Adding a Sharepoint Files tool to a Groove workspace

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Someone on the Groove newsgroup recently noted that the instructions for “Setting up a SharePoint Document Library connection” in the Groove Help only apply to Windows XP. After confirming this was true, I checked the Groove 2007 Help and How-to Home page at https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/FX102270281033.aspx, the most current documentation for the Groove 2007 desktop application. The instructions there do not refer specifically to Windows XP features, but also didn’t work for me when I followed them exactly on Windows Vista. (That should be fixed soon.) There are also possible shortcuts that vary by Windows version and are not documented.

If you are adding a new SharePoint Files tool to a Groove workspace, here’s what I recommend:

  1. In the new tool, click Setup to open the Select a document library or folder dialog box.

  2. Select a SharePoint site by following these steps:

    1. In Windows Vista, click to open My SharePoint Sites; in Windows XP, click to open My Network Places

    2. If the SharePoint site that contains the document library you want to synchronize in Groove is displayed, double-click to open it. If the SharePoint site is not displayed, enter the URL for the SharePoint site in the Address field at the bottom of the window, and then press the Enter key.

    Note: The URL should start with https:// or https:// and end with the site name – for example, https://sharepoint.adatum.com/sites/oursite. If you copy and paste the SharePoint site URL from a Web browser, be sure to truncate the URL so that it contains only the sections required for referencing the site.

  3. If prompted, enter your credential information, and click OK. A list of document libraries and subwebs displays

  4. Select the document library that you want to synchronize and then click the Select button. (If you want to synchronize a lower-level folder in the library, you can click down to it before clicking Select.)

Note that the notification that the tool is synchronizing comes up in a separate window, and if you click on another window at the wrong moment, it may end up obscured. Don’t immediately assume that the operation has failed when the tool display doesn’t change. Wait a few seconds, and check your taskbar to see if a status window has appeared. Depending on the size of the library, the initial synchronization can take a while, and your SharePoint Files tool will continue to display the setup screen until synchronization is complete.

In Windows XP, you can avoid manually entering the URL by adding the site to My Network Places. When I first started looking at this, I wondered if you could similarly add sites to My SharePoint Sites, or if you could use configured Network Locations. Neither is a solution. The My SharePoint Sites list is generated once a day by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and lists sites in which the user is a Member. If you have permissions to a site through Active Directory, or if you are only part of the Owners group, it will not show up on the list. If you have not set a default My Site, qualifying sites may not show up in the list. Frequently the only way for a Groove user on Windows Vista to link the SharePoint Files tool to a site is the URL method.