Microsoft Office Groove 2007 Web Services Release Notes

  • Article

The Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007 Software Development Kit (SDK) contains documentation, developer samples, and tools to help with Groove Forms and Web Services development.

These release notes are valid for SDK with Groove Web Services Version 2.1. Groove Web Services Version 2.1 is available in the 2007 Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2). Groove Web Services Version 2.1 is available on SP2. But it is not available on the Microsoft Office Server 2007 Groove Data Bridge system, which only supports Groove Web Services Version 2.0.

SDK Contents

The SDK is provided as a self-extracting zip archive. When you install the Software Development Kit (SDK), the Help, Library, and Sample folders are extracted to your hard disk. You can extract the files to any folder that is convenient.

The SDK is copied into the following three folders:

Microsoft Office 2007 Developer Resources\ Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK\
  Help
  Lib
  Samples

Help Folder

The Help folder contains the documentation for the SDK. The Help folder contains the following files:

  • GrvWSDevLib.chm — Contains the Groove Web Services Programmer's Guide and the Groove Web Services API Reference.

  • GrvFormsDevLib.chm — Contains the Groove Forms Programmer's Guide, the Groove Forms API Reference, and the Groove Forms Release Notes.

Lib Folder

The Lib folder contains the Groove WSDL files that describe the Groove Web Services API and source files that make it easier to create projects to handle events. The Lib folder contains the following subfolders:

  • DotNet\GrooveEvents — includes the appropriate language file in your project to use the GrooveEvents operations.

  • XMIs\2.0 — includes the .wsdl and .xsd files that describe the Groove Web Services API. Use the .wsdl files to set the web references for Groove Web Service applications.

Visual Studio 2005 stores web references to .wsdl files on the local file system as absolute file paths. The SDK samples assume that the .wsdl files are in the following location:

                                <drive>:\Program Files
  \Microsoft Office 2007 Developer Resources
  \Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK
  \Lib
  \XMIs
  \2.0
  \wsdl

In this folder path, <drive> is the default drive on the system. This is the location where previous versions of the Groove SDK stored the .wsdl files. If you want to use the same location for your .wsdl files, you can copy the Groove SDK to the Program Files folder on the system drive. Once you have copied the Groove SDK to the Program Files folder, you should delete the Samples folder from that copy.

If you do not copy the .wsdl files to this location, you will be able to compile and run the samples. However, you will be unable to update the web references of the samples without updating the location of the WSDL file for each imported web reference.

SDK Samples Folders

The Samples folder contains the following subfolders:

  • GrooveRemoteExplorer
    This sample is provided in C#.NET. It shows how to use Groove Web Services to display the data about the Groove accounts on the device, the workspaces for each identity, and the tools in each workspace.

  • GrooveFormsExplorer
    This sample is provided in C#.NET. It shows how to use the GrooveForms2 service to display data from Groove Forms V5.0 tools and InfoPath Forms V1.0 tools.

Each developer sample includes a readme file that provides a brief description, the software requirements, and the steps that you must follow to install and run the sample.

What Is New in the Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK

This section describes what is new in this SDK.

What Is New in the Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SP2 SDK

Service Pack 2 provides additional Groove Web Services operations to enable applications to control the lifetime of a workspace and to minimize the need for users to interact with the Groove user interface. These features are provided as Groove Web Services Version 2.1. These features may not be available on all systems.

Groove Web Services Version 2.1 contains the following new operations and events:

  • GrooveLocal.SetAlertLevel—enables or suppresses alerts for all accounts.

  • GrooveMembers.Create2—invites the specified member to the workspace providing options, such as requiring confirmation or using a silent invitation.

  • GrooveMembers.Update—updates the role of the specified member.

  • GrooveMessages.AcceptInvitation—accepts an invitation to a workspace.

  • GrooveMessages.DeclineInvitation—declines an invitation to a workspace.

  • GrooveMessages.ConfirmInvitation—confirms an accepted invitation to a workspace.

  • GrooveMessages.DenyInvitation—denies an accepted invitation to a workspace.

  • GrooveMessages.ReadInvitations—reads the invitations and invitation responses for the identity.

  • InvitationReceivedEventData—indicates that an invitation to a workspace was received.

  • InvitationResponseReceivedEventData—indicates that a response to an invitation was received.

  • GrooveSpaces.Create2—creates a new empty workspace with advanced options that include workspace visibility and alert level.

  • GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSA2 and GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSAByRef2— create a new workspace from a Groove Space Archive with advanced options that include workspace visibility and alert level.

  • GrooveSpaces.CreateGrooveFileSharingSpace2—creates a new Groove File Sharing workspace with advanced options that include workspace visibility and alert level.

  • GrooveSpaces.CreateInvitationFile2—creates an invitation file by using advanced options that include silent invitations and specifying the application to handle the invitation.

  • GrooveSpaces.Update2—updates the workspace with advanced options that include workspace visibility and alert level.

  • GrooveSpaces.Read2—provides extended information about the workspaces including invisible workspaces, which are not returned by Read.

