Virtual Office

[vernacular_life]

Our headquarters is pushing something new called Groove, a virtual office..... sounds interesting and WAY ahead of the stuff we usually do and will be awesome for work-at-home days!  (Watch, it won't be Mac friendly...)

What is Groove? Groove Virtual Office is a new paradigm in working. It accelerates business activity among small groups within and across organizational boundaries. Teams interact and exchange information in shared spaces where members work and communicate securely, in context, and content is available whether you are online or offline. With quick access to shared information, team members have one place to find information, shaving time from project schedules. Benefits of Groove Virtual Office are: Rapid deployment Create a rich workspace in a single-step process. Invite team members inside and outside the company as easily as sending an email. No time-consuming special-purpose server or network setup. No worries about security Groove uses military-grade, 192-bit encryption. Groove security is always-on. Users do not need to know about, understand or even care about encrypting sensitive intellectual property. Groove takes care of it transparently. No worries about network availability Work in the same Groove workspace regardless of your status: offline, online, and over poor network connections. If a network connection drops, Groove picks up where it left off when the network connection comes back. Groove only sends changes to files over the network, making the most of low-speed connections. No Reply-to-All messages with large file attachments. Everyone's work is in one place, always up-to-date All the information -- files, forms, calendar, meetings, project tracking, discussions -- are in context in the same place. No need to send and resend information to everyone. Groove automatically synchronizes all the workspace content for all team members. Just-in-time interaction "Water cooler encounters" happen frequently and naturally in Groove. Someone shows up in a workspace that you care about, and Groove lets you know he is there. One click and you are having a just-in-time interaction. Nothing falls through the cracks Groove automatically alert you when something has changed in a workspace that matters to you. No depending on someone else to send you an email to let you know there is something you should see or know. Hassle-free meetings All the meeting material -- dial-in info, agenda, files, presentations, attendee list, minutes, action items -- are all in one place. No scrambling around looking for web conferencing URLs. One-click presentation sharing. All meeting notes remain in the context of the workspace for future reference. One solution for real-time and different time activity No need to choose between different products and user experiences. Supports real-time interaction (live meetings, co-edit and co-review of documents, live chat and instant messages) in the same context with stored files Work in one mode and whiles you and your colleagues other arrive online and go offline through the course of a day.

Comments

[djoyusone.livejournal.com]

Wow, sounds cool! I'm adding this to memories.

[vernacular-life.livejournal.com]

it does remain to see how user-friendly it is...my luck, I'll be my holy grail, then we'll stop using it...

[tinksdust.livejournal.com]

Andrew and I were talking about something similar to this last weekend. We were talking about how more companies should encourage working from home and just have ports where people can plug in if they have to come to the office for a face-to-face meeting. We talked about having things on secure servers so that employees can get to them, using something like net-meeting in addition to conference calling, etc.

I think what you've posted is a really cool concept!