The Groupware User Group is the UK forum for users of Novell GroupWise. It was originally formed by WordPerfect Corporation UK at the request of a number of UK users. At the time of the first meeting the takeover by Novell was imminent and Novell GroupWise was born shortly after. The name of the User Group reflects interests wider than only GroupWise itself. In the pre-GroupWise era the Group was also concerned with document management (do you remember SoftSolutions?) and forms management Informs.

Now the group is considering whether to expand to cover products such as NetMail and Virtual Office as well as showcasing many third party products that enhance GroupWise. The User Group is run by members for members with a small committee undertaking the bulk of the organisation and administration. The Group is financially independent and charges member organisations £150 per year which entitles them to send two staff to the quarterly 1 day meetings which the group organises. The focus of the group is to bring together GroupWise administrators and IT managers; to introduce 3rd party product vendors in a sales-free environment; and to act as a focus-group to Novell UK Ltd.

We have over the years expressed our concerns about the marketing (or lack of it) of GroupWise and support for the product in the UK; upgrading the functionality of GroupWise Library; complacency in the face of competition; lack of support for integration with third party products; and improvements to the client (now partly resolved in GroupWise 6.5). Membership of the Group has varied over the years, peaking at 100 organisations from many business sectors. We estimate that the User Group represents well over 100,000 GroupWise users, but there is still much scope for expansion.

Previously we have not actively gone out and publicised the group to a great extent. The Group organises one day conferences every quarter, the majority taking place at Novell UK in Bracknell but we have felt it important to go on the road. Notable meetings have been held at Bletchley Park (where the Enigma code was cracked and first computers developed) at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, Williams Formula 1 technical centre in Oxford, the Bristol Science Centre and Planetarium (show included) as well as several hotel based events.

The Group has also organised two highly successful 2 day "GroupWise User Conferences", the last at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds UK in May 2003. Apart from two days of GroupWise related presentations (including Richard Bliss, Geoff Stratford of Nexic and Aldo Zanoni from Omni-TS and Messaging Architects all from North America) and a small exhibition the 90 conference delegates were treated to an excellent dinner party with jazz in the museum"s "War Gallery". Novell were also supportive of this event providing admin assistance and merchandising as well as technical speakers of course! Charging non-members £250 and members £100 (excluding accommodation) this event was close to financial break-even, thanks to an appropriate choice of venue and charging of exhibition space.

Another 2 day conference in York"s National Railway Museum in 2001 was also highly successful if on a smaller scale, and included a presentation by the UK's deputy Information Commissioner on Data Protection as part of our "Email and the Law" stream. Our normal one day events now regularly attract an average audience of 60.

A typical agenda for a User Group meeting will include a "Novell update" session in which Novell discuss latest news and initiatives, a technical presentation from Novell often given by Robin Redgrave Novell UK's Mr. GroupWise and a long time supporter of the User Group and demonstrations from maybe three vendors either in person or via webcast as in the case of Advansys's discussion of Formativ. At recent meetings we have previewed for example: TreeCast from Open-Net (Michael Shalev who flew in from Israel for the meeting), Synchronis from Nexic, (presented by Stack UK Ltd) and ViewWise from Computhink Inc.