  • GrooveSpaces.ReadSpace2— provides extended information about the targeted workspace.

  • SpaceDeliveryProgressEventData—indicates the progress of a workspace being sent to an invitee. This event is available on both the inviter's and invitee's systems.

  • GrooveSubscriptions.Create2—creates a subscription that, optionally, specifies a query that limits an invitation message subscription to invitations targeted to the specified application.

  • GrooveTools.ReadPermissions—reads the tool permissions or the available tool permissions for the specified role.

  • GrooveTools.UpdatePermissions—updates the tool permissions for the specified role.

What Is New in the Microsoft Office Groove 2007 RTM SDK

This section describes features that were not present in the Groove Web Services Development Kit released with Groove 3.1.

The following new web services are provided:

  • GrooveForms2 — provides access to the Groove Forms Tool Version 5 and the InfoPath Forms tool. For a description of the API differences between the GrooveForms2 and GrooveForms services, see Updating Existing Groove Version 3.1 Applications.

  • GrooveApplication — provides a mechanism to notify Groove that it should optimize network communications for interactive users.

In , the following web services are improved:

  • GrooveSubscriptions — the CreateAggregated2 operation provides the ability to automatically start aggregating events from new sources without having to refresh the subscription.

  • GrooveFilesBase64 — works with the new SharePoint Files tool in addition to the standard Files tool.

In , there are the following changes to existing services:

  • GrooveForms2 operations and events have been improved to return a single event that can contain updates to multiple records. In previous versions of Groove, a single call to GrooveForms.UpdateRecords produced multiple events: one event for each field updated in each record. In , a single call to GrooveForms2 or GrooveFormsUpdateRecords produces a single event. The RecordDataSet in the event contains all the updated records.

  • In the SDK, all projects have been updated to Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005. You cannot open these projects with previous versions of Microsoft Visual Studio.

  • If you have developed applications by using Groove Version 3.1, see Updating Existing Groove Version 3.1 Applications.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK Requirements

Your system must meet the following minimum requirements to install and use the SDK:

 Operating System

  • Windows XP

  • Windows Vista

 Hardware Requirements

  • Intel® Pentium® II 750 MHz processor (or equivalent), 900 MHz or faster recommended.

  • 256 MB RAM, 380 MB or more recommended.

  • 300 MB free disk space, 1 GB recommended.

  • Display resolution 800 x 600, 16-bit (65,536 colors) minimum.

  • Sound card, speakers, and microphone required to use voice features.

 Software Requirements

In order to run the samples provided in the SDK, you should have the following installed on the system:

  • or access to a Microsoft Office Server 2007 Groove Data Bridge system.

  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the Version 2

 Development Environment

You can write SOAP clients for Groove Web Services in any Microsoft .NET CLR language or any development environment that supports SOAP. The sample project files that are provided in the SDK require Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You cannot open these projects with earlier versions of Microsoft Visual Studio.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK Installation

This section provides information about how to install the Software Development Kit (SDK).

Remove previous versions of Groove Development Kits

If any Groove development kits earlier than SP2 are installed on the system, they will not be uninstalled when the SP2 SDK is installed. You should uninstall all previous Groove development kits before you install this SDK. If you want to preserve any information from previous development kits, make a copy of the relevant files before you uninstall the kit.

Install the SDK

The SDK installer is a self-extracting zip archive. When you unzip the SDK, the default location is a temporary folder. You should browse to another folder, such as your Documents folder, to install the SDK.

Note

If you want to install the .wsdl files in the location that was used by previous versions of the Groove SDK, you must copy the SDK to the Program Files folder as described in the previous Lib Folder section.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007 SDK Release Issues

This section provides late-breaking information about the Software Development Kit (SDK).

Groove Web Services Do Not Handle Optional Parameters Correctly In Some Cases

Groove Web Services do not process correctly any parameters that are specified after an omitted optional parameter. If there are no parameters specified after an omitted optional parameter, Groove Web Services handle the parameters correctly.

The workaround is to always specify optional parameters.

Multiple Events from Single Data Update

Some data changes produce multiple events even when there is a single data update. For example, adding a contact can produce three GrooveContacts events. These Web Services events are caused by events in the underlying Groove component. A single gesture by a Groove user can generate multiple events. Although this behavior can be surprising, it is as designed.

An exception to this behavior is how the GrooveForms and GrooveForms2 services handle record update events. GrooveForms and GrooveForms2 generate a single event for any update transaction in a Groove Forms or InfoPath Forms tool. The event shows the final state of the updated records. This is a change in behavior from Groove 3.1, where the GrooveForms tool generated multiple events including separate events for updates to different fields in the same record.

Note that if an account has more than one identity that is a member of a workspace, an events subscription will receive duplicate events, one for each identity in the workspace.

Many Groove Web Services SOAP Exceptions Are Not Localized

The great majority of the SOAP exceptions that may be generated by Groove Web Services operations are not localized, that is, they are only provided in English and are not translated to the local language. Some of the exceptions may be localized.

See Also

Concepts

Updating Existing Groove Version 3.1 Applications