Confusion on File Sharing and Workspaces

[Bryan Campbell]

I'm a relatively new user to Groove but I'm very intrigued by its
peer-to-peer nature and 'container' approach to managing collaborative
projects. Unfortunately, I'm not sure why there appear to be two mechanisms
for setting up a Groove 'project', it appears I can 'synchronize' a file
directory and share this with colleagues or I can create a 'Groove Workspace'
with a number of tools (one of which is Files) and share that with colleagues.

Frankly, what I would like to do is both. I'd like to create a Groove
Workspace and have the 'Files' tool point to a directory structure which is
automatically synchronized and replicated as I save files into it.

Can someone help explain the metaphor between these two usages in Groove and
perhaps share with me if I can accomplish what I've described above.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Justin Rodino]

Hi Bryan,

The two are similar but different The File Sharing workspace is that
and just that - only to share files. The Standard workspace is one that
is much more customisable and can have other tools added to it, as well
as more finely control ACL's to resources as you would in a standard
Windows environment. One caveat though is Vista x64 clients don't play
well when file sharing (the "File Sharing" workspace isn't supported and
occassionally you can get the stanadard workspace to work) so be careful
of that.

HTH,

Justin

 

[Bryan Campbell]

Thanks for the confirmation Justin and the heads-up on the Vista x64 client
issue.

Do you (or anyone) know why the Filesharing is kept separate and does anyone
know if the Files Sharing maintains a versioning mechanism ala Subversion or
CVS?

 

[Justin Rodino]

Bryan,

The main reason for FileSharing and also Workspaces is that Groove
integrates itself in to the explorer shell and gives you a "Folder Sync"
button such that at any time you can find a folder in explorer view and
click on that and presto you have a folder sharing application with no
frills, whereas with a Workspace you might want a file sharing
collaboration as well as a white board, etc...

Also, for reference, here is the URL which explains the x64 issues as
well as a bit more on file sharing workspaces.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/HA102231201033.aspx

Good luck!

 

[Don]

Hi Bryan. We've been using Groove for about 3 years. Started with the
regular Files Tool under Groove 3.1 and we are now using File Sharing under
Groove 2007. I have 14 users and each of us have dozens of folders each
containing dozens of files - 8GB of data, over 21,000 files in about 2,700
folders, and we're all in separate office locations in the U.S. The Files
Tool under 3.1 worked great, absolutely no complaints. I moved everyone over
to the File Sharing under Groove 2007 in order to have Windows Desktop Search
capabilities. However, I'm having lots of timestamp/version problems with
File Sharing and am migrating back to the Files Tool. I will lose the
search, but it's better than the problems i've had under the File Sharing
workspace. We make lots of changes to our files and we each make changes to
each other's files and that has been the cause of most of the problems under
File Sharing. We never had any problems in using the Files Tool. There is
no versioning mechanism built-in to Groove. We just do our own "versioning"
by adding a letter or number to the original filename. The PROs to File
Sharing is that you can have search since the data is unencrypted on your
harddrive and you can save items directly to the folders within File Sharing
folders. The PROs to the Files Tool are along the lines of what Justin has
already mentioned and your data is also encrypted on the harddrive. Maybe
you won't have problems like us under File Sharing if you have a lot less
files/folders. Do a thorough test first. Groove is a great product for
sharing files between many users.

 

[Bryan Campbell]

Thanks for the feedback on this Don and I'm getting a clearer sense of when
to use File Sharing over the Files Tool in a Workspace. I was hopeful there
was a bit more support for file versioning to avoid the problems you've
described but that might be a bit much to ask without an underlying server
infrastructure managing version control.

The projects I was planning to use this on could easily start hitting the
numbers you mentioned so I'll keep on eye on these kinds of issues.

Does anyone know how Groove handles directory level versioning? I'd be
intereted in understanding how Groove would respond to a scenario where users
were frequently creating new directories (or renaming/deleting them).

 

[Don]

Funny you should mention directory level versioning....Groove has absolutely
no versioning at all. As far as renaming directories - * * * warning * * * -
i've had a couple of people rename directories under File Sharing and some of
the files within the renamed directory were deleted. Now we're running Vista
Business and the deleted files did go to the Recycle Bin. If you look in my
08/04 post, you'll see that Mark did a test of the same thing on a XP machine
and files were not deleted. I was actually able to reproduce the
"error/problem", and am not sure why files are being deleted on a folder
rename. I never had this problem under the Files Tool, so just be aware. I
do have a standalone machine that's invited as Guest to all spaces - File
Sharing and Files Tool and run 2 backup utilities, 1 backs up the Files Tool
workspaces and can keep multiple copies of daily backups (GForce Backup), and
the other is just a windows file backup program that does versioning backup
copies based on parameters - file size, time stamp, etc. I use SyncBackSE,
but there are lot's of other windows backup progs too. GForce Backup was the
only tool I could find that would actually backup the Groove Workspaces (non
File Sharing). Read up on the other posts to get a feel for what's going on.
You may also want to get Groove Enterprise Services licenses too if you're
not going to build your own server/relay. This group is reasonably good at
responding, just make sure to give enough details. Best of luck.

 

[Don]

oh, and don't forget -
1) workspaces (file sharing and files tool) don't sync after getting larger
than 2gb
2) you can't have more than 50 file sharing workspaces or groove will lockup
3) the files tool comes with default permissions for - manager, participant,
and guest - and if you change the default permissions, none of the
sub-folders inherit these permissions regardless of whether you set the
permissions when creating a new files tool or if you change them after the
fact, you must set these permissions on each folder separately...sucks
4) no search in the files tool, but search in file sharing
5) i think there's some limit to the number of files in a single files tool,
maybe 5,000, but am not sure
6) i am not aware of any limitation to the number of files tools that one
can create and become a member of

Maybe some of the others in this group will add to the list so that everyone
can benefit..........

 

[Bryan Campbell]

This is great stuff Don, the practical experience with some of Grooves
limitations are really useful. I really like the P2P model it supports but
clearly it has a lot of tradeoffs. I'd be interested to see Microsoft's
product roadmap for Groove, alot of the items that you described would are
real showstoppers for large scale adoption. From what I can see of the
current '07 version it appears to have actually lost features from 3.1
version when it was an independent company.

 

[Mark Smith]

I just want to pick up on Dons' useful summary.

While he's 100% correct that the Groove Files tool doesn't have a Find
function, I've created a stand-alone tool that can search for files across
any number of files tools. It does not search file content (you can buy our
Bambuco tool for that!), but it does 80% of what you need at a great price -
free!

You can download it from here: http://infopatterns.com/toucanfilefinder

 

[Justin Rodino]

One other alternative to backup is ThreeWill's Personal Backup for
Groove. Works fine with Groove 2007 and like Mark says about some of
his tools, this one is free too