Please take a moment to tell us how you’re using Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta. Are you using it for work, school, or home projects? Do you have better access to your documents from multiple locations? Is it easier to work with other people? 

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I really like Google. 

[That's probably not what you wanted to read in this post, but don't hit the delete key yet; read on.]

They do so many things right, and offer some really incredible and cool tools -- that either come right out of Google Labs, or that they've bought (I am totally in love with Grand Central).

But not everything. And as much as I wanted Google Docs and Spreadsheets to be the answer for me. It's not.

Even as we were using it, I was searching for an alternative. The interface is clunky. The editing capabilities are way too basic. It's an idea for which the time has come, but GD&S doesn't quite meet my expecations, much less my specific needs.

I asked our IT guys about Sharepoint (apparently we have it, but they didn't want to set it up and administer it if they didn't absolutely have to). I looked around the web for other, more effective ways to collaborate on or share spreadsheets and other documents. One of our team even tried Groove -- but that wasn't quite what we were looking for either.

And then I stumbled on the Office Live Workspace beta.

We've been using shared workspaces for about a month, now, as I write this. And it IS a beta. But I gotta tell you: there's just no better way to edit an Excel workbook than with Excel. And I can share and collaborate without adding to the IT workload.

This is everything Google Docs and Spreadsheets is not. I absolutely love it, and I can't wait to see how it improves as it moves through beta.

OLW is a very cool product.

And that's not something you'll always hear me say about Microsoft products. But when they do something right (or are clearly on their way), they deserve to hear about it.

Congratulations, OLW team, on a terrific work in progress.

Now, can you make it work with Office 2008 on the Mac?

hi i'm Rochelle & i'm using office live for my work & my kids projects ,i know it will be the best choise i make. So thank you for a chance that my kids can do there school work,& get my work done.i 'm try to get out in the working world ,a daycare  center & i really need office live to get my work started

Currently I am working for a school.  It would be great to see the students and teachers use Microsoft Office Live Workspace anywhere, anytime.  It could minimize distraction, increase class-time and productivity, and be cost effective.

 Way to go, thank you for all your hard work.  ~ Eboots

Tell our story?  Well, we are a body of freelancers coming together to build what we believe is the best solution for small businesses, and eventually towns and villages, to personify their unique brand and completely function online. Our unique business model keeps costs low for our clients and allows freelancers from around the world to work on what they most enjoy doing from the comfort of their own homes, and the success of our business model depends on the technology that the Office Live platform provides, specifically workspaces.  Not to be over-the-top, but workspaces have truly revolutionized the way we work, collaborate and communicate and without Office Live workspaces I’m not really sure how we would accomplish our goals. Using the Office Live platform we will soon launch as a new team of website developers each having our own roles and responsibilities with access to the projects being developed using workspaces.

Although workspaces are beta, to us they seem more stabilized than some products well out of beta.  As an online crew we are in workspaces daily and we’re very excited each time new developments in this platform are introduced.  Of course, it does not come without its frustrations. However, it seems the product team is listening to our requests and we believe it won’t be long before further improvements will make our lives even easier.  If anyone were to ask our freelancers what they think of workspaces, most of them would give a resounding cheer.  Excitement is heard throughout our over 100 workspaces. 

To answer the question of how exactly we use workspaces; in short, one could compare workspaces to fields. In these fields the produce, or deliverables, are information. As the one that primarily oversees the progress being made in the “fields’, and when the time is right, I harvest the information and bring it into the “barns” to be used and distributed.  In this analogy the barns are our portals created by the applications side of Office Live Small Business.  To go back to workspaces we simply have everyone set up in their own workspace. This is their window to everything they are working on at any given time.  As each freelancer, vendor, or partner needs access to a “Project” or “Possession”, etc. we simply give them workspace access until their work is completed and then take access away.  This helps me oversee everything everyone is working on while being able to give targeted direction to everyone participating no matter what their unique interest or contribution may be.

This example concerning our sign and business card vendor is just one example and then I must go back to work :).

