I just finished writing a big proposal for a company client (big Exchange and Active Directory migration). All that hard work deserves some blogging on a Friday afternoon. Hey, smokers get a break every few hours. Call this a blogging break!
So, I’ve been using Groove Virtual Office for the last couple days. I have to say that I’m very impressed. Those of you not in the loop on Groove shouldn’t feel bad. I didn’t know about it until Microsoft announced their intent to acquire Groove earlier this year. Groove can best be described as a P2P collaboration tool for businesses. I know P2P has some negative connotations – but Groove isn’t anything like BearShare, Kazaa, or Morpheus. Check out the flash demo or read more about what Groove can do for you and your business.
Without a doubt, my favorite Groove feature is its ability to create an offline cache of all my important SharePoint sites. With this functionality, I can post documents, announcements, etc. to my SharePoint sites without even being connected to the Internet or my company’s LAN. When I’m connected next, Groove provides a simple “synchronize now” button that uploads my changes to the SharePoint site. This works with both SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services. Very cool stuff. If you are a heavy SharePoint user like me – this feature alone makes Groove Virtual Office worth the $179 price. Check out the free 60–day demo at www.groove.net. If you want someone to collaborate with while you are testing – my Groove ID is centimano-at-msn.com.