The best OS in the world ?

Windows 7, something truly exciting. From the same man who wrote Groove, Ray Ozzie, and designed on the same philosophy, keep it simple, and don't ask the user to do your job of setting up and finding drivers and a whole lot of other exasperation that drove people to the Mac.

And believe it or not, it runs even on a Pentium III, amazing, total redesign of the OS not the incremental stuff that MS has been inflicting (Vista) on us for years

way to go MS - you may just become a well loved company again some day soon :-)

Document Tracking and Workflow

Microsoft Groove Based Document Tracking and Workflow published on Code Plex for free! Enjoy! - http://doctrackandworkflow.codeplex.com/

Powerful yet Simple Customisable Workflow Using Groove Workspace Forms

This tool was done for a Dubai based client in the Cut & bend Steel business.

Typically for each project say the Burj Dubai, they receive documents / drawings of around 1 Giga Byte. These are dropped into a groove workspace shared by their offshore centre and are transmitted automatically and reliably by the file sharing tool.

Dubai then uses our RWS form to define different tasks and deadlines for delivery. At the offshore centre the teamleader allocates work to multiple detailers. Each of them then adds one or more Submission records indicating when the work will start and end and Dubai can see the workflow without making a single phone call to monitor progress.

There are 2 levels of approval to be followed by the offshore team and the finished drawings are returned to Dubai. There a trigger alerts the GM who obtains client consent and grants the final approval that allows the drawings to be processed for production.

The entire process is automated and requires no special IT admin or support. If any document is revised the system maintains revision numbers and also ensures that the original documents are never overwritten, thus maintaining a perfect record of the process for later billing.

The published Tool has deliberately been left open so you can see the simple JavaScript code. Users can customise the project form to apply to different businesses and developers get a bunch of very useful functions they can learn from and apply to their own designs

we are happy to share this with all so pass the word around please. The Tool is available here http://computact.web.officelive.com .

Feel free to call us for any clarifications.

regards

Ashok

What drives Innovation and can you accelerate it.

people talk of innovation, knowledge discovery and how best to encourage them. Some structured processes do work but history shows that the best results come from unstructured interaction, often in corridors and around coffee machines.

with traditional collab technologies that were too dependent on Administrators / Resources etc. there is a natural inertia to the creation of new groups, topics, linkages that could lead to new ideas and knowledge discovery. very difficult to simulate the spontaneous discussions around the coffee machine.

With Groove a user who has a problem or idea can create a workspace and invite some members into it, who he feels have appropriate knowledge. Those members can then invite other members (if give rights) who they think have useful inputs. The original person may not even know the new members in advance, but someone did and introduced him to them. So discovery happens naturally.

Once together groove provides members with many ways of interacting in real time with discussions and calendars and live meetings and even structured data capture with Groove Forms. decisions are taken rapidly ideas tossed up and out by quick peer review. Members bring past knowledge to the table and an new KB begins to evolve around the task, good for future use.
At any time new members can be invited to provide specialised inputs and then they exit after their part is done.

A groove workspace is a fluid and lifelike environment which creates a warm nosed feeling among members, allowing them to relax boundaries and focus on the task. The best part is that members can take ideas home and work when it suits them - when they connect again all members will be synced.

Equally important is security and privacy - groove ensures that no one outside a workspace (non member) can ever see data from there - there is NO leakage. So people can speak freely with no fear that they will be overheard and compromised.

As a result of these factors someone like GSK who bought 10,000 licenses and used them for their R&D teams, found dramatic improvements. Project that involved 20-30 people across the world and normally took 7 months, were now completed in 4. Decisions that took days were taken on the spot and the quality of results was markedly better - they had their ROI in the first 3 months with costs down 40%..

Once you bring the groove culture into your organisation you will wonder how you ever did without it :-)

i could go on but it would help to understand what you have in your mind. some reading material here
http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcomputact%2Eweb%2Eofficelive%2Ecom%2Fdefault%2Easpx&urlhash=gBiJ&_t=mbox_grop

Virtual Office / E-Work

IBM should use groove Workspaces :-)

IBM discovered that workers who spend three or more days without talking to a manager or colleagues start to feel disconnected. "Employees used to feel that IBM meant 'I'm By Myself,'" says Dan Pelino, general manager for health care and life sciences at IBM. "We learned that it was important for managers to understand that people feel that way and to create new collaborative environments and to ask what they're doing." IBM teams use tools that provide customizable online team spaces, or portals that can be tailored to a specific project—complete with calendars, task lists, discussion forums, and document libraries.

Time to start thinking seriously about Cloud Computing

But with the Internet set to overload in 2010 as rich content increases exponentially, how practical is it to depend on it for mission critical work.

