New user - calendar question

[Stewart]

Hi,

I'm trying to deploy Groove 2007 and want to be able to transfer calendar
appointments out into Outlook (and from there to PDAs and so on) but I can't
see any easy way to do this or any add-on that will do it for me.

Have I missed something blindingly obvious?

Any suggestions?

Thanks very much for your help!

 

[Revett]

GrooveIT (http://grooveit.biz/en/foroutlook/home.aspx) moves Outlook data to
Groove workspaces, but I'm not sure if it is bidirectional.

 

[Stewart]

I was hoping it would be, but I can only get it to work one way (from Outlook
to Groove) which is good, but I really need the other direction as well :-(

 

[Fabrice BARBIN]

A new version of Team Calendar Manager
(http://www.teamcalendarmanager.com) will be available in the coming
weeks (Beta program to start shortly). This new version will allow to
consolidate both Outlook and Groove calendars.
Drop me a direct email and I will add your name in our Beta program
participant list.

Regarding GrooveIT! for Outlook, some good news to come in the coming
weeks too... A new feature allowing an automatic export of calendars
events from Outlook to Groove (by defining a GrooveIT rule) will be
available very soon....

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Fabrice BARBIN
fbarbin.spaces.live.com
Hommes & Process (www.hommesetprocess.com)
GrooveIT! for Microsoft Office Outlook (www.grooveit.biz)
---------------------------------------------------------------





Stewart a écrit :

 

[Donna Shaw \(Microsoft Program Manager\)]

The next release of Groove will support bi-directionaly sync to and from
Outlook.

 

[Stewart]

Excellent news Thank you

The next release of Groove will support bi-directionaly sync to and from
Outlook.

 

[Mike]

I'm sorry, having only just purchased a copy of office ultimate edition under
the student deal (which I must say is excellent), and discovering this
problem I do not understand how incorporation of this feature in a future
version of groove is excellent news.

It should have been there from the beginning and at the worst case a service
pack. I am left constantly frustrated by Microsoft's incompatibility between
products that are sold to users as a single item under the office suite. I am
running a formula student race team at university, and implemented Groove
into the team thinking that it could really help share our CAD and design
data. After finally getting around the lack of 64bit support in the product
(don't get me started), this is just another irritating issue that destroys
our productivity and generally makes me less keen to implement Microsoft's
products into our working structure as a whole.

For as useful as Groove may be in some situations, i find the sheer lack of
finalisation of this product should have not made it into the office suite
until Microsoft realises that products focused on team collaboration do not
work if the team cannot share data, and are just left angry, frustrated and
held back by a heavily restricted product. It only angers me more that the
feature was available before combining it into the office suite.

Mike

 

[Kevin Reeuwijk]

Hi Mike,

Please understand that Groove 2007 is basically the original Groove 3.1
version without all of the features (meaning: code) that would not pass the
Microsoft-quality bar. Many of those features were only features on paper,
because they would not work well at all in practice. The chances of losing
or corrupting data was just too high with those features so they were
scrapped for the Office Groove 2007 release. I agree with you that it is
unfortunate that these features have not returned in Groove 2007 SP1, but
rest assured that they WILL return (and actually be usable) in Office Groove
'14'.

In the mean time, try GrooveIT! to sync Outlook with Groove:
http://www.grooveit.biz/en/home.aspx

Regards,

Kevin Reeuwijk

 

[Aristotelis]

Thank you Kevin and all for this post.

Is any release date for the new Grrove version announced?

We would need to have an answer within the following days.

We are going to deploy a collaboration tool/platform for our teams and we
are considering, amongst others, MS Groove (for its integration with other MS
products..).

However the lack of the basic functionalities such as the sync of:
Groove Calendar <-> Outlook Calendar
Groove Meetings <-> Groove Calendar
Groove Meetings <-> Outlook Calendar
are really leaving us disappointed regarding the MS solution..

We would like to start with a pilot in a few teams asap.
Our company has 1.2k+ employees so as you can understand we can not reallly
wait for too long nor can we make descisions without answers.

Thanks for your help in advance,
Aristotelis.

 

[Fabrice BARBIN [Groove MVP]]

Hi Aristotelis,

Is any release date for the new Grrove version announced?

There will be an Office SP2 available in the coming months.... but,
according to me, it will not include new features or major improvements.
(More bug fixes...) and at this stage we do not know yet if there will be
something related to Groove in this pack.
So, the next major version for Groove will be Office 14 to come in more than
1 year (no official annoucement yet about the release date nor *public
information* about new or improved features). Of course, we can guess that
integration between Office products will be reinforced.

Perhaps did you already give a try to GrooveIT! for Outlook.
(http://www.grooveit.biz)
It will not 100% fit your needs but it's maybe a good start.
Please note, that Hommes & Process is also working on a new release of
GrooveIT! for Outlook...

Finally, regarding Meeting and Calendar integration, there's unfortunately
no technical mean to collect from and/or write information in the Meeting
tool. It's a technical limit in the way this tool is designed. So, even by
using an external application, meeting data can not be manipulated.

I have 1 or 2 extra ideas about possible workarounds. Feel free to contact
me by direct email (fabrice dot barbin at hommesetprocess dot com) or by
Groove ("Fabrice BARBIN 2007" in the Groove.net public directory) if you
would like to deepen this discussion.

HTH

---------------------------------------------------------------
Fabrice BARBIN [Groove MVP - Groove MCTS]
http://blog.fbarbin.com
Hommes & Process (http://www.hommesetprocess.com/en)
GrooveIT! (http://www.grooveit.biz)
---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[sgtmck]

Now that Sharepoint Workspace 2010 is out (limitedly), shouldn't that be the
next release of Groove? I have Workspace 2010 up and running right now and I
can not find any method of synchronizing Sharepoint Workspace with Outlook.
Even if I try to export from Sharepoint, Outlook does not recognize the .xml
format. I had high hopes of being able to synchronize my calendars.