The IW Center

Today's Prodcast features Gray Knowlton, a Senior Product Manager in the Office division. He is responsible for the InfoPath product as well as Microsoft Word. For those of you who aren't familiar with Infopath, it's our electronic forms offering, but that's merely scratching the surface. Using InfoPath, customers can create dynamic forms for data collection, but it uses XML to store the data in SQL, SharePoint, files, etc. It can even be intergrated into a business workflow, passing the data off to a .NET web service.

Gray covered the basics of InfoPath, how easy it is to create forms (you don't have to be a developer), the benefits of using XML as a data format and how customers can automate processes using forms and workflow. When I asked him about any customer case studies he could talk about, Gray revealed how the State of North Carolina Highway Patrol is using InfoPath for entering data electronically. Instead of filling out paper-based forms, they fill out forms in the field electronically and then synch up the data when they get back in the office, saving them thousands of hours in data processing time. So I guess I should be happy the next time I get a speeding ticket...at least they are using Microsoft technologies. ;-)

Click to Play Audio (18:36)
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For more information on InfoPath, visit the Microsoft website.

Today, I had the opportunity to interview Matt Pope, Group Product Manager for Groove at Microsoft. Matt drives the product management and planning for Groove, so he is THE GUY when it comes to talking about Groove. I met Matt in Seattle a few weeks ago and was very excited spend some time with him on the phone.

In case you hadn't heard, Microsoft recently finished the acquisition of Groove Networks. Groove was founded by Ray Ozzie, who was the creator of Lotus Notes. In fact, Ray is now one of Microsoft's three CTO's. What is Groove you might ask?

According to the Groove website, Groove products enable "teams of information workers to securely create and share files, manage projects and meetings, and track data and processes in a highly decentralized manner unconstrained by time, location, or organizational affiliation." I like to think of Groove as a peer-to-peer collaboration tool for cross company or intra-company scenarios. You can use Groove to share files with people at other companies without the complexity of setting up users and trusts in Active Directory or without having to manage user permissions in a Sharepoint site on the extranet. Simply open your Groove workspace, copy a file to it and then send an email to the other person inviting them to "Groove" with you. It's got built in encryption and is network aware so it only replicates the binary deltas of the files you share as they change.

Matt and I talk about the Groove acquisition, the various Groove components and a few of the usage scenarios where Groove might make sense. We also discuss customer references, most of whom were here in the Southeast including Siemens Medical, GlaxoSmithKline, and the State of Florida Department of Emergency Management.

Listen to the Prodcast below and see if it excites you to get your Groove on!

Click to Play Audio (21:44)
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For more information about Groove, visit the Microsoft/Groove website.

Rachel Falzone, a Product Manager in the MapPoint division of Microsoft, spent an hour with me on the phone today talking about MapPoint 2004 and the upcoming release Mappoint 2006. Rachel has been working on the MapPoint products for the past seven years, so she has a great deal of history with the product. She talked about the various editions of MapPoint and why you would use the cd based product versus the fleet edition. She also gave a couple of case studies of customers who are using MapPoint today.

As many of you know, I'm geographically challenged, so I use MapPoint practically every day. I would literally "be lost" without this product. In addition to mapping out directions to a customer, I also use it to create territory maps and coverage models, analyze my accounts by geography and even pasting maps into Powerpoint for presentations. I love this product and can personally attest to it's usefulness.

Click to Play Audio (16:09)
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For more information on Mappoint, vist the Microsoft website.