Featured Discussion posted on the Dynamics Elite Group on LinkedIn

Hi all 

my thanks to Jade Banham for the invitation. Since i am not a practicing Dynamics professional at the moment, why am i here. 

i have been associated with products like Navision from the mid 90's before it became part of Dynamics. Plus we have built our own very successful ERP solutions. So we understand the needs of this market very well. 

My current love affair is with Groove / Workspaces, and i am the MVP for Groove and a founding partner of the development community from 2001. 

There is a reason for my enthusiasm for Groove because it resolves the single bissgest problem i faced in 20 years of ERP. How to get real time data across multiple locations integrated seamlessly into the backend, and do this with 100% reliability and 100% security. Top that with no need for special servers, replication engines, special communications, IT administration or any other overhead and at a cost that the smallest factory can afford. 

In the last 2 years we have built a number of solutions from Point of Sale to an ERP for Garment manufacturers, based on Groove and they provide a level of efficiency and reliability not matched by an distributed server based systems. 

More, Groove itself out of the box makes a wonderful customer support tool to create interactive help desks and has loads of other features, that give customers that warm nosed feeling, and ensure satisfaction. 

But we as a company don't want to be in the ERP implementation space at this point in time - requires too many people - so I have been seriously thinking of how we can use groove to add that last mile capability and other value, to the Dynamics range of solutions, from Navision to CRM or whatever. 

Using Groove Forms to capture data from the smallest factory in Tirupur, to goods movement across warehouses across india, is so simple it can be deployed in days, with full data validation at source of entry, something even most SAP extension / Dynamics tools cannot do, 

Groove is a complement to any existing Dynamics implementation and i would be happy to share ideas on how best this can be done. Typical ROI is less than 3 months. 

rgds 

ashok

some thoughts i just shared with a colleague at MS

what can i say, you should be using Groove :-) But then i am a believer, not in a product as much, as a way of working. And i could say the same of the groove team and partners i have known for a long time now.

So much else happening is very similar, from Sharepoint, to Mesh to Vine and Azure - a way of computing where sharing of information is natural. Groove was the precussor, way back in 2001, and the reason why Bill Gates brought Ray Ozzie to take over from him.

It's Ray's philosophy that excites us, as expressed in the product. He was determined to produce something that was disruptive, that changed the way people did things, like the Fax or the Cell Phone. Those of us who have worked with it for 8 years believe he achieved that.

At a cost of < 125 $ you get a product that installs and is up and running in minutes, takes less than a day to get the hang off, has no real settings etc that it expects you to twiddle, works with no IT admin or infrastructure support .... i could go on. Groove changes traditional IT equations.

Truly a remarkable platform and concept, It's rebranding today as Sharepoint workspaces is sad in some ways yet apt in others. We have always wanted a true thin client access to our Groove data (don't always have a laptop around) and SP could now well be that. :-)

Won't burden you here with more info here - I have a couple of presentations if you are interested as well as some groups here where we share some of the really powerful stuff you can do with groove. mail me at apwizard@usa.net

rgds

as posted on CNN IReport in response to their question

Hi

my name is ashok hingorani and I am a Microsoft MVP for Groove Virtual office, and have worked with it for 8 years now, so i speak not just from the heart but practical experience.. (as of today Groove is called Sharepoint Workspaces)

At a recent meeting of the IAMCP Western Chapter (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners) the question came up of how CEOs / CIOs are dealing with the downturn.

While cutting down on Purchases and expansion was the most common solution the results are minimal and short term . The expenditure is at best deferred.

My suggestion was to change the very way we work, by using a technology like Groove, to create Virtual Offices, also largely paperless.

E-work maximizes the use of the most expensive, recurring expense of the company, people, cuts down costs and time loss by as much as 40% in many cases, allows faster decision making.and actually promotes initiative and innovation.

All at very little investment as Groove costs little to own, install, and manage, with no special servers, communications etc. and very little administration. Also no viruses and Spam, making it one of the safest and most productive technologies out there, with an ROI of less than 3 months..

small savings don't help in such times, we need to take bold steps to make the same resources more productive for a long time to come

So it has happened - Groove becomes Sharepoint Workspaces

sad for us old groovers to see the name go but this branding ensures that groove itself will not die or get less dev support that the big moneymaker - MS Office.

One of the "problems" face by groove was that the name did not communicate what funtion it performed - so people did not react positively when when one said use Groove - they had not heard about it and the name told them nothing.

does this diminish groove in any way - i think not - the SP marriage is a natural one and extends the power of both products.

cheers

Groove is the best tool for CRM / helpdesks
In recent times (since Groove) the first thing we do with a new client is install a copy (at our cost if needed) at the clients office. This creates a persistent realtime conduit between us and the people using our system - customer requests / comments are visible to all as are our responses.

