Information about synchronization alerts in Groove workspaces

If members of a workspace do not synchronize regularly with that workspace, the workspace manager may receive synchronization alerts in SharePoint Workspace, in Microsoft Office Groove 2007, and in earlier versions of Groove. This article contains information about synchronization alerts in Groove and synchronization alerts for Groove workspaces in SharePoint Workspace. 

The workspace manager will receive a synchronization alert for a workspace if all the following conditions are true:

• The manager's outgoing data queue for a workspace has outstanding changes for a member.
• The oldest queued change is 21 days old or older.
• The manager makes a change to the workspace.
• The total size of the workspace exceeds 100 megabytes (MB).
  
  Note In Groove Workspace 2.5, the 100-MB size limit does not apply. Therefore, even small workspaces will display alerts.

When the manager receives a synchronization alert for a workspace, the manager has the option to suspend the member.

Changes to a workspace are queued by endpoint. A member who uses Groove on multiple computers will have queue entries for each computer. Although members are never automatically suspended from a workspace, account endpoints or computer endpoints can be automatically suspended. For workspaces that are over the 100-MB size limit, Groove automatically suspends each computer that is not updated as it passes the 21-day mark until the workspace changes are queued to be delivered to the member on only one computer. A workspace manager must manually suspend the member for the last computer that does not synchronize for 21 days.

Members who use Groove on a single computer will never be suspended automatically. A workspace manager must explicitly suspend the members after the manager receives a synchronization alert for the workspace.

Note After a member was suspended in Groove Workspace 2.5, the manager would continue to be notified that the suspended member was not receiving changes. This problem was resolved in Groove Virtual Office 3.0.

Consider the following scenarios.

Scenario 1

In this scenario, the workspace has the following members: Fred (manager), Jane (manager), and Mary (participant).

• January 1
  Fred goes on extended holiday without a connection to the Internet.
• January 5
  Mary updates the Team Task workspace. This is the first update in her outgoing queue that is not received by Fred.
• January 10
  Jane updates the Team Task workspace. This is the first update in her outgoing queue that is not received by Fred.
• January 26
  The oldest change in Mary's queue is now 21 days old. However, because she is not a manager, Mary does not receive a synchronization alert.
  
  Note If Mary's role is changed to manager before this situation is resolved, she will receive a synchronization alert.
• January 31
  The oldest change in Jane's queue is now 21 days old. Therefore, she receives a synchronization alert icon (a yellow triangle) by the workspace in her Workspaces listings on the computer where the change originated.
  
  Jane clicks Suspend Members for the workspace and sees that Fred has been offline for a long time. Groove asks if Jane wants to suspend Fred to recover the disk space that is being used to store the changes that he has not received. Jane chooses not to suspend Fred. The outgoing data queue will continue to grow as long as Fred does not connect to Groove.
• February 4
  Fred's relay server sees that Mary's first changes are now 30 days. Therefore, the relay server purges those changes from Fred's incoming data queue on the relay server. This clear interval is set on the relay itself and is independent of the manager's decision to suspend or not suspend members. The changes still exist in the members' local queues.
• March 1
  Fred connects to Groove. The first new workspace update that Fred receives from either Mary or Jane will advise Fred's computer that it is missing earlier changes. These changes include those that were purged from the relay server. Fred's computer will automatically fetch these changes from Jane's or Mary's queue until his local copy of the workspace is synchronized. If many changes were made, or if the changes involve much data, this process may take a long time. For best performance, Fred should stay online in Groove until there is nothing left to receive. As soon as the workspace is synchronized, Groove finishes the changes from Jane's and Mary's outgoing data queues and frees that disk space.

Scenario 2

In this scenario, the workspace has the following members: Fred (manager), Jane (participant), and Mary (participant).

• January 1
  Jane and Mary work at the same site and stay synchronized with each other through a hub. They do not have access to the Internet. Additionally, they change the workspace regularly.
• February 1
  Jane and Mary do not receive a synchronization alert because they are participants. Fred does not receive a synchronization alert because he is not aware of Jane's or Mary's changes.
• February 15
  Jane connects to the Internet. This action sends her changes to Fred's relay server.
  
  Fred goes online and receives Jane's changes from his relay.
  
  When Groove receives those changes, Groove sees that Fred is missing Mary's changes. Then, Groove automatically fetches the missing data from Jane's queue. This behavior occurs because Jane, not Mary, is the one who is online.
  
  As soon as Fred's copy of the workspace is synchronized, Groove clears the changes from Jane's and Mary's outgoing data queues and frees that disk space.