OHSU's Software Forum

Mike Miller · Joined: 02 Nov 2007 Posts: 34 Location: Portland, Oregon

Yep, you heard it here first, I said, "the next killer app". At least I believe there is tremendous potential with this tool.

Groove 2007 is a Microsoft collaboration tool which allows users to share folders (and their contents) as well as Collaboration Workspaces where files, discussions, notes, meetings, images etc... can all take place.

Content can be shared with any computer that has Groove installed and has Internet access. This, in my opinion, is one more nail in the coffin of portable media (CD's, DVD's, Thumb Drives, etc...).

It is possible for an institution to setup and configure a local Groove server but it's not necessary. OHSU does *not* have an internal Groove server. For those Groove users who do not have access to a local Groove server, their content is shared via a hosted Microsoft Groove server (this hosting is invisible to the users).

There is a mutli-step process to first offer the Share Space, then accept the offer and finally confirm the acceptance, before any files are transferred. This is all part of the MS security that's an integral part of Groove. To further address potential security concerns, Microsoft built into Groove an automatic 192-bit encryption of all Groove related traffic. Additionally, a large number of files are, by default, not allowed to move through Groove folders due to their possible security risk (although this feature can be turned off).

Due to this very high level of security built into the system, Groove has actually been suggested as a solution for health care providers for purposes of collaboration (this speaks to Microsoft's confidence in the security). Here is an article with more detail about that: http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/healthplans/solutions/groove.mspx

From a personal standpoint, Groove 2007 has increased our departments ability to collaborate and access content from multiple locations greatly. From my experience with it so far, and my 20+ years in computing, I believe there is enormous potential for this application.

Final notes. Groove 2007 is a bonus application that OHSU has included for deployment, but it does *not* fall under the standard application support arena. IT Training does not at this time plan to provide any classes for the bonus applications.

Ready to get your Groove on?

-- Mike