Indian companies talk of CRM but use such tools to focus on marketing to new clients. What most forget is how important it is to create support channels for existing clients. Help desks created in groove are far more responsive to users needs that typical mail based support incident based tools - in groove it is a two way dialogue.

cheers

Groove is a brilliant Backup solution
people really need to be made aware of the power of the Folder Share Tool to keep real-time backups of most kinds of files including some databases. With auto compression and binary diff compare, updates are extremely efficient and and bandwidth used is minimal.

once you select a folder on your PC and invite another PC - home, remote location, HO whatever that's all you as a user have to do - any files added / updated wither side will be automatically synced across one or multiple locations
very nice indeed

if you need groove 3.1 tools in a G2007 space create the workspace in 3.1 then invite G2007 - or save 3.1 tool as template and add to G2007 space - works

Societies of the future
just a thought that recurs in discussion on the society of the future - smart devices for sure, but also social networks that are smaller, closer, trust based and focussed around matters of interest from health to hobbies.

I was involved with a pilot project in Bavaria, for e-medicine, as some towns here have become intensive centres for treatment, mainly ME people. But their own communities are aging and the health of their citizens has become a serious concern for the local authorities. So some Groove colleagues and i are designing the first of such "social networks" to knit together communities.

Meanwhile some years ago i had embedded a Camera App inside groove to provide a live surveillance and interaction capability between users / groups, perfect for monitoring of the elderly. Lots of different pieces to the big picture and i am hoping your guys have some ideas for me.

It is music to our ears. A simple solution to a complex problem.

Harish Mehta

From: Ashok Hingorani [mailto:apwizard@usa.net] Sent: 23 April 2009 22:54To: Vijay Mukhi; anand.desai@dsklegal.com; Kamal.Kashyap@relianceada.com; 'Sunil Mehta'; 'Santosh Khanolkar'; brijesh_singh@yahoo.com; 'Ashok Hingorani'; 'Mr.Harish Aiyer'; mehtaashwin2007@yahoo.comCc: 'Gul Kripalani'; 'Khanapurkar, Nitin (IN - Mumbai)'; 'Harish Mehta'; 'Atul Nishar'; 'Mr Raj Saraf'; 'Trips'; skjiva@gmail.com; indushahani@yahoo.com; fc.kohli@tcs.com; 'Dr. Chirag Unadkat'; sumit.chowdhury@relianceada.com; 'Javed Ahmad'; cmd@microtechnologies.net; pramoud.rao@zicom.com; 'Som Mittal (NASSCOM)'; 'Ashank Desai'; 'Ninad -- Aptech'; 'S Swaminathan'; 'Sanjay Bahl'Subject: Re: Technology to create a Reporting Room for Police Stations

as agreed at the meeting - it is anathema to a democracy, the a citizen should fear the govt servant, police or BMc or Judge. They are ultimately servants of the people. Bringing total transparency through video / technology is vital in bringing this growing monster to heel. The police can install cameras to watch us, why can we not demand cameras to watch them ???
rgds
ashok

heh heh
going to build my first tool that leverages live mesh - note I use the word leverage - too early to build real tools for Mesh but possible to "use" mesh as part of another tool's architecture easily - more to come ....

If Groove is so great why have i not heard about it.

1. When Ray Ozzie released Groove he had a small team of just 250 people - he knew he could not support thousands of small users - so he refused to market Groove to the industry and focussed on fortune 1000 clients who had their own inhouse IT resources. No ads were ever released, he relied on the trickle down effect as well as evangelism by those who loved Groove.

2. By 2004-5 when MS was taking over Groove, the most important target was getting Groove Office 12 compliant - they gave up a lot including some tools that just couldnt make the deadline, but they gained a multi lingual platform and the branding / bundling benefits of MS Office. Once again Ray / MS decided not to promote groove seperately and widely as there was little awareness within MS itself of it's capabilities and no enhanced support structure in place. Now every week new teams at MS are adopting Groove as their preferred way of working and the word is spreading.

3. But the most significant reason is that people never talk of a product that is proving to be strategically useful to them. Real story - at a recent talk i gave to the top 50 CIOs in India, i asked about Groove and no hands went up. I knew the the MD of xzxzxzx Pharmaceutical company in the first row and pointed out that his company did use Groove, internationally. I got such a dirty look :-)

Later over drinks he came and clarified - he said Groove has had such a major impact on their efficiency and costs at xzxzxzxzx pharma, that if his CIO colleagues wanted to remain blind to it, he was surely not going to be the one to enlighten them - his company would shoot him.

Groove is not a toy or just some file sharing tool for large files only - it is the closest you can come to a real time paperless office and it's impact on any organisation is phenomenal.

