[opensuse] Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

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Verner Kjærsgaard

6 Feb 2007 6 Feb '07

11:06

Dear list and gurus :-) Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail. This is not easy to handle. Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something? If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing? Other suggestions? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

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Will Stephenson

6 Feb 6 Feb

11:58

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:06, Verner Kjærsgaard said:

...

Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail.

This is not easy to handle.

Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something?

Yes, directly. You have lots of options, one addressbook is LDAP.

...

If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing?

For open source groupware I'd recommend Kolab, it uses IMAP and LDAP, and kmail and the other KDE PIM components have very good support for it (developed for the German government). It also has outlook and web frontends. http://kolab.org/, support available at http://www.kolab-konsortium.com/en HTH Will (KDE PIM developer) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer

12:59

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:58:39 Will Stephenson wrote:

...

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:06, Verner Kjærsgaard said:

...
Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail.

This is not easy to handle.

Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something?

Yes, directly. You have lots of options, one addressbook is LDAP.

...
If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing?

For open source groupware I'd recommend Kolab, it uses IMAP and LDAP, and kmail and the other KDE PIM components have very good support for it (developed for the German government).

It also has outlook and web frontends.

http://kolab.org/, support available at http://www.kolab-konsortium.com/en

Looks good. Can it be a client to a real Outlook server? I currently use evolution to at least respond to calendar messages. However, I have never gotten evolutoin to use the Outlook address book that is on our company server. I would love to move to a system that 'does outlook' as a client. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems AB -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Peter Van Lone

13:20

On 2/6/07, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

Looks good. Can it be a client to a real Outlook server? I currently use evolution to at least respond to calendar messages. However, I have never gotten evolutoin to use the Outlook address book that is on our company server. I would love to move to a system that 'does outlook' as a client.

the evolution exchange connector certainly can use both a users exchange contact address book, or the global address book. It has done so over several versions. What kind of trouble have you had? Is it possibly a firewall restriction? Peter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer

7 Feb 7 Feb

14:38

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 14:20:45 Peter Van Lone wrote:

...

On 2/6/07, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...
Looks good. Can it be a client to a real Outlook server? I currently use evolution to at least respond to calendar messages. However, I have never gotten evolutoin to use the Outlook address book that is on our company server. I would love to move to a system that 'does outlook' as a client.

the evolution exchange connector certainly can use both a users exchange contact address book, or the global address book.

It has done so over several versions. What kind of trouble have you had? Is it possibly a firewall restriction?

I was starting by trying to access the global address book. The sys admins here are a Winders lot and know surprisingly little about what happens in their black boxes. The best I could see is that the global address book was something called: SEGROUPEXCL01.ramboll-g.global.network I guess this is an address that means something to outlook clients, as that is where I looked for this. It is not an address that is resolved via DNS. Our network is not .network. Maybe it is resolved via a windows mechanism. Is evolution expecting a name that resolves with DNS, or is ie a name it uses in some other way? Of course, right now my evolution will not run on SUSE 10.0. The current stable GNOME for 10.0 broke it. So I cannot tell you the exact text of the label where I am entering this in evolution. I an currently using kmail. I am willing to try from there, it is is supported. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems AB -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Will Stephenson

6 Feb 6 Feb

17:22

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 13:59, Roger Oberholtzer said:

...

Looks good. Can it be a client to a real Outlook server? I currently use evolution to at least respond to calendar messages. However, I have never gotten evolutoin to use the Outlook address book that is on our company server. I would love to move to a system that 'does outlook' as a client.

No, it's a server. Evolution is supposed to be Exchange compatible, and several people on the kdepim-users@kde.org list are able to use Kontact with it, but for some reason it's never been very high on my agenda to try it out. Will -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Kai Ponte

18:20

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 09:22, Will Stephenson wrote:

...

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 13:59, Roger Oberholtzer said:

...
Looks good. Can it be a client to a real Outlook server? I currently use evolution to at least respond to calendar messages. However, I have never gotten evolutoin to use the Outlook address book that is on our company server. I would love to move to a system that 'does outlook' as a client.

No, it's a server. Evolution is supposed to be Exchange compatible,

Evolution is Exchange compatible for those using MS Exchange 2002 or newer. -- kai Free Compean and Ramos http://www.perfectreign.com/?q=node/46 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

email.listen＠googlemail.com

16:55

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

On Tue, 6. February 2007 12:06:00 Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...

Dear list and gurus :-)

Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail.

This is not easy to handle.

Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something?

If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing?

Other suggestions?

