Using SharePoint Offline with SharePoint Workspace

What is SharePoint Workspace 2010?

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is a tool that simply takes your SharePoint sites offline. With only few mouse clicks you can synchronize all your online SharePoint libraries and documents, and store them locally on your compute and you are no longer tied to the company network. After offline work, when you go back online, all your changes are then synchronized to the server using the SharePoint Workspace tool. In this article I will cover all the technical aspects of this tool, starting from the installation, ending on the advanced collaboration using this  Workspace.

SharePoint Workspace Installation on our desktop machine

We will start with the installation of our SharePoint Workspace 2010 media. To install this you’ll need a licence key, so go ahead and get your copy. Also take a note about the requirements of the SharePoint Workspace – you need at least 1,5 GB available disk space for this software and minimum Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista with SP1, or later. You can install this tool on either 32-bit or 64-bit environments. Workspace is working with Internet Explorer 7 and above. Also keep in mind that if you were using previous version – Office Groove 2007, you won’t be able to downgrade after you launch the installation of Workspace 2010.

Now, let’s launch the installation file.

On the first setup screen we will see the Product Key window which is standardized in the recent Office 2010 family of applications. You should type in your key there and continue with the installation:

SharePoint Workspace Installation – Product Key window

After entering the   key, you’ll have to read (if you have   time!) and accept the Software License terms. Check the “I accept the terms” button and continue with the installation.

On the next screen you’ll have to choose the installation type. By pressing Install Now button, you accept the default settings, the Customize option will allow you to  choose the components you require for this installation. In this demo we will select Customize  to see what will be installed in the package.

SharePoint Workspace Installation – Installation details

In the Customize setup details, you can choose the components to be installed:

SharePoint Workspace Installation – Customize installation components

For now the default settings would be sufficient, but keep in mind that you may want to enable all Proofing tools features to get the support for optical character recognition modules – if you will decide to use them in the future.

Click Install Now and wait for the progress bar to complete its tasks:

SharePoint Workspace Installation – Final progress bar

Now run the application . The first time you’ll launch the application, you’ll see the Account Configuration Wizard, where you need to specify an account for the SharePoint Workspace:

Account Configuration Wizard setup screen

Ensure that “Create a new account” is checked and click next. Now you can decide how you want to create the account – using the email or by Account Configuration Code:

Account Configuration Wizard – Installation account type

We will be using the e-mail type account, so type in your name and e-mail and click Finish button:

Account Configuration Wizard – account creation window

After this step you are done with the configuration wizard and we can start using the tool.

Inside the SharePoint Workspace Tool

On the first run the application window will be quite empty. We are starting with the blank Launchbar window, so let’s get some data into this.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 Launchbar

First, click on File tab:

SharePoint Workspace 2010 – File tab.

In the Change Online Connection Settings section, you can switch the workspace to offline mode (with no synchronization), get the workspace back to online mode and pause or resume current or all workspaces.
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