The SharePoint Workspace 2010 and Groove Server 2010 technologies from Microsoft are designed to address this common business scenario:
An organization has documents, lists, and other assets stored in SharePoint 2010, but the organization also has a good number of users who are often working in a situation where they are not maintaining an active connection to the SharePoint server. These people need to be able to work on documents and participate in SharePoint sites in a way that is consistent whether they are connected to the server or offline. The users in this situation need tools to help them be more efficient, to prevent mistakes, overwritten documents, and lost work.
Adding to the complexity of the problem, some of these frequently offline people are actually collaborating on the same artifacts with other team members who are also frequently offline.
Together, Workspace, SharePoint, and Groove can address the dual nature of the above described business problem: the need for offline work capability and for offline collaboration. The common theme between these two ideas is “offline,” which of course means being not connected to, or only occasionally connected to, the server. There is a difference, though, between whether Workspace has been set up to enable only the offline work scenario or to also enable the offline collaboration scenario.
In this article, we will explore the difference between these two ways to utilize the technology. In summary, the offline work scenario can be accomplished using the Workspace elements that are included with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. Going beyond that to offline collaboration scenarios requires additional network and security configuration and additional server elements. The additional server elements are part of the Groove Server 2010 product, which is separate from (but linked to) SharePoint 2010.
Clarifying Some Terms
We have introduced three terms to explain different technologies offered by Microsoft:
- Workspace, which refers to the concept and mechanism for synchronizing copies of documents between client and server or client and client
- SharePoint Server, which refers to the server technology that stores the documents and assists Workspace with document versioning and synchronization
- Groove Server, which refers to a separate technology that facilitates peer sharing and collaboration scenarios
We could say that the “Workspace” concept/technology for offline work and collaboration is shared between the SharePoint 2010 and Groove 2010 products. However, the Groove product takes the Workspace concept further than the SharePoint implementation, enabling more peer sharing and collaboration outside the normal confines of the company network and SharePoint.
The name “Groove,” incidentally, comes from the technology acquired by Microsoft when software designer Ray Ozzie joined the company. Ozzie was also the original creator of Lotus Notes. Interestingly, the one feature that Lotus Notes users have lamented as missing from SharePoint was the offline work feature, which has been heralded as a powerful native capability of Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes, however, is a distributed, document-based database technology. SharePoint is a centralized, server-centric technology.
For Microsoft, offline capability is a more difficult problem to solve in a way that combines peer-to-peer and server-centric considerations with offline/online considerations. The Groove technology is designed to address this thorny problem, and it has now been woven into the fabric of SharePoint and Office. The SharePoint Workspace 2010 release finally adds a robust offline capability to SharePoint. Ray Ozzie has been thinking about these things for a while. It’s no accident that Ozzie has also been instrumental to Microsoft’s cloud strategy.
Offline Work
Working offline requires only a simple connection between a Workspace 2010 client and a SharePoint 2010 server. Workspace will automatically synchronize designated files stored on a SharePoint 2010 site with the client machine where the Workspace application is running. If someone else checked in changes to a document on the server, Workspace will bring the latest version down to the client. If a client copy of a document was changed while the user was disconnected, Workspace will upload the changes to the server. If there is a conflict between server-side and client-side changes to the same document, Workspace helps resolve the conflict.
All of this is activity is limited to a two way conversation between a single client and the SharePoint server. There might be multiple users in the company using Workspace clients, but in a basic offline work scenario, each of those server-client Workspace conversations is in a way its own isolated channel. In Microsoft parlance, we could describe this scenario as using “SharePoint Workspaces,” as opposed to “Groove Workspaces,” which apply to the offline collaboration scenario, described next. SharePoint Workspaces offer a private, user by user offline synchronization functionality.
Setting up your SharePoint 2010/Office 2010 environment for the offline work scenario can be pretty straightforward. As long as certain things are configured on your SharePoint 2010 server (see “More Information” at the end of this article), then the Workspace client running on a user’s client machine does the work to synchronize between that single client and the server. The SharePoint Workspace 2010 client ships with Office 2010 Professional.