AFAIK in the moment there is no SUSE based Groupware Server which offers autoinstalled and preconfigured groupware functionalities out of the box which is free of costs. A good and IMO the best and very powerfull server distribution which will fit your needs is the former SUSE Open Scchool Server (OSS). It is still offered and supported by Extis a german company. They also adopted its future development. IMO OSS is the most powerfull Linux based Server solution for education environments and the needs of a school you will find. There is a free (of cost) evaluation version at: http://www.extis.de/oss_eval.html precisely it points to: http://www.schul-netz.de/dh/?pfad=/openschoolserver/OSS2.0/iso Don't worry that it's primary documentation is in German, nevertheless it is one of the best documentations in this field I'm aware of. And not to forget Lars Rupp and Peter Varkoly (in alphabetical order ;-) are very competent people behind it. On the long run the costs for update, installation and general support are worth one's salt. As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware. There is a free (of costs) Debian based groupware server distribution offered by univention Germany. Since end of last year univention offers it as free downloadable distribution. The univention groupware server (ugs) is targeting the needs of a professional environment in a company. But IMO it is also worth a closer look: http://download.univention.de/download/ucs-cds/ucs1.3-2/ (as mentioned in a German article in c't, the leading IT publication in DE, the installation of ugs should be done after the ucs (univention coorporate server) is installed first. This avoids some configuration steps which have to be done if ugs is installed alone. Due to the fact that ugs is based on ucs a later installation of ugs will only add the groupware functionality. german article: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/79250 ) As for OSS support for ucs is offered for cash. And as said for OSS it is worth one's salt too. So which one will be the best for your needs? + OSS comes alon with a lot of features which will be of interest for your students, e.g. a web based forum, special preconfigured groups for teachers and students which enables a taylored permisson policy for each group (e.g. internet access for students, class based permissions, age-group (german: Jahrgang) based permissions). + OSS is configured and administrated via yast2 as in Opensuse (+) The integration of opensuse workstations is well documented. (+) because in the moment I don't know if it is available in English. + OSS is developed for schools + UGS offers KOLAB2 as groupware solution, which IMHO is better than the one in OSS. + UGS is free of costs - ugs is not primarily targeting the needs of a school + both offer full groupware support for GNU/Linux, Windows and also MacOSX + both offer the perspective to have students accounts (-) both are documented in German only. (-) because as far as I know I've installed both OSS and ugs in a couple of schools and youth centers ?youth clubs? (german: Jugendzentren). Both of them work like a charm! In the end the staff people's preference / knowledge for either suse or debian was the reason for a decision in the end. The lack of a German documentation of both OSS and ugs offer a big chance for your school. You may enter the Linux hall of fame and claim the merits to be the first who made one of them available for native english speakers, worldwide, if you will find a way to translate the documentation. May be it might be of interest for a german course at your school? regards, thomas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Verner Kjærsgaard

19:18

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 17:55 skrev email.listen@googlemail.com:

...

On Tue, 6. February 2007 12:06:00 Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...
Dear list and gurus :-)

Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail.

This is not easy to handle.

Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something?

If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing?

Other suggestions?

AFAIK in the moment there is no SUSE based Groupware Server which offers autoinstalled and preconfigured groupware functionalities out of the box which is free of costs.

A good and IMO the best and very powerfull server distribution which will fit your needs is the former SUSE Open Scchool Server (OSS). It is still offered and supported by Extis a german company. They also adopted its future development.

IMO OSS is the most powerfull Linux based Server solution for education environments and the needs of a school you will find. There is a free (of cost) evaluation version at: http://www.extis.de/oss_eval.html precisely it points to: http://www.schul-netz.de/dh/?pfad=/openschoolserver/OSS2.0/iso

Don't worry that it's primary documentation is in German, nevertheless it is one of the best documentations in this field I'm aware of. And not to forget Lars Rupp and Peter Varkoly (in alphabetical order ;-) are very competent people behind it. On the long run the costs for update, installation and general support are worth one's salt.

As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

There is a free (of costs) Debian based groupware server distribution offered by univention Germany. Since end of last year univention offers it as free downloadable distribution. The univention groupware server (ugs) is targeting the needs of a professional environment in a company. But IMO it is also worth a closer look: http://download.univention.de/download/ucs-cds/ucs1.3-2/ (as mentioned in a German article in c't, the leading IT publication in DE, the installation of ugs should be done after the ucs (univention coorporate server) is installed first. This avoids some configuration steps which have to be done if ugs is installed alone. Due to the fact that ugs is based on ucs a later installation of ugs will only add the groupware functionality. german article: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/79250 ) As for OSS support for ucs is offered for cash. And as said for OSS it is worth one's salt too.

So which one will be the best for your needs? + OSS comes alon with a lot of features which will be of interest for your students, e.g. a web based forum, special preconfigured groups for teachers and students which enables a taylored permisson policy for each group (e.g. internet access for students, class based permissions, age-group (german: Jahrgang) based permissions). + OSS is configured and administrated via yast2 as in Opensuse (+) The integration of opensuse workstations is well documented. (+) because in the moment I don't know if it is available in English. + OSS is developed for schools

+ UGS offers KOLAB2 as groupware solution, which IMHO is better than the one in OSS. + UGS is free of costs - ugs is not primarily targeting the needs of a school

+ both offer full groupware support for GNU/Linux, Windows and also MacOSX + both offer the perspective to have students accounts (-) both are documented in German only. (-) because as far as I know

I've installed both OSS and ugs in a couple of schools and youth centers ?youth clubs? (german: Jugendzentren). Both of them work like a charm!

In the end the staff people's preference / knowledge for either suse or debian was the reason for a decision in the end.

The lack of a German documentation of both OSS and ugs offer a big chance for your school. You may enter the Linux hall of fame and claim the merits to be the first who made one of them available for native english speakers, worldwide, if you will find a way to translate the documentation. May be it might be of interest for a german course at your school?

regards, thomas

A big thank you to all of you, giving me so much valuable info. First; I'm danish, ahem...the school is danish. Never the less, I (we) read german documentation just as well. No sweat. I'll give Kolab a run first though. In fact, I just surfed to the website and it's downloading as I write this. Again, thank you! I'll keep you posted. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

email.listen＠googlemail.com

20:02

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

On Tue, 6. February 2007 20:18:24 Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...

Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 17:55 skrev email.listen@googlemail.com:

...
On Tue, 6. February 2007 12:06:00 Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...
Dear list and gurus :-)

Say you have an organization (a school) with 15 teachers. All using SuSE10.2/LTSP4.2 and Kmail. Every teacher has his own list of contacts (E-mail adresses) in Kmail.

This is not easy to handle.

Can Kmail either self or indirectly make use of a remote, centