Groove Becomes SharePoint Workspace

The Groove client application has been renamed SharePoint Workspace and has gained new features for offline access to SharePoint data. Offline access benefits mobile workers (such as salespeople) who need to work on SharePoint data while out of the office, and it can also serve workers in branch offices who want efficient access to SharePoint data that reside on the other side of a WAN link. However, offline SharePoint access is not new, nor is it restricted to SharePoint Workspace.

SharePoint for Mobile and Remote Users

SharePoint Workspace enables a user to quickly find and download content from a SharePoint site, view and edit the content while offline, and then synchronize the changes back to the SharePoint site while back online. (See the illustration “A SharePoint Site in SharePoint Workspace“.) Offline access works with documents, document libraries, and most other types of SharePoint data tables (such as task lists). However, SharePoint Workspace can’t replicate an entire SharePoint site for offline access. It does not work with some types of content (such as calendars), and it does not give users all the Web pages and navigation that they will see when viewing a SharePoint site in a browser online. What SharePoint Workspace can do is ensure that users with laptops or users at remote offices will have access to critical documents when they are disconnected from an organization’s SharePoint servers.