A workspace is a place where groups or organizations with common purposes and goals can share ideas and work together.

Workspaces allow members to work with a variety of specific application tools. For example, suppose you conduct a weekly meeting to discuss developing marketing materials. Activities might involve setting deadlines, assigning tasks, as well as reviewing completed work. To facilitate this meeting workspace members might post documents in a Files tool, discuss issues in a Discussion tool, and collaborate on meeting agendas using a Meetings tool. All members currently online at the same time in the workspace could interact using real-time chat, or even talk to each other using audio chat (if their computers have the required audio components).

The Forms Tool is notable among the collection of available workspace tools because, unlike all the other tools, this tool is intended for building custom Groove tools. The complexity and features in a custom tool can vary widely, depending mostly on the skills and vision of a Forms tool designer. Any designer should be able to build a simple tool that consists of a variety of data-entry and input fields laid out on a form. More sophisticated designers can add features as needed by adding scripts, lookups, and so on. Similarly, tool designers can build custom Groove tools using the InfoPath Forms tool, in conjunction Microsoft InfoPath.

The data in workspace tools is highly dynamic. All currently connected members see instantly any updates either they or other members add. Optionally, members can use the Navigate Together feature, which allows one member to lead others in activities. As the leader navigates in the workspace, or in some cases, within a tool in the workspace, other members automatically go to the tool or location within the tool.

Types of workspaces

When you create a new workspace in Groove, you can choose from the following workspace types:

• File Sharing. This workspace type allows you to share the contents of a folder in your Windows file system across all computers on which you have your Groove account, and with other Groove users by invitation. For more information, see About file sharing workspaces.
• Standard. This workspace type displays in the Groove Workspace Explorer and initially includes a Files tool and a Discussion tool. Once created, you can add more workspace tools as needed.
• Custom. This workspace type displays in the Groove Workspace Explorer and allows you to pick the initial set of tools for the workspace.

Workspace limitations

Although there are no specific size restrictions for workspaces, for optimal performance, we recommend limiting the size of any workspace to 2 GB or less. You can view workspace properties to see the current workspace size.

 Note   Groove cannot send a workspace that exceeds 2 GB to new invitees.