In this scenario we set up three workspaces; one for logos, one for our business cards, and one for our signs.  Like most, we are always trying to improve everything on a continual basis so each item having its own workspace makes sense as it’s an ongoing project. So we give personal access to the vendors to these three workspaces, each having directives, previous pictures, and instructions.  Unfortunately, sometimes, vendors do not follow through. But using workspaces, the information is already set up and the next vendor picks up where the last one left off. During this time one of our freelancers needed to work with our logo. There was no need to send emails back and forth. He already had his own personal workspace and I simply gave him temporary access to the logos workspace. He, like everyone else, had everything he needed and I still had a bird’s eye view of everything being produced.  And, as hard as it is to understand, when dealing with some companies if you send logos or other documents or pictures in an e-mail they many times want you to resend them later when they work on a new project for you.  One has to think, do they not have any way that contains each of their clients projects? Well, if they had Microsoft Office Live Workspaces they would have no problem. Unfortunately, we many times have to be organized for our vendors and make it easy for them or we will be the one losing time and money. Besides, it is actually a big help for us when our partners agree to use the workspaces we create for them. Nothing against them, we just believe we have a better way, and it’s all done with harnessing Office Live Workspaces.

We invite you to visit us at our soon to be launched Office Live website at http://www.theproficientsproject.com/ . There, we will also be reporting on things we are doing with workspaces, not just the Small Business side.

Brian Woytovich

The Proficients Project Inc.

Greetings!  When I first received notice of the Office Live Workspace, I could not wait to sign up.  Like most people, it did take some time to be added but when I received my logon credentials, it was like Christmas all over again!

In my profession, I have utilized Microsoft’s SharePoint at work and so wished I could afford a way to build a server at home for my own personal use.  Working from workstation to workstation, I started off by saving my documents, personal spreadsheets, pictures and so forth to a USB flash drive and I soon found myself with problems.  I had to be aware of my actions, monitoring the version of my documents, avoiding overwriting previously modified items and remembering where I last saved my files to.  Not to mention traveling with the USB flash drive back and forth to work without forgetting it behind and having the feeling of “being lost without your homework!”.  With Office Live Workspace I now have my own virtual USB Flash Drive that allows me to travel without the fear of leaving home.

I started with a few postings; inventory of the house with serial numbers, contact numbers, frequently used technical documents, and then remembered all those Boy Scout documents I made modifications to and emailed back and forth to parents.  I started to work on schedules, phone lists, camping lists, forms and more forms.  This made it so easy for me to have one location to share them with a click of a button.  I recently started using it for special projects at work allowing me to share with co-workers and avoiding unwanted modifications to my documents.

Office Live Workspace has added a level of simplicity to my life and only wish I had this available to me several years ago when I started working the IT field.  I can only imagine how large my contact list would be and how large my list of files would look like now.

Thanks Team! 

Keep up the great work!

Hi everyone,

I often work on my university assignments at work and at home and carry an SD card with me. OLW looks like a much better alternative and I love the office integration.

 Great stuff guys!

I absolutely love the fact that I can access, edit and share my excel files from any computer with an internet connection!

Hi. My name is Dave and I have been studying Microsoft Office Products and the .NET Framework for a little over a year now. I am an adminstrator for a financial entity, so I draw upon facts that I learned from those who define, analyze, and solve business and social problems. Anyone who has ever worked in the insurance industry knows that they keep the most enormous statisitical databases in the world. Knowing the Microsoft has always been extremely diligent in data gathering, I have also noticed that at this point, the Word technology is broken into document regions. More to the point, I have seen that documents are filed according their content type. Similar to both C# and the .NET Framework, content types support inheritance, allowing you to base a new content type on an existing content type. A hierachal chain is formed. This allows you to define a single content type with specific attributes and create a derived content type based on it. For example, an Excel sheet could be an expense report and another could be sales revenue report. The parent type would be Financial document: each type could then be routed into a different document library. I am a fan of Microsoft products and develop applications on occasion wih Visual Studio. I am hoping to develop applications by actually obtaining the components by .NET remoting.

