Microsoft SharePoint Workspace

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace is one of these really new, big and very exciting technologies in Microsoft Office 2010. Based on the Groove technology, it allows you to take your complete SharePoint environment offline, continue your work without a connection to the server and synchronize the whole thing when you are connected again.

In this post I will try to give you a quick overview of how this looks, how it works and what you can do with it.

When starting up this software, I was asked to create an account or use an already existing account.

I decided to create a new account and so I entered my name and e-mail address.

The software will then start creating your account.

After a while I will be presented with a, how I call it, MSN like application where I get an overview of all my workspaces. At this moment, I don't have any.

I will know create a new SharePoint workspace. So I click on new and select 'SharePoint Workspace'.

It will then ask my to enter the URL of the SharePoint site for which it has to create a workspace.

Then the initial synchronization starts. The software will recreate the complete site structure in my new workspace.

The syncing goes on for some time. I tested this with an almost empty, out of the box team site and it took quiet some time. As you can see in the following screenshot, you can see the sync process progressing. List already downloaded are in the top of the list. Lists that are still queued for syncing, are placed under 'Downloading'.

After a while, the complete site is synced and I can see the result. I clicked on the announcement list because an item was present there. As you can see, it is now also available in my offline workspace.

I will now create a new announcement in my workspace. You can also attach attachments to this offline list item.

As you can see, I have now two items in my workspace.

Keep in mind this second announcement is still offline data. If I go to my online announcement list, I still just have one item.

To see the new item online as well, I first have to sync. I can choose to either sync the list itself or sync the complete workspace. After the sync process, I can via the status see what list is synchronized and when the last sync took place.

If I then recheck my online announcement list, I will see my new announcement.

I hope this will at least give you a first impression of what this software looks like, how it works and what it can mean for you.