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GroveSite Collaborative Workspaces Quick, Easy, and Useful Team Workspaces for Collaboration with Customers and Suppliers

By Ronni T. Marshak Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group

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Patricia Seybold Group / Product Profile

GroveSite Collaborative Workspaces Quick, Easy, and Useful Team Workspaces for Collaboration with Customers and Suppliers

By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group August 3, 2006

NETTING IT OUT GroveSite offers a low-cost, simple, but versatile collaborative team workspace solution. The advantages of the offering include the ease of creating useful and attractive shared workspaces and public Web sites; ease of use; and low pricing model. The disadvantages are a lack of high-end features, such as automatic version control, content management, and rules-based workflow; limited granularity of permissions and security; and lack of integration with outside applications, such as Outlook Tasks and Calendar.

OVERVIEW OF GROVESITE OFFERING

GroveSite, a Phoenix, Arizona-based provider of collaborative workspaces, offers a simple but versa-tile alternative to the team workspace offerings from companies such as EMC/Documentum, Micro-soft/Groove, and IBM. Although this hosted offering lacks some capabilities such as presence awareness, robust document management, and rules-based workflow, the low cost and ease of defining very useful, customized workspaces make this an appeal-ing option for companies looking to quickly set up and use engaging shared work environments with customers, suppliers, and colleagues.

Addressing Supply Chain Scenarios Although many different types of scenarios can

be addressed with GroveSite, many of GroveSite’s customers are using the offering to facilitate RFP bidding scenarios (I want to receive bids for a prod-uct manufacturing project; I want to sub-mit/review/accept bids; I want to monitor progress of project) and the related manufacturing process (I

want to build samples of the product; I want to ap-prove samples; I want to modify build orders; I want to monitor production of products).

SUMMARY OF CAPABILITIES

Creating a Workspace It is very easy to create a new workspace in a

short amount of time. Using a page metaphor, the workspace owner creates new pages by choosing from a list of available page types on the left-side navigation panel. (The names of these page types can be customized, so, for example, “discussion” pages can be renamed, say, “forums” or whatever term works for your team.) Each page type has a layout and structure with underlying intelligence to support its function. For example, project plan pages include fields for task #, priority, task name, status, % complete, responsible party, start date, and due date, as well as links to import a plan from Excel and to produce Gantt charts and other reports.

New workspaces can be created from existing workspaces, replicating look and feel only to include complete content in the new site.

Power users of GroveSite can fairly easily set up “library sites” in which to store commonly-used pages. All the workspaces can include any of those pages (selectively) as well as pages unique to the one site. One large GroveSite customer, a major na-tional retail department store chain, has a library site with an “instructions for vendors” page. All product workspaces then include that page, and the company only has to update information in the library site to update the more than 900 product design workspaces the company uses to collaborate with its vendors.

The majority of GroveSite’s users create multiple secure team sites and restrict access to enrolled ex-

2 • Product Profile

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ternal or internal team members. However, one of the attractions of GroveSite is the option to create workspaces with publicly-viewable pages, or even public Web sites (see Illustration 1). Colors, logos, and fonts can be customized (although there are a limited number of fonts supported). GroveSite pro-vides a WSIWYG HTML editor to help with format-ting of information; although this feature is easy to use, it is somewhat hard to find—something that is

true for many of the GroveSite features. Anonymous public access is very easy to set up.

STANDARD PAGES. GroveSite comes with a vari-ety of standard pages, including:

• Discussions

• Project Plans

• File Library

GroveSite Team Sites and Public Web Sites

© 2006 Patricia Seybold Group

Illustration 1. With GroveSite, you can create secure team sites, such as Ronni’s Collaboration Site, shown in the top screen. You can also create publicly-available Web sites, as illustrated in the bottom screen. Note the very different look between the two sites. Also note how the information in the left-side navigation panel is customized for each site. It took less than an hour to create each site and populate it with preliminary content.

