Dear O3Spaces Partner,

This newsletter marks the start of a new campaign surrounding the upcoming release of O3Spaces Workplace 2.2-final.
O3Spaces Workplace 2.2 is due for release on December 10th and will contain a range of new features, as well as, usability and performance upgrades. Most of these features have been available in the Workplace Community Edition beta that we released on October 17. The section "What's new in O3Spaces Workplace 2.2" sums up the most important additions and improvements that have been made.

The release of O3Spaces Workplace 2.2-final is accompanied by some licensing changes regarding the EULA and the new Subscription agreement for O3Spaces Workplace.

The current success and resonance that O3Spaces Workplace is seeing is a prelude to the expansion of our activities and initiatives both on the development and business side. We're looking forward to the realization of the potential in our continued partnership.On behalf of the entire O3Spaces Team,

Warmest regards,
Rob Mentink

O3Spaces CEO

The Community Edition 2.2b has proven to be a great success

The Community Edition 2.2b has proven to be a great success. In the first weeks since its launch on October 17, we saw over 10000 downloads.

The Community Edition will have a significant and long lasting effect in establishing the O3Spaces brand and Workplace adoption around the world.

We've seen the first results of this effect clearly in recent weeks, and you can expect the release of Workplace 2.2-final and the activities surrounding 2.2-final to increase awareness for O3Spaces, as well as for you as partner, in the near future. 

Business Case: City of Heerenveen

A great reference implementation of O3Spaces Workplace in the field, already using the Template Management features, is the O3Spaces deployment at the City of Heerenveen in the Netherlands.

Customer context:

• Strategic Council decision for a transition to an open source/open
  standards based environment
• Approx. 500 office seats employees
• Not locked in by a single vendor
• IT management open minded

O3Spaces Workplace
The migration from MS Office to OpenOffice.org that the City of Heerenveen had initiated was faced with multiple challenges. One the one hand, there were the functional challenges of at least offering similar features with OO.o as were available in the MS Office days. On the other hand, the City Council was faced with the need for Document Template handling integrated with the new office suite and with the search for an alternative to the core features as offered by MS Sharepoint.
O3Spaces Workplace was found be the only available product to meet  all requirements.

Result:
All 500 office workers use O3SpacesWorkplace. O3Spaces Workplace now has a primary position in the organization as a central environment easy access to secured, and manged documents and document templates. Moreover, the City Council's IT department can now manage, update and distribute all document templates, making them available directly to the right end-users.

Workplace 2.2: Template Management

The release of O3Spaces Workplace 2.2-final, also marks the public availability of the new Template Management functionality.

We encourage you to take the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the new features. An introduction to the Template Management module is available at the partners workspace.

New Workplace EULA & Subscription Agreement

As of December 10th 2007, the O3Spaces Workplace Licensing and Subscription terms will be updated. The new End User License Agreement and Subscription Agreement are available for review on the partners workspace.

Please note that the new terms are applicable to all new O3Spaces Workplace sales, as well as to any subscription renewal from December 10th.

The new Subscription Agreement in particular invokes a small procedural change. The end-customer is required to sign the subscription agreement, in order to receive the license keys and initiate the subscription term.

What's new in O3Spaces Workplace 2.2

End-User functionality

• Lock Management
  Enhances your control of the check-in & check-out process, improving
  off-line work
• Search & Sort in overviews
  Usability enhancement in the Studio & Spaces browser environments
  enabling searching and sorting the information in various overviews)
  documents, users, groups, etc.)
• Template Management
  New functionality for the administration and distribution of 'document
  templates' & 'corporate identity'
• Anonymous access
  Access the Workplace repository with anonymous access to link
  Workplace content to Wiki's, Portals & Websites.
• Multiple File Upload
  New functionality supporting multiple file uploads in the Browser
  environments. New non-blocking uploads allow you to continue work
  while uploading.
• OpenOffice.org Assistant control
  A usability enhancement allowing you to control the Workplace Assistant
  status and connect to the Workplace directly from OO.o.
• Create new Workspaces as Workspace user
  New functionality allowing users with administrative permissions to
  create new Workspaces from the End-user environment.
• Web Interface improvements
  • Resizable browser interface.
  • Improved loading and rendering performance
    (better responsiveness)
  • Top menu redesign (Assistant Status, etc.)

System & Admin functionality

• Zip - Bulk Import
  New Studio functionality enabling you to import content structures
  into the Workplace repository in one go.
• OSGi framework
  Manage Workplace add-ons and extension modules with the new
  OSGI Studio command interface.
• Improved performance & scalability
  Lower network and server loads mean improved performance
  and scalability.
• Template Management configuration and distribution control
  Configure which document templates should be available for end-users, 
  configure the template structure for the OOo template plugin,
• Studio System overview
  Review key Workplace Server information, a.o unit structure,
  repository size, active users etc.