Getting started with SharePoint Workspace 2010

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is one of the most exciting product of the 2010 wave and I'm sure it'll change your everyday SharePoint life much more than you expect. I don't know if you were familiar with Groove or not, but I'm sure you'll like SharePoint Workspace 2010 in any case. Let's see, why.

First of all, you have to know, SharePoint Workspace 2010 is not a brand new product as this is the new generation of Groove. It not only got new name but a lot of new functions as well as design. In this article I'll give you a basic introduction and show how you can connect and sync SharePoint 2010 content to your local computer. I for one, sync capabilities and offline accessing to SharePoint conent are very important in my everyday work and life. As a consultant, I'm very often at the client site with no access to my company's Intranet but with a need to use content from there. Most probably you know the situation when you need something that you know you have, but not by you right at that moment. But, I for one hate to copy documents to my laptop and back to the server, moreover we have tons of information not in documents but SharePoint list.

On the other hand I travel a lot. Generally I can sleep during flight but very often I need to work too (ohhhh no, unfortunately I cannot sleep and work at the same time :) ). And for my work I need other documents and info stored in various libraries and list, on various SharePoint farms.

Yes, there are also 3rd party tools for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007, and to be honest I'm a big fan of the Colligo Contributor. I love it! But believe me, I was very surprised when I first met SharePoint Workspace 2010. Not because it's better or nicer. They have similar functions but they're different. I'll be back with a complete comparison of them soon, but please let me show you the SharePoint Workspace 2010 now.

This product fits perfectly to the Office 2010 wave and make the integration between the clients and SharePoint 2010 much stronger and more powerful. It makes you able to acces the SharePoint content even offline, and gives you automated synchronization features.

Basically, the sychronization can be initiated on two different ways: right on the SharePoint 2010 User Interface in the browser, or in the SharePoint Workspace 2010 itself.

On your SharePoint 2010 sites, you can find a 'Sync to Computer' command in the new 'Site Actions' menu placed on the left side. When clicking this command, the synchronization is beginning immeadiately. Also, you can click on "Sync to Computer" on the lists' and libraries' ribbons.

The second way you can initiate the two-way sync between the SharePoint 2010 and your local computer, is the SharePoint Workspace 2010 installed on your client machine. It starts with a simple Launchbar with the functionalities of the old Groove extended with the new SharePoint 2010 capabilities. On this Launchbar, you can choose the New button then typing your site's location manually, and that's it!

After getting synchronized, you get a lot of functions, and I cannot underline enough: these functions are available for you even being offline!

So, let's see what we get after opening a site from the Launchbar. The Site Browser opens in a new windows, and it's divided into three parts:

• Workspace content: Here you can see all of your lists and libraries on the current site.
• List view with the default view of the selected list or library.
• Item view with the properties of the selected item in your list.

This is the main window you'll work in. You can manage your list items and documents right from here, without starting a browser moreover without being connected to the SharePoint 2010 site. Or you can set client alerts to getting new items sync'ed to your computer.

If I should make a simile I had to say: SharePoint Workspace 2010 with SharePoint synchronization is similar to Outlook with Exchange sync. You can view and manage your downloaded content, can create or delete items, and all of changes will be synchronized after connecting to the server. It's so simple!

A few very small thing that I like a lot though: after right click on a site in the Launchbar, you can find a context menu from which you can choose some very useful options. For example, my favourite ones:

• Save Shortcut to Desktop: You can place a shortcut to this site on your desktop, so you'll be able to open it in SharePoint Workspace 2010 with a simple click.
• Pause Communications: If you wouldn't like to sync this site for some reason, you can pause the synchronization all time.
• Mark Read/Unread: Similar to the function in Office client.

I love this tool! I might be anywhere, anytime, I can see all of my SharePoint content, even offline at client side. This is very important for me for the reasons I mentioned above. And, to be honestly, I love to work in coffees or tee houses, out of my office, without Internet access: although I like to be the part of the worldwide SharePoint community, sometimes I need a "cave" feeling with being alone (amongst the people around me). My best ideas come with a good coffee and no network access :)

I love this tool! I might be anywhere, anytime, I can see all of my SharePoint content, even offline at client side. This is very important for me for the reasons I mentioned above. And, to be honestly, I love to work in coffees or tee houses, out of my office, without Internet access: although I like to be the part of the worldwide SharePoint community, sometimes I need a "cave" feeling with being alone (amongst the people around me). My best ideas come with a good coffee and no network access :)

At least but not last, one more surprise for you.

After synchronizing some sites to SharePoint Workspace 2010, open Word 2010, and try to save a document. What you can see? - Yes, there're your sync'ed workspaces too, and you can save the docs directly to them.

Even offline.

Awesome!...