Offline Collaboration
Collaborating offline means that Workspace users who are frequently not connected to the server can collaborate on the same materials with other Workspace users who are also frequently not connected to the server. This occurs in a semi-real-time fashion, with data flowing from Workspace peer to Workspace peer, as each person is connected to the network. The clients do not need to be connected to VPN.
These additional sharing and collaboration capabilities are provided by the Groove server technology, but also by the “Groove Workspaces” technology. Groove Workspaces are similar to, but separate from, the “SharePoint Workspaces” described above, which are limited to a two-way conversation between a single client and the server. Groove Workspaces, in short, add support for peer-to-peer collaboration and sharing.
The Business Case
The business case here comes down to whether your organization has a team-oriented need for offline work and collaboration, as opposed to being limited to the individual-by-individual offline workspaces offered with SharePoint Workspaces. If you have a strong team-oriented need, or if you simply have so many potential Workspace users that collaboration needs are a strong likelihood, then you might take a look at the Groove 2010 technology to add to SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010.
To be clear, a kind of “offline collaboration” is possible in a SharePoint Workspace scenario where the peer-to-peer collaboration is not enabled with Groove 2010. SharePoint, of course, is itself a collaboration hub. If the documents, data, and content that people are sharing are all stored in SharePoint, then people can go to SharePoint to see all the latest versions together and collaborate with others in SharePoint. The fact that some users might be working on content in a private Workspace does not change that. When those users synchronize the content updates to the server, others will see it.
Setting up your environment for offline collaboration scenarios is a more complex matter, long story short. Additional network protocols and ports will need to be enabled, and additional server elements are recommended in most interesting scenarios. In most scenarios, the peer-to-peer communication will be routed through a special server component called Microsoft Groove Server Relay, which ensures a secure connection between clients. A related product, the Groove Server Manager, provides centralized administration tools such as policy management and reporting.
An Important Workspace Security Consideration
The quote below from Microsoft’s “Plan for SharePoint Workspace 2010” TechNet article (see “More Information” below) highlights an important point: Workspace is secure in terms of its reliance Windows and Active Directory for authentication, and the https/SSL network protocol for transport security. However, the actual copies of files stored on the client computers are not encrypted. This is, they are “protected,” but not encrypted, which would offer additional protection against someone who really wants to see what’s in those locally stored files.
“SharePoint Workspace 2010 does not encrypt SharePoint Workspace 2010 documents and other binary files, including SharePoint workspace content, on disk. Therefore, consider using BitLocker Drive Encryption to encrypt all content on client data drives. For more information see BitLocker Drive Encryption. You can strengthen protection by blocking Windows Search in the SharePoint Workspace Data directory, to prevent generation of Search indexes that are not encrypted. However, be aware that content shared with other clients that are not equally protected will remain not encrypted and searchable.”
As explained in this quote, Microsoft recommends BitLocker as a solution to this problem. BitLocker encrypts your company’s files at the drive level, offering added protection against a lost or stolen laptop. This approach is consistent with Workspace’s overall security paradigm of depending on external system elements to provide security. Workspace does not attempt to replace the security capabilities offered by elements such as Windows, SSL, and BitLocker.
More Information About SharePoint Workspace 2010
This article has attempted to demystify certain elements of the SharePoint Workspaces 2010 product, and its companion products SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, and Groove 2010. Microsoft, however, has published a good amount of detailed technical material, where you can learn more. The TechNet article “Plan for SharePoint Workspace 2010” is an excellent place to start. In that article you can find detailed information about different topologies supported for offline work and collaboration and combinations of the two. You can follow links from that article to many other Workspace-related articles. This “SharePoint WorkSpace 2010 overview” article is also a good place to start. For the more advanced collaboration capabilities, you can start with the main “Groove Server 2010” article on TechNet.