GroveSite Collaborative Workspaces • 3

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• Calendar

• Member List

• List of Related Sites

• Announcements

• Link—to another (external Web page), to a Li-brary page, to another GroveSite

• Issue Tracking

• Easy Customer Relationship Management

• Easy Contact Management

• Image/Photo Gallery

STANDARD TABLE PAGES. Also included with the product are a number of XML tables. Users can sort table information by column, and content can be up-loaded and downloaded from Excel. Standard Table Pages include:

• Issue Tracking • Customer Relationship Management • Contact Management • Sales Opportunities • Vendor Bids • Image/Photo Gallery

The structure of these pages/tables cannot be modified.

Although many of these page types are listed in the left-side navigation column, as mentioned earlier, not all are displayed. You must “create new page” by clicking on an icon at the top right of the naviga-tion column to get a “complete” list of available page types (see Illustration 2). Note, however, that not all page types are listed even here—we didn’t find Announcements on the list, even though this is a common page type available on most of the sample sites that GroveSite provides.

This is an example of one of the weaknesses of the GroveSite environment—many of the features are hard to find, either not appearing on standard lists or accessible only by an easy-to-miss link bur-ied within an input page.

CUSTOM DATA TABLE PAGES. To expand the functionality of the environment, customers may commission GroveSite to build a custom table page for a small fee (typically between $199 to $399, de-pending on complexity). GroveSite has also recently begun to offer a Custom Table Editor ($995), which lets customers create their own custom page types or modify existing page table structures. Users may specify column headings, field types (numeric, text, date, URL, email address, etc.), pull-down menus, required/optional settings, view/edit permissions, and more. Custom tables have different views for input, Summary View, and Expanded View, and allow files, thumbnails, discussion areas for each row, editing rights by field, etc. Table security al-lows specifying that participants see only their own rows—one major retailer uses this capability to up-load detailed bid info from its providers, and ven-dors can only see their own bid rows, while the retailer can see them all. GroveSite customers have built custom pages to track work orders, software bugs, production samples, vendor bids, outstanding proposals, construction requests-for-information, retail store audits, etc.

Once a custom table page has been designed, it is available to all new sites that the customer creates (see Illustration 2).

Unlike the other capabilities of GroveSite, the Custom Table Editor is designed for people who understand database structure and syntax—a very different level of technical competency that is re-quired to use the rest of the product. We believe that the user interface could be enhanced (or, actually, simplified) to make it much easier to modify exist-ing table pages and to create reasonably simple new tables.

Document Management GroveSite makes it very easy to post any sort of

file to a File Library page (with proper permission). Metadata, such as category, status, and owner, are kept for each file. With proper permissions, a mem-ber can download the current version of a document, and choose to temporarily lock access by other members, then edit and upload an updated version. The member has the option to list the new version separately in the workspace’s File Library or replace the old version. Because file locking and versioning



are optional, the document management capabilities are limited by user behavior (which can be inconsis-tent at best).

Administrators can track a file’s access history, seeing when the file was uploaded, who has viewed or downloaded it, and who has replaced it. Multiple file upload/download capabilities are included.

A nice capability within GroveSite is its ability to create thumbnails of most types of image files. Prod-uct design and graphics teams can scroll through thumbnails, rather than an unfriendly list of file names, to find the file they need.

Project Management/Issue Tracking/Workspace Calendar

Basic project/task management capabilities are included (task #, priority, task name, status, % com-plete, responsible party, start date, and due date). Each task has a Discussion log, allowing teams to track unstructured information, such as progress notes, in addition to the structured information.

There is no integration with underlying project management applications or calendaring/to-do sys-tems (e.g., Outlook Tasks), although contents can be downloaded to or uploaded from Excel.

Creating a New GroveSite Page

© 2006 GroveSite

Illustration 2. Although many standard page types are presented in the standard navigation panel on the default site page, to find the complete list of available page types, you “add a new page.” Note that any custom page types defined for or by a customer are available when creating new pages on new sites.



Similar to the project plan pages are issue track-ing pages, with fields for priority, issue number, category, description, status, responsible party, and related discussion postings.

A basic calendar of events is provided. Items need to be explicitly entered into the calendar. A nice feature is that when an item is added to a pro-ject plan or an issue is modified, an email can op-tionally be sent to specified team members. Milestone tasks from the project plan are displayed on the calendar.

