Office 2007 Bible

Chapter 41. Groove

In This Chapter

Groove versus SharePoint Groove basics Creating and deleting accounts Creating and deleting workspaces Sending workspace invitations Working with workspace documents

Groove is a collaborative alternative to SharePoint (discussed in the previous chapter). One is tempted to call it a poor man’s SharePoint¸ but Microsoft would be quick to point out that Groove offers a robust feature set that gives users advantages otherwise not available.

From an organizational standpoint, Groove 2007, a peer-to-peer collaboration tool, is less expensive and administratively easier than buying, setting up, and maintaining a SharePoint server. From the user’s standpoint—particularly non-enterprise users—Groove 2007 offers some of the advantages you get from using SharePoint at a fraction of the cost. If what you really want to do is share Word documents so users can benefit from each other’s updates without having to resort to e-mail, Groove 2007 might be all you need. Similarly, if you have work, home, and notebook computers on which you need to synchronize files, Groove 2007 might be just what the doctor ordered.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to use Groove as a way to manage shared Word documents. Groove 2007 has a lot of dimensions that are beyond the scope of Office 2007 Bible, so you won’t end up being a Groove expert. However, if you have Groove 2007 and haven’t even started it yet, this chapter will give you a basic sense of how to use it, and what it can ...