Office Groove Server 2007 provides IT organizations with powerful, enterprise-class server software and tools to centrally deploy, manage, and integrate Microsoft Office Groove 2007 across the enterprise.

Office Groove Server 2007 includes three components: Office Groove Server 2007 Manager, Office Groove Server 2007 Relay, and Office Groove Server 2007 Data Bridge. Together, these three components enable you to control and optimize the use of Office Groove 2007 software in your organization and create custom solutions integrated with enterprise systems.

Enhancements to Office Groove Server 2007 focus mainly on localization, performance, and scalability. Office Groove Server Manager has been localized to English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Office Groove Server Relay and Office Groove Server Data Bridge will ship on 64-bit operating systems. Office Groove Server Relay also offers performance and communications enhancements to improve bandwidth optimization and scalability. And Office Groove Server Data Bridge features performance gains to help you scale integrated Office Groove 2007 solutions.

Office Groove Server Manager is an easy-to-use, Web-based interface for managing all aspects of Office Groove 2007 deployments, including user account configuration, domain creation and certification, policy setting and enforcement, reporting and compliance, and more.

With Office Groove Server Manager, you can create, configure, and manage Office Groove 2007 user accounts, either manually or through Microsoft Active Directory directory service synchronization. And you can add or remove members from your domain and set policies for members.

You can use Office Groove Server Manager to create policies that must be obeyed by all managed devices. For example, you can create policies that define which Office Groove 2007 tools domain users can access.

With Office Groove Server Manager, you can set a variety of security policies that govern the use of Office Groove 2007, such as password length and expiration intervals.

Yes. Office Groove Server Manager provides usage reporting directly from the Web interface. Reports enable you to track the use of Office Groove 2007 by all managed domain members. Reports are available for Office Groove 2007 workspace creation and use, user activity, and tool use.

No. By design, the end-to-end encryption model in Office Groove 2007 does not permit administrators to access data within Groove workspaces directly from Office Groove Server Manager. However, the integrated Audit Service does allow you to audit select workspace data and information from Office Groove Server Manager. The data is automatically sent from Office Groove 2007 clients to a Microsoft SQL Server database.

Office Groove Server Relay provides three essential services that enable teams using Office Groove 2007 to work efficiently and productively anywhere, online or offline, with members inside and outside their organizations. The three services are:

• Office Groove Server Relay facilitates communication between Office Groove 2007 clients when direct client-to-client communication is not possible. This occurs when Office Groove 2007 clients are not online concurrently or are separated by a network boundary, such as a firewall.
• Office Groove Server Relay provides wide area network (WAN) presence and awareness services. The Office Groove 2007 client is the presence and awareness services publisher; Office Groove Server Relay routes these services to Office Groove 2007 users who are not on the same subnet.
• Office Groove Server Relay optimizes network bandwidth through a process called "fan out." When an Office Groove 2007 user adds a 3 MB file to a workspace, for instance, the Office Groove 2007 client assesses the size of the file, the speed of the user's connection, and the number of members in the workspace. When it is most efficient, the Office Groove 2007 client sends the file to its Office Groove Server Relay to be "fanned out" to the other workspace members, instead of sending the file directly to each member.

Yes. Multiple Office Groove Server Relays can be set up within an organization to scale easily to the largest organizational requirement. For example, you can assign a different set of Office Groove Server Relays to each of your Office Groove 2007 domains.

Office Groove Server Manager is required to support the deployment of one or more Office Groove Server Relays. Office Groove Server Manager enables administrators to assign Office Groove Server Relays to individual users and to manage access and track usage. Office Groove Server Manager also supports multi-relay provisioning, enabling client-side failover.

Office Groove Server Data Bridge facilitates data integration between Office Groove 2007 client-side workspaces and enterprise databases and applications. Office Groove Server Data Bridge also enables IT organizations to build custom solutions that efficiently bridge the gap between the centralized data center and project teams working in an unstructured manner. As a result, teams stay productive anywhere they need to work with centralized data, and enterprise applications and data stay automatically up to date.

Office Groove Server Data Bridge serves as a non-human "peer" within Office Groove 2007 workspaces. As a result, you use Office Groove Server Data Bridge as a single point of integration between teams working in Office Groove 2007 workspaces and centralized data sources. Depending on the solution, Office Groove Server Data Bridge "pushes" data from enterprise systems into the workspace, "pulls" data from the workspace back to enterprise systems, or "synchronizes" data in a two-way manner between the workspace and enterprise systems. All application integration logic resides on Office Groove Server Data Bridge, which is connected to Groove workspaces and other systems through a services-oriented architecture. All remoteable Office Groove Web Services application programming interfaces (APIs) are accessible for custom development through Office Groove Server Data Bridge.

Developers can use Office Groove Server Data Bridge to integrate server-based systems with data in any of the following Office Groove 2007 tools, which have documented Web Services APIs: Files, SharePoint Files, Forms, InfoPath Forms, and Calendar.

Office Groove Forms is both a workspace tool and rapid application development (RAD) environment that is included with Office Groove 2007. The tool enables experienced users and developers to define, develop, and deploy forms-based solutions within Groove workspaces. Office Groove Forms is ideal for team workspace solutions that require the gathering, sharing, analysis, and integration of structured data. Because a form comprises some sets of fields that contain data, Office Groove Forms is well suited for data mapping and integration with enterprise system databases.

Office Groove InfoPath Forms is a workspace tool that enables an Office Groove 2007 user to import a Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 solution into an Office Groove 2007 workspace for the purpose of gathering fielded data. Each time a team member fills out an InfoPath form within a Groove workspace, the data is stored as an XML document and synchronized with each team member’s copy of the workspace. The resulting XML documents can also be integrated with a back-end system using Office Groove Server Data Bridge. To develop Groove InfoPath Forms solutions, you must have Office Groove 2007 and Office InfoPath 2007.

Office Groove Server 2007 and Office Groove Enterprise Services are the two options IT organizations have to centrally manage and control their Office Groove 2007 deployments. Customers consider two main criteria when choosing Office Groove Server 2007 or Office Groove Enterprise Services: cost and functionality. Generally, Office Groove Enterprise Services are more cost-effective for smaller deployments, while Office Groove Server 2007 is more cost-effective for larger deployments. Office Groove Server 2007 provides additional functionality such as Active Directory synchronization, multi-domain creation, and server-side data integration. Larger organizations that value these capabilities, regardless of the size of deployment, will opt for Office Groove Server 2007.

Office Groove Services Manager is the Microsoft-hosted version of Office Groove Server Manager. While the functionality available in both offerings is similar, Office Groove Server Manager provides incremental capabilities including Active Directory synchronization, administrative control over server functions through roles-based access control, the ability to create multiple domains, and custom reporting opportunities using SQL Server Reporting or Crystal Reports for Visual Studio.

Office Groove Services Relay is the Microsoft-hosted version of Office Groove Server Relay. Office Groove Server Relay provides the same functionality as Office Groove Services Relay. However, customers who choose Office Groove Server 2007 can customize their Office Groove Server Relays to optimize network performance.

No. However, without Office Groove Server 2007 or Office Groove Enterprise Services, your Groove 2007 user accounts will be unmanaged and will be provisioned against a public Groove Server Relay hosted by Microsoft.

Find pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office system pricing page.

Find system requirements for Office Groove Server 2007.