Chapter 6: Working as a Team in a Microsoft Office Groove Workspace

Overview

Information workers often perform their jobs as part of a group or team-situations in which they need to share information and collaborate to solve problems and reach their goals. A group might consist only of coworkers, or it could be a mix of coworkers, consultants, business partners, and customers. Members of a group like this might work in three or four different locations, which can make it more difficult for them to remain on schedule, establish priorities, and accomplish the work they’ve initiated or been assigned to do. Often, the tools that groups use to communicate and collaborate support only work that takes place within a single organization, inside the firewall. Costs and security risks increase when these tools need to support the work of a team whose members are in different locations or outside organizational boundaries.

In this chapter and in Chapter 7, “Sharing and Communicating Using Microsoft Office Groove,” you’ll learn how to use Microsoft Office Groove 2007, an application designed to help teams of workers collaborate, especially on the kind of work that project teams perform. Office Groove 2007 is also designed to work securely over the Internet or a corporate network (based on a user account and data encryption), without requiring a large investment in additional IT resources.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the basics of setting up Groove 2007. You’ll learn how to create a Groove workspace, set up workspace members, and use workspace tools. In Chapter 7 you’ll learn about details such as managing contacts, saving workspace templates, and other tasks that you perform in Groove.

Note 

Office Groove 2007 is one of the products included in Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007. The Microsoft Office system also includes Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007, which can be deployed in organizations that want more control over the installation and use of Office Groove 2007. With Office Groove Server 2007, organizations can, for example, use their implementation of Active Directory to configure Groove user accounts. They can set up various IT policies that govern the use of Groove, monitor usage, conduct data audits, and centrally back up user accounts. You can find more information about Office Groove Server 2007 on Microsoft Office Online.