We have a group of road warriors who rarely make it into the office.
When they needed to hand in reports to their manager or share a file, they had to send it through e-mail.
This setup often made it hard for the group to organize their work, and even harder for them to collaborate with each other.
I tried creating folders for them on a network server and giving them VPN access, but the connection was slow and there was always a problem.
I figured with all the Internet could do, maybe there was a Web-based solution that could help.
We used Microsoft Office for most of our documentation, so I did some research on sites that could host our Office files online.
I found out Microsoft has its own service that hosts Office files on the Web. And it was free.
I signed my road warriors up for Office Live Workspace, which allows them to work on documents, securely save them to their own “workspace,” and access them online from any computer anywhere.
They can also give other members of their group permission to read files or make changes.
It’s made their lives so much easier, and I was able to get rid of the costly, issue-prone VPN.
(Alex Borsh, IT manager, Polymeright, Inc., Fremont, CA)

Tags: Live Workspace, Microsoft, Office, remote, road warriors, VPN