Bulletin Boards/Discussion Forums GroveSite supports announcement pages for gen-

eral information and threaded discussions. When an item is added to a discussion, an email is sent to specified team members.

Personal Dashboard Because team members rarely participate in only

one team, it is important to have an overview of all your teams and your deliverables for each team. GroveSite automatically sets up a “home” view for each member, which includes all active workspaces.

My (GroveSite) Home


Illustration 3. This composite illustration shows the author’s “My Home,” which is her personal dashboard of all team sites in which she is registered. Via the “Manage My Information” page, users can do some customization to this dashboard view.



This view is somewhat customizable—you can turn on/off whether to display upcoming tasks, calendar events, and pages that have updated since the last time you looked at them. (See Illustration 3.)

The home page is limited, however. There are no graphical indicators of project process, for example.

Member Administration It is not complicated to manage the enrollment of

team members, but cumbersome. You have to either enter each person individually—using a comma-delimited format to enter information (e.g., [email protected], Joe, Van Wilder, President, “Domain, Inc.,” 800-555-1212)—or you can upload an Excel spreadsheet. We wish there was more inte-gration with Outlook, Notes Mail, or other email contact files.

If you just enter, say, an email address with no other information, the administrator cannot add new member information (such as their full name, phone number, etc.); only the member herself can provide that information. An Organizational Administrator (a higher-level role than a site administrator—see be-low) can specify required fields within the member profiles, so when members log in the first time, they are required to provide that information, but the onus is still on the participants themselves. Site adminis-trators should be able to add this information after the fact, with members having ultimate modification control. Members can be assigned one of three roles:

• Site Administrator. Customizes logo, headers, footers and color scheme; defines pages; and en-rolls members of the group. A team workspace can have multiple administrators.

• Moderator. Places most of group’s information, images, and files on the group’s site. A work-space can have multiple moderators.

• Participant. Primary users of the workspace, participants can view pages, and participate in discussions. They may also upload files, update tasks and issues, and add calendar events and ta-ble information with the proper permission.

Access permission for participants—the ability to add to or modify information on the page—is asso-ciated with a page, not the sub-items on a page. So,

for example, if you want participants to have access to some posted documents, but not others, you need to create different “file libraries,” each with different permissions.

GroveSite supports a higher-level role, Organiza-tion Administrator, who manages the overall usage of GroveSite for the company. The Organization Administrator(s)—there can be multiple people who have this role—can create/delete/expire workspaces, assign new passwords, and view organization-wide statistics on GroveSite usage. (See Illustration 4.) The Organization Administrator creates and man-ages Custom Table pages.

Workspace Reports GroveSite provides a variety of predefined report

templates for use by the individual space administra-tors. Reports are also available for the “organiza-tion” administrator—a higher-level role that initializes the group Web site, and sets its access and security level.

Team space sample reports include (among oth-ers):

• Active Site Enrollment

• Site Security

• Broadcast, Enrollment, and Notification Mes-sages

• All Site Project Plan Tasks Due Soon

• All Site Project Plan Tasks for One Person

Organization reports include (among others):

• Site Tree Management

• Active Site Enrollment Every Enrolled Email Address

• Active Site Utilization Summary by Page

• Daily Site Utilization, Last 45 Days

Custom reports can be created in Excel and then uploaded to GroveSite. Complex custom reports can be commissioned from GroveSite for a fee.



Pricing Model GroveSite, which is a hosted offering, comes in

two models: GroveSite Intro and GroveSite Pro.

GROVESITE INTRO. This single workspace sup-ports up to 10 named team members for $99/month. You can enroll extra folks at any time for $15/month each. There is a one-time set-up fee of $75. About 10 to 15 percent of GroveSite customer accounts subscribe to this model. Anonymous (public) access to the workspace is free.

GROVESITE PRO. Subscribers to this model can create unlimited workspaces and enroll up to 25 people for $199 per month. An additional 25 people can be signed up for $8 per month, and the pricing for more team members goes down from there. Cus-tomers who support thousands of registered team members can negotiate a flat fee. Again, anonymous (public) access to the workspaces is free.

