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Tools for Collaboration

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Why should you be interested in collaboration tools?

As accounting professionals and consultants, we

1. Need to collaborate with many individuals, often over great distance.
2. Would like to update a change to everyone affected automatically.

Today I want to introduce you to several such tools available today, with the lion's share of the attention going to the one with the longest pedigree, Microsoft Groove. But I'll also mention two more recent (and free) alternatives. (Editor's Note: Sorry, none of these tools are recommended for collaboration within QuickBooks; see below for more information).

Groove

Groove comes with Microsoft Office Enterprise, stand-alone, or as part of Groove Server. This technology was not the only thing to come to Microsoft with their acquisition of Groove Networks; at the time, Groove's Ray Ozzie (also one of the creators of Lotus Notes) joined Microsoft and replaced Bill Gates as Chief Software Architect.

What is It

Microsoft Groove is a software tool that shares files in near real-time and synchronizes the files among participants, requiring minimal effort and technical knowledge. It was designed to better facilitate collaboration among members of small groups without requiring IT administrators. Groove operates on a peer-to-peer protocol level; many users may not need complex servers and other network architecture to benefit from Groove. (Users of SharePoint, InfoPath, or Office Communicator are also supported.*)

How Does It Work?

A Groove user creates a workspace and then invites other Groove users into that workspace with an e-mailed invitation. Each invited user who responds to an invitation becomes an active member of that workspace and is sent a copy of the workspace that is then installed on his or her hard disk drive. For security, all data is encrypted, both on disk and over the network, with each workspace having a unique set of cryptographic keys.

Groove in Collaboration

I use Groove for my work at K2 Enterprises, www.k2e.com, a group which develops and presents technology related CPE to accountants throughout North America. There are a half dozen associates who develop seminar content in real-time mode and, as is common with technology, the data changes in real time as well. Groove helps us at K2 to keep our information current across all presenters. When a change is made to a presentation or work file, whether Word, Excel or PDF, it is synchronized to members in the group as soon as their computer connects to the Internet. If a file is no longer needed, delete the file and it is deleted from everyone's folder in the group.

Benefits

Having a local copy avoids the problems associated with traditional collaboration tools requiring physical attachment between the user and the shared data. As a private virtual location, Groove lets authorized users interact and collaborate with each other. It is easy to add users, or make a user inactive.

Limitations

Groove does have limitations, a number of which are listed at the Groove Advisor blog site. Note that the maximum individual file size is 2GB, and several sites recommend against using Groove to share files larger than 50MB. In my experience, files larger than 50MB will work, although the network or Internet connection speed plays an important role in how well the synchronization will perform.

Another sticking point: If two or more people edit a document at the same time, multiple copies are maintained and those users affected must agree which changes are to be retained. This could be cumbersome when Groove documents are actively being changed by multiple users at the same time. For that type of activity, SharePoint Services or Shared Document, as in Excel shared document feature, would work much better.

Learn More

Potential users will want to research this solution further before making a decision to use it. Start with coverage of Groove's underlying transmission schema at Dr. Pete's Digital Domain. I also recommend J. Peter Bruzzese and Ron Barrett's book Administrator's Guide to Office 2007 Servers, which not only covers Groove servers, but a host of other Microsoft Office related servers as well. I am awaiting Microsoft's Step by Step for Office Groove 2007 which is due to be release January 20, 2008 and I think will be a must have for you to get started. Finally, something free, simply download Microsoft's Getting Started Guide for Office Groove 2007 for a detail description of how to install and begin using Groove.

You can download a Groove trial for 60 days to test, or if you are a Microsoft consultant, you have Groove as part of your TechNet subscription. Groove 2007 is included in Office Enterprise 2007 and Office Ultimate 2007 Editions and can be purchased separately as a Server side component as well.

Other Collaboration Option

While we have used Microsoft Groove as our primary example of a collaborative peer-to-peer synchronization tool, there are other options.

• NomaDesk. A large public accounting firm in New Jersey uses NomaDesk, to synchronize and share data across the consulting and technology groups. The firm, with multiple offices and international clients say they find NomaDesk also indispensable. As a beta solution at the moment, NomaDesk is a free download you may test and work with immediately via a simple download.
• Clearspace. Clearspace from Jive Software, has a free solution for up to five users that is also a collaboration tool to eliminate redundant conversations, meetings, emails and so forth.

Conclusion

Groove, NomaDesk, Jive and many more collaborative tools for business are beginning to emerge to help centrally manage and expand our ability to work across virtual boundaries and improve productivity.

NOTES

* Groove integrates directly with SharePoint Server 2007 or the SharePoint Services 3.0 document library, as well as InfoPath 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator, so you can access, work with and exchange documents or forms via SharePoint and InfoPath, or make a phone call from a Groove workspace via Office Communicator. These types of services are more often found in larger consulting firms supporting multiple locations and lots of users with high demand levels. But, Groove is also useful for basic file synchronization.

EDITOR'S NOTE on QuickBooks and Collaboration

Intuit warns that these collaborative tools will not be satisfactory for working with QuickBooks. More typically, collaboration is achieved via the Accountant's Copy (requires Premier Accountant Edition) or online solutions like Remote Access or QuickBooks Online.

Dr. Bob Spencer is an internationally recognized writer, lecturer and consultant. You may e-mail him drbob@tsif.com, or visit him at Twenty Seconds In the Future.

Last Updated: 03/07/2008