I had the opportunity this week to get a demo of the new beta from Groove, v3.0. Wow! I was bowled over, for a number of reasons: vastly improved user interface and user experience, close integration with Windows shared folders for sharing of files (including embedded presence of workgroup members displayed in the Windows folders), and an great alerting model. Groove has also developed a rich forms tool, to support the creation of and use of form-based information.
Groove 3.0 is so different from 2.5, its almost like the whole user experience has been turned inside out.
Last year, I reviewed version 2.5, and wrote about my dissatisfaction with the UI:
"Groove User Interface
For reasons that are not obvious to me, Groove Workspace operates on a user interface model that I find counter intuitive. There is a group of three pull down menus that provide high level navigation, located at the upper left hand corner: a 'go to' menu, a 'contacts' menu, and 'my spaces' menu. Note that the 'contacts' menu is also repeated as one of the destinations of the 'go to' menu, which seems confusing. Selecting one of the workspaces leads to that workspace opening, and the appearance of a set of tabs along the bottom of the UI, as well as a set of context sensitive menus in a tool bar at the top. So if you select the Calendar tab in a space, the tool menus are calendar related. Also at the left hand side while in a shared space is a buddy list, and two big ungainly buttons: a 'chat' button, and a 'push to talk' button, both of which initiate real-time communication.
I personally believe it would be better to have the real-time communication capabilities pulled out into a separate client to streamline the spaces, especially since many folks use alternative IM clients, anyway. The three sorts of menus -- with completely different look and behavior -- drives me crazy. Perhaps I have been too strongly oriented toward the Office metaphor -- user customization of menu bars -- but having three sorts of fixed UI elements is aggravating."
With the new 3.0 client, I take it all back.
It looks like someone in product management at Groove heard what I was bellowing about (and probably a few other paying customers howled too), since the UI metaphor is now almost indistinguishable from the now-standard instant messaging client interface.
At the right you see the Groove "Launchpad" in a tabbed mode, showing my contacts (Ryan Hoppe, of Groove), as well as a tab for workspaces.
Instead of always dragging files into Groove workspace, the interaction now can be much more in context, since 3.0 workspaces can be associated with shared folders on your desktop -- wherever you want them to be -- and these could be existing folders. To manipulate the files, you can stay in the normal Windows model, and when you make changes to the files, the updates are transmitted to other Groove workspace members, without any added actions on your part.
Very, very cool.
You can still have old-style Groove workspaces, which are not linked to folders or your desktop. And these old-style workspaces, as before, can be extended with various tools, such as discussions, notepads, outlines, and project tools of various sorts, as well as games like tic-tac-toe and chess (although the latter group have always seemed off-message to me). These tools cannot be (at least in the beta) embedded into shared-folder-based workspaces, so it seems like there are going to be two distinct kinds of workspaces. There seems to be some way to create embedded workspaces, so perhaps that will bring the two together: you could embed a shared folder workspace within a conventional workspace, for example. We'll see.
As you can see in the JPG below, Ryan's presence info is shown in the shared folder, and there is a placeholder where (in the final release of 3.0) Groove chat will be embedded right in the Windows folder. The user can toggle back and forth from this Groove presentation of the folder to the conventional Windows display, without the Groove widgets showing.
Users are alerted to offline messages, requests for chat, folder updates, and the coming and going of buddies by transient popup originating from the Windows tooltray.
I haven't invested the time necessary to become proficient in Groove forms creation, but I found it relatively easy to create an ugly form for ordering chinese food. I bet that anyone with a modicum of design sense and some knowledge of form layout (that leaves me out) could build real forms pretty quickly. Ryan and Andrew Mahon of Groove explained to me that the form tool supports a class-oriented sort of inheritance, so that families of forms can be developed that share attributes, greatly simplifying the development of form designs and their use. Looks good at first glance.
Close
I was not really prepared to be surprised so positively by Groove 3.0, but I admit it, I was.
Of course, I have not been working with Groove behind the scenes on the release (and after the harsh words I leveled at them regarding the UI on the previous generation, who could blame them), so I had no visibility into the product planning. However, simplyfying the UI to get a better UI was really needed, and what better metaphor to adopt than instant messaging?
The real breakthrough in this product will turn out to be the integration with shared folders on the desktop, as much as the new UI pleases. The core value proposition of Groove (and its nearest competitors, like the new Shinkuro , which I haven't yet gotten to review) is real-time collaboration around shared files. Changes to shared files, forms, and other information is distributed to workspace members in what could be considered near real-time, although Groove also supports offline use and subsequent synchronization through a replication model.
The product is directed toward agile, distributed teams, and would be a natural for professional services organizations, field service, nomadic consultants, and cross-enterprise teams that do not share common information infrastructure. The product meets the collaborative and security needs of ad hoc groups, whether sitting around a table at Starbucks, in a conference room at headquarters, or scrambling to make sense of incoming intelligence, under fire at the Baghdad airport.
Definitely a tool for our times.
1. Zbigniew Lukasiak on March 14, 2004 04:51 AM writes...
Once again there is something wrong with the link in "Last year, I reviewed version 2.5, and wrote about my dissatisfaction with the UI".
By the way it would be helpfull if you linked to the product page (after some googling I found the Groove company page - but still they have many products).
Permalink to Comment2. SBC on March 15, 2004 05:30 AM writes...
http://weblogs.asp.net/sbchatterjee/archive/2004/03/15/89665.aspx
Permalink to Comment3. Robin Good on March 15, 2004 07:21 AM writes...
Stowe thanks for this early review of Groove.