Much of my enthusiasm fior Groove stems from the fact that for the first time we have a tachnology that is suited to india in all respects

1. Designed for a distributed environment - as is our local industry
2. Works under the most austere conditions even a 56 kbps dialup
3. 100% secure (certified for the US Intelligence services)
4. 100% reliable - will never miss a sync or corrupt data - autmatically
5. Priced at a level that makes it usable in the smallest company in India.
6. Works across firewalls hence organisations with no change in config.

Ray Ozzie felt that IBM had turned his Lotus Notes product into a 800 pound Gorilla, expensive enough to own but even worse to support. He created groove as a challenge, to disrupt the prevailing technology equation - by changing the power / ease of use / price equation beyond recognition.

Groove is both client and server in one as the situation demands - the user needs to do no setups whatsoever. Install and run. Of-course groove has an enterprise background and when you want to add further security and admin layers like LDAP and Managed accounts Groove fits into the corporate environment seamlessly.

While Groove was first adopted by fortune 1000 companies like GSK, Pfizer, KPMG and even the US DoD, Interpol and the united nations, it is actually one of the best products for the SMB market because of its ease of use / self management and low infrastructure demands.

rgds

ashok

from a thread on Linked In

I am glad somebody had started this thread because it reminded me of what i regard is the true power of groove to make business computing better, as well as a means for all Partners to value add to clients legacy systems, and hence revenue for all.

1. Groove is a user level collab tool that does 80% of sttuff needed out of the box - TRUE and hence of immense value in the workplace at all levels.

2. Groove is a platform on which to build next generation Tools and true distributed ERP solutions, real time Point of Sales .... TRUE we have done these for real and they are spectacular in the ROI to the company in instant business intelligence as well as one point data entry and zero overhead costs.

3. But Groove is also the best last-mile extender to current and enev traditional legacy systems of any kind. Take a popular accounting system, or Navision for example as that is doing well in India. You cannot deploy an ERP to a small 50 person factory that actually makes your garments. But you can deploy a groove form, with no replication servers, no admin, no special IT skills etc. The end user only has to fill in daily status Forms and this data is reflected isntantly at HO. At that end a simple VB.NET connector to groove via Web Services, extracts data in real time and updates the backend database. All seamless. We will relase a generic Tool for this process next week that you can all try for free :-)

you can even use groove folder share to sync application data across locations if carefully handled. So accounting data entry in remote factories can be mirrored at HO for just a Rs 5,000/- one time cost and of-course the PC. Nothing else is needed except for an internet line, that is welcome to fail 10 times a day. Groove never misses a beat, never loses or corrupts data, and is in fact certified by the US DoD for battlefield worthiness.

So a low cost Tool, 100% reliable, 100% secure from interception of any kind, is the way for computing to truly penetrate a country like india, or in fact mirror the real world of business, distributed, across countries and time zones.
So one must stop thinking of groove as a single product - it is a capability that did not exist before and opens up the door to the computing and working model of the future. Factories connected across anywhere, to people working from home if needed, to decision making that is quick and accurate because the data is good quality and current.

Groove (virtual office)
the new social networking tool
safe, effective and totally private
we are now looking at networking entire buildings
creating communities where there were just apartments :-)

Windows 7 - the OS for the future ?
Must confess i am not the one to look too closely at operating systems,
my domain is more solutions than the technology itself
but operating systems are core to how we use computers
so i eagerly awaited the new windows 7.

I saw it first at the MVP Open day in Goa in November
( yup long time no write blog :-) )
First impressions were coloured by the limited presentation itself
things were still secret
so what we saw was a lot of UI tweaks but little substance.
where was the future in this ?

then towards the end the presenter said something that made it all fall in place
he stated that windows 7 was not just an enhancement on the XP / Vista platform
that it had been designed by Ray Ozzie from scratch.
Halleujah - that one statement made windows 7 a whole new animal
i stopped worrying.

If Ray has done this from scratch i don't need to know
if x problem is fixed
or y feature has been included
a see whole new way of doing things, yet familiar
i know the goodies will reveal themselves slowly
as programmers themselves try to grapple with a new pardigm.

I always believed that in Groove Virtual Office Ray was the kernel of a new operating system
one that implicitly knew that i create documents in order to share them
that i no longer live in a world where computers were office equipment
today my personal and professional worlds and even multiple personnas,
are integrated into one very fluid whole
the the computer is now where i live some part of each day.

Ray's perception has been that all work and indeed living
requires collaboration in some way between people
who are not necessarily going to be in one place at the same time.
That i need my information to go where i go
and be accessible even if i do not have internet connectivity at that moment.
Much of the philosophy of Groove Virtual Office deserves to be embedded in the OS itself
so machines begin to really work the way people instinctively do.

In keeping with that philosophy i expect windows 7 do do more
and expect less from the user,
than windows software traditionally has.