Organization Perspective

This product can be used in Software industry, where you can share your requirement specifications, document life cycle management across or all the members within the respective Business Unit like, Project managers, Code writers, Quality assurance team and team members by creating Workspaces.

Team managers

The Team managers can send quick invitation to the other members in the workgroup, informing them of any changed requirement or send a note using the personnel setting in the "Microsoft Office Live Workspace." Similarly, document can be shared among the Project manager, Module Lead and QA lead, based on the permissions assigned to them as roles.

Quality Assurance

The Quality assurance team can upload their Test plans, status report and bug report for reviewers, and collaborate with the team members by sharing, managing, and organizing available latest information.
 

Documentation Life cycle Management

For information management system, creating such workspace would help in delivering various types of document for the en-user, based on their domain knowledge and experience. This will help in keeping the content in the User guides, reference guide, and Installation guide accurate and authentic. And later, if find there is any inaccuracy in the document, they can be modified online, using the collaboration technique. 

Marketing and Business Analysis

 From the business perspective, it is very important for the Marketing team, to give presentation whenever required, irrespective of where they are - across the different location of the same organization or in a different geographical local. The marketing can print any collateral and circulate immediately when required, by sending an quick email to the participants after the event. By doing so, he can create a list of customer to his contact list and also inform them of the likely events that are to follow in the immediate future, by updating the Calendar and the Event list. This can help in being more productive in accomplishing the desired task, and can build more faith and trust in community relationship now and for future in a local and global environment.

Important: Creates a unified communication and Software as a Service (SaaS)

Challa Prabhu
Microsoft MVP (India)
challa_prabhu@hotmail.com 

I am a type I diabetic and started off using Google Documents to share my spreadsheet that included my blood sugar values, insulin shot values, carbohydrate intake and charts that I created to detect trends. Google was difficult to use and wouldn't let me adjust my charts the way I wanted to. Now I use MS Office Live and my charts show perfectly.  I share my document with my family out of state so they can see how I'm doing (and of course yell at me if I'm slacking). Best of all, my primary care physician and entire diabetes care team can all see my values whenever they want without me having to go into the office to download my meter. My primary care physician and diabetes specialist aren't affiliated and it's often difficult to get the two to share information - this solves that problem!

I am the facilitator for a small learning group comprised of clergy persons.  When I saw the information about LiveWorkSpace I thought this would be a great way for us to continue our conversations and share our research between our regular group meetings.  Presently I am setting up the WorkSpace for the group.  I have distributed a newsletter using WorkSpace and tomorrow I plan to demonstrate to the group how to sign up to use the group.  I have already shared the WorkSpace with group participants.

 My concern is that ministers are not all on the same page when it comes to technology and software.  We usually have to use what our churches provide for us.  So, I am hoping that everyone at lease has a copy of Microsoft Word and knows how to use it.

 J. Albright, Pastor First ChristianChurch in Nebraska City, NE

Often classmates ask me to send them my file via ICQ (which is the most used messenger in Germany). This often takes a lot of time: searching for the document and sending it to everyone! On top of that, I have to stay online all the time, so that the file can be transmitted.

I decided to try the Office Live Workspace – and I love it!

Thanks for your great job!

I was looking forward to having a workspace for academic use for a long time. Finally, my workspace is ready and up and running!  I plan to transfer my lecture notes, PPTs, and test batteries to course specific locations for my use in the classroom. The goal is to stop hauling around a laptop and work with the school's computer system. I can do that easily with WorkSpaces.

Also, I have created Workspaces to let debate team members post documents, take notes and meet online rather than during school hours. I have three such teams this semester. I can monitor their progress and coach them more efficiently during my free time rather than taking class time to do this. So Workspace saves me invaluable teaching time.

Finally, I have lots of photos and other personal "stuff" that I want to transfer to the Workspace and invite my close friends to view at their leisure.

I've been waiting for this a long time. It's finally here!