It does indeed show how much progress and improvements these guys have made over these last 12 months. Pretty impressive indeed.
On the other hand, I find your label of "a tool for our times" to be somehow detracting from your traditional objective approach.
While Groove remains definitely a breakthrough approach to online collaboration and it has now added more valuable features, its key handicaps and limitations, outside that overly cluttered and difficult-to-master interface, are all still there:
1) VoIP. Though Groove integrates a VoIP module, its quality and performance have long left much to be desired.
2) Hooks and optional bridges to business/social networking facilities would be a perfect complement inside this technology. No-one has yet understood this potential, and those who have, have long seen the limits and superficiality generated by the likes of Ryze, Ecademy, Orkut and LinkedIn which do have the people, but have hardly any facility to allow them to collaborate.
3) Publishing and syndicating content is going to be soon part of every man job on this planet. Groove, for what I know, offers no way to "publish" or hook into my preferred publishing tools.
4) As a matter of fact I may even want to have a Web-based and an RSS-based output feed of any workspace information I create in Groove. This would create even more usable access routes to Groove data for my dispersed team and collaborators.
5) When I collaborate I often have to show what is going on my screen. Groove leaves me in the cold here, forcing me to use third-party solutions (is there an add-on for groove?) to do basic screen-sharing activities, which are nowadays offered within most if not all web conferencing solutions.
6) As it is largely demonstrated by advanced uses and cutting-edge collaboration tecnologies video makes a difference and, to use it, you don't need to really have tons of bandwidth. Showing other people faces and having the option to show yours as well, and at different degrees of quality, frame rate and size is something that appeals to users and that provides tangible benefits while conducting real-time collaboration sessions. When will this apply to Groove too?
A tool of our time: futuristic features, and same handicaps looming from the past.
Permalink to Comment4. Stowe Boyd on March 15, 2004 08:14 AM writes...
Looks like you (like me, to some extent anyway) are looking for the single overarching ubertool: a single, rich, desktop client that supports all manner of communication, coordination, and collaboration with others.
Regarding application sharing and other potential plug-ins (like video, etc) -- I can't speak for Groove, but the company has a wide variety of partners that have developed "tools" that plug into the Groove architecture. Perhaps the APIs have been rewired enough that partners can add capabilities at a fundamental level -- adding entries to the core menus, and so on -- instead of just as embedded tools. I will find out more from Groove on that.
Social networking is an obvious adjunct to the buddy lists and groups that Groove currently serves. Obviously, Groove put a lot of energy and time into revamping the entire experience of the product, and now has to contemplate additional features to keep folks like you (and me) happy.
Permalink to Comment5. Stowe Boyd on March 15, 2004 08:18 AM writes...
Ziggy -
Thanks for the reads up on the broken link. Fixed now, plus I added a link to Groove.
- Stowe
Permalink to Comment6. Darrell O'Donnell on March 15, 2004 08:55 PM writes...
I just wanted to cover some of Robin's comments and questions here.
VOIP - Can't say much on that, I don't use it - it was bad enough in previous versions that I jumped to Skype when pressed.
Hooks/Bridge for Business/Social Networking - Groove v2.5 had 3 different ways to write tools/applications and they exposed a large amount of the underpinnings of Groove. v3.0 exposes far more but allows only 2 official methods of tool development (.Net and Web Services). I would say that Groove could be integrated into the facilities you mention here - but it would be on a case-by-case basis, and someone would have to find the business case to drive it. I'm not saying there is or isn't a business case here, I am just saying the technology is there if someone wanted to hook in some other technology.
Publishing/Syndicating Content - the folks at Suite75 created a beta Bloggertool that allowed bloggers to punch entries in via Groove, thus allowing a more asynchronous publishing tool. It never made it to the full release type, but it gives an idea of what can be done using Groove to push blog entries out to a blog such as Blogger. On the other side of things, I can see several ways to use the Groove Web Services to create automated publishing/syndication capabilities. The real application work would be more on the business rule side of things, as you would have to see what info you want to have public, when it is ready, how you flag it, how you maintain it, etc.
Creating an RSS feed or web page information of workspaces is pretty much just a simple implementation using the Groove Web Services.
On Screen Sharing and Video - I can't really comment too much here, I am not an expert in this domain. I do know of some other technology companies that may be of interest to the folks at Groove if they every decide to do any of this, particularly in the screen sharing side.
Stowe - you mention the Groove partners (again, we are one of them) and I would say that your thoughts are pretty close to the mark. You mention adding menus, etc. and making the tools seamlessly fit into Groove - that can certainly be done, but I think one item is glaringly missing from both yours and Robin's comments.
The Groove Web Services go deep enough that I don't even have to show Groove at all (at least not if I don't want to.) The limitations of the Groove UI and it's self-monitoring tabbed tools are left behind if we want. A developer can effectively have their application sit outside of Groove totally - this is where I see the power of the Groove platform. The new tools are definitely improvements, but being able to use the Groove Platform without the Groove UI means a lot of power to developers.
For example, we are just about to release our first product - which is a collaborative GIS (geospatial information system) that builds on our years of experience in creating mapping solutions for military and non-military customers. Groove is one of the platforms we can ride on, but there are others that we can see coming, but Groove is alone in many aspects in its industry.
Perhaps you guys would be interested in discussing this - but I will ask to take that discussion offline or into a more secure and less public space - perhaps a Groove space? :-)
Permalink to Comment7. Pete on May 26, 2004 02:25 AM writes...
A caution: shared folders, and any applications that make use of them, BY DEFINITION break the basic Groove security model. Only what is done inside a "real" groove workspace is secure at all times.
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