New Workgroup Tool: Groove

How peer to peer collaboration can work for all organizations, large and small.

By Jim Halpin

You are working on a program budget for the next fiscal year, and you need to coordinate with your staff, your manager, the auditors, the consultants and with the head of finance. One small problem: how do you get all those people together? They all work different schedules and some of them (the consultants and the finance head) don't even work in the same city.

E-mail and fax machines provide a partial solution, but they don't allow teams to discuss, brainstorm and create documents together in real time. Groupware computer software fills the need, but the cost of acquiring, installing and maintaining these systems has been too high for the small and medium sized organization.

Is there anything that will help you finish that program budget? Let's look at peer to peer networking.

Peer to Peer Networking

Many small office groups use a peer to peer network, with the computers connected together through a hub or simply in sequence. Microsoft Windows, beginning with 3.11, offers peer to peer connectivity. A peer to peer network lets individual personal computers "talk" to each other and share resources without the need for a "server". In a typical peer to peer network, each computer makes some or all of its files available to other computers. Computers can also share printers and other devices, such as internet connections and scanners.

Resource sharing on a local area network is an affordable, partial solution to our problem. But how can we brainstorm in real time? What about connecting users from different physical locations?

Napster: Peer to Peer for the Masses

Napster was a peer to peer platform that, until it was essentially shut down due to copyright infringement difficulties, enabled one user to share a file (in this case, a song file) with another user over the internet. Servers run by Napster maintained lists of users currently connected and what files those users had to share. The song files were always kept on the individual users' hard drives. The Napster client software, running on the users' machines, let them search for and exchange song files directly with each other.

The "peer to peer over the internet" capability of Napster caught the attention of business software developers. Some serious players were already at work on products that would combine the internet and peer computing to change the way collaboration happens in the work place.

Groove

Ray Ozzie founded Groove Networks in late 1997. He is the creator of Lotus Notes, the most popular Groupware product in the world, with more than 75 million users. His new product, Groove, is a peer computing platform that helps users collaborate in real time, but it also helps them collaborate from different places and at different times.

Groove is actually a group of products designed for individuals, small businesses, governments and large enterprises. While Groove sells Hosted Services and a variety of Servers, we'll take a look at the Groove Client, the end user piece that sits on your desktop computer. Individuals and small organizations can use the Groove Client without any server.

The Groove Client is a low cost (approximately $50 per seat) solution that will run on almost every Windows PC. The minimum requirements are:

• 64MB of Ram
• 233MHz Pentium processor
• 40MB of disk space
• 56kps modem
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater
• Sound card, speakers and microphone

What can Groove do?

Groove lets you set up shared work spaces on your computer, add tools and resources to the work spaces, and invite other Groove users to join you as you work in the space. Each work space is a secure area of your hard disk, and you control who has access to the resources in that space. You can have multiple shared work spaces on your system, each one with a separate set of resources and invited participants.

When you start Groove, you are presented with a list of work spaces. Highlight a work space, and Groove will display when the work space was created, as well as a list of the work space members. Groove will also detect and display whether a member is currently on-line.

You can work in the space whether or not the other members are on-line, because Groove will track the changes for later synchronization. But Groove really shines when several members of the team are on-line together.

Participants must be "invited" to join the work space. Groove makes this easy to do. Registered users of Groove can elect to be included in a directory; you can then invite a registered user by searching the directory. You can also invite anyone else to join your work space by entering their e-mail address. The invitation is sent with complete instructions on how to join.

To accept the invitation, both the inviter and the invitee must be on-line. The invitee is automatically sent a full copy of the work space, and added to the member list. From that point, Groove sends any changes made in the work space to all members automatically; if a member is not on-line, the changes will be sent the next time the member connects.

This automatic synchronization feature lets members work off-line, sending any changes when they reconnect. It also makes the collaborative process possible, since any changes are instantly sent to all connected members. Groove actually updates your screen to tell you that another member is typing a message, or to show you that another member has switched to a new tool in the work space.

Groove Functions

Groove has several functions that are automatically available in every work space. You have the ability to chat with other members...



...by typing in the lower box and hitting the Enter key or clicking the Send button. This Instant Message (IM) feature displays a running transcript of the conversation, and the transcript is retained from session to session unless you choose to delete it.

You also have the ability to talk and listen to other members over the internet. There are two walkie-talkie type buttons:

• one for giving a long talk, which you click to start and then click to stop, and
• another button that you click and hold while speaking, releasing it when done.

This "voice over internet" feature is effective for giving presentations combined with the other tools, and it also works quite well for discussions (once everyone gets used to the walkie-talkie, "over" technique).

Groove has another option that is quite handy: Navigate Together. When checked, members currently on-line follow each other from tool to tool, and (within the browser tool) they follow each other as they browse the web.

Tools

In addition to the chat, talk and synchronized navigation, Groove provides a full set of tools. You control which tools are added to the work space, depending on your objectives.

The Groove tool set helps your group to brainstorm and discuss agendas and project items, set calendar schedules, share files, create an outline, and much more. In addition, third party developers are working to create tools for the Groove environment. With each tool, all activity is sent to each on-line member as it happens, and to each off-line member the next time they reconnect.

The tools in the workspace are displayed on tabbed windows. For instance, this sample work space has two tools: Files and Links. The third tab (Add Tool) is always available.

The Files tool holds the documents and other files for this work space. Documents are created in the usual way; Groove doesn't supply the underlying application. For example, you'll need a word processor to create a document, and you'll need a drawing application to produce a drawn image. Groove does enable members to view files even if the member doesn't have the creating application.

The Links tool is a web browser built into Groove. This is very useful, particularly when used with the "Navigate Together" option. You can prepare a slide show in a series of web pages, and then present the show by taking the group on a tour in the Links tool.

Many tools, such as the Calendar and Discussion tools, will be useful in almost any work group. Other tools fill a specific need. With Groove, you add or remove tools from the work space at any time.

Back to Program Budgeting

Groove provides a method for individuals to work together on a project, even if they are physically in different locations. You can hold a "virtual meeting" on-line, saving travel and communication costs. Members of the group can work off-line, in preparation for the meeting, and have their efforts automatically synchronized with the other members as the meeting begins.

The out of town consultants and the finance head from the west coast can fully participate in the creation of the program budget, using the tools built into Groove. While Groove will not replace other types of meetings and other types of productivity products, it is a valuable addition to your professional tool box.

Summary

GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott Laboratories, Raytheon, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Dell Computers and hundreds of smaller organizations have implemented Groove as a cost effective tool to help their staffs collaborate on projects. Groove offers a solution to the problem of coordinating and collaborating from different locations, often at different times. With today's high travel costs and other budgetary concerns, the low cost of implementing Groove is a real bonus.

For more information on Groove, see their web site at www.groove.net.

To discuss how we can help you implement Groove in your organization, contact Murray Dropkin.