The majority of GroveSite clients subscribe to the Pro model, setting up multiple workspaces to support “value chain collaboration”—a separate (but similar) workspace for each customer project, for

Organization Administrators Create New GroveSites


Illustration 4. Among other capabilities, a GroveSite Organization Administrator creates new sites. As indicated by the circled area, (which contains the contents of the “Site to copy” drop-down list) new sites can be based on any existing site or on standard templates. The administrator can also specify which content elements are to be included in the new site.



each supplier, or for each internal team. GroveSite proudly states that it provides discounts to non-profit organizations to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders.

CREATING A RESELLER COMMUNITY. Recently, GroveSite has begun signing up selected resellers. Seats are sold to resellers at wholesale prices (about 40 percent of posted fees), who may then price them to customers as they like. These resellers can sell standard Intro or Pro accounts, but, more often, they package “Web/project collaboration” in with other services they are providing to their clients.

GroveSite’s Downside For workgroups with very robust requirements,

both in terms of capabilities (e.g., workflow, docu-ment management), GroveSite will not fit the bill. Nor is it intended to. These workspaces (which GroveSite calls team sites) are intended to provide the base functionality required by a large number of collaborative teams who need to create new team sites quickly and easily.

GroveSite actually offers more functionality than is immediately apparent from working on the site. There are a lot of features which are almost hidden

Hidden Features


Illustration 5. A very useful feature is the HTML WYSIWYG Editor. However, the only place to access (or even know about) this capability is buried within a long entry screen (which is abbreviated here in the left-side screen shot) of information.



(a link in a small font, for example, to the WYSIWYG editor, lost amidst a long input page—see Illustration 5). If you choose to evaluate Grove-Site for your company’s use, be sure to ask about capabilities you don’t find—they might be there! GroveSite needs to surface its functionality within the user interface.

The ability to create custom tables and modify existing tables is very important, and it’s good that GroveSite now offers a tool to do so. But the Cus-tom Table Editor is designed for people who under-stand database structure and syntax—a very different level of technical competency that is required to use the rest of the product. Although complex data tables need that level of expertise, simple table/page struc-tures or, say, the ability to add a field to one of the standard tables, should be much easier to do. Of more concern is the lack of flexibility in assign-ing roles and permissions. As Byron Wilson of Vis-ual Comfort discusses in his interview (see our report, “How Visual Comfort Uses GroveSite’s Col-laborative Workspaces to Improve Time-to-Market”1), the lack of granular security impacts his ability to optimally use the custom tables that have been designed specifically for his use of GroveSite. Even on straightforward implementations, the nature of shared environments is to provide appropriate access to all content by team member. This means that, within a group of posted documents, some members should have read-only access, others should be able to modify the documents, and still others shouldn’t be able to even view the files. Right now, GroveSite doesn’t support this type of access granularity out of the box.

We would also like to see GroveSite integrate with more outside applications, such as Outlook Tasks and Calendar. We also wish that existing flat-file databases could be uploaded (using XML con-version) to create new custom tables.

1 See “How Visual Comfort Uses GroveSite’s

Collaborative Workspaces to Improve Time-to-Market,” August 3, 2006, Ronni Marshak, http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=739

GroveSite’s Advantages The most attractive aspect of GroveSite is the

ease of creating useful and attractive shared work-spaces and public Web sites. Although not as feature rich as some other options, there is a surprising amount of value in the capabilities included in the product. We were able to create new Web sites within an hour each, including posting relevant con-tent, and customizing the look and feel of the work-spaces.

GroveSite is easy enough for most customers that not much training is required. As one frequent user at Texas A&M states, “…with GroveSite, it’s fast, easy and if I can do it, anyone can do it.” However, the company does provide free guidance, training, and support to users. And the online help is compre-hensive and easy to follow.

The low pricing model also makes this a good option for departments within companies who are working on tight budgets and who do not have the authority (or desire) to include IT in the decision. As a hosted solution, GroveSite doesn’t impact a com-pany’s infrastructure or security.

Contact Info GroveSite 3104 E. Camelback Road, #559 Phoenix, AZ 85016 Jane Hagen Founder, VP Marketing & Sales Email: [email protected] Internet: www.grovesite.com

http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=739

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