA). We were all able to stay in sync without sending documents by e-mail. Groove is intelligent in that it automatically synchronizes files using an encrypted link.

Because of the peer-to-peer nature of the system, you do need to be online at the same time as your colleague in order to sync. The Groove server may eliminate this requirement - I haven't used it.

Groove appears to be secure, but I am no expert in that - Microsoft has lots of information on the subject.

Another great use for Groove is when you have multi-vendor projects - for example using an agency to do graphic design. You can use Groove to communicate securely through your firewalls. The communications are limited to the content of your Groove workspaces, so it's not intrinsically a risk.

However, from a corporate perspective, there is a risk. Groove makes it easy to invite "outsiders" to access potentially private corporate information. This means that a malicious user could transfer information to a third party in ways that may be difficult for their employer to detect. Of course there are many ways to do that, but this will probably be a concern to some IT organizations.

In summary, Groove has encouraged open and frequent communication across three continents, and has allowed effective sharing and backup of key documents without cluttering our e-mail. Five stars!

I have evaluated this product as an alternative to using the free Microsoft FolderShare service for syncronizing files & folders between my computers. I have found that there are some very restrictive limitations when configuring a file sharing workspace. More specifically, a file sharing workspace is limited to 2GB or 5,000 files, whichever comes first. Once the limit is reached, the files in the workspace will no longer be synchronized.

In these days of 4GB+ flash drives, having a 2GB file sharing limit is terribly restrictive. I have stopped using MS Groove as a result and am currently looking for a better alternative to FolderShare.

I live in Seattle and am working on starting a new Web-based business with a colleague in Singapore. We use Groove to share all our files as well as keep track of bugs in our prototype. While the product has a pretty rough user interface- as far as I can remember, not particularly improved over the previous, free version of Groove- it still beats using a shared folder or (shudder) e-mail as a way of keeping our work in synch. It easily saves me enough time and aggravation to be worth the price.

Groove is a really useful product. My major in college allows us access to Groove through an agreement with Microsoft. It is used extensively by the students. The nature of our work is very group oriented. My group uses our workspace often, many times instead of meeting in person! It has allowed us flexibility to share ideas and files. We are a lot more productive because we can always share information. Creating workspaces is very simple. In fact, I have created personal workspaces with other members of the class just to share information and helps. The file-sharing workspace is amazing. I would recommend this product to anyone who needs to collaborate with others on a tight schedule.

Upgraded from Groove 3.1. No real improvement, in fact it seems a little more selective in timing of messages sent and syncing with other co-workers. But, other than that - the possibilities with new plugins sounds interesting.

I've known about Groove since it was first delivered by my former Lotus and Iris colleagues. This was my first opportunity to use Groove in a heavily collaborative environment. Three companies, two in Canada, and one in the US. Sharing documents really shouldn't this difficult. On a different account, we're using SharePoint, but it requires VPN access. So, Microsoft offers a dozen ways to share files, but none are interoperable. It's no wonder that people are looking to Google for simple solutions.

Though I received this product for free...

I have not really tried it out, for at least 30 days... I would say it has its issues, some down time, but it does allow users to upload files to a little server... so that users or groups can collaborate with each other, and if a user is not online and editing a file, it will automatically be up to date once that user logs in... which I consider truly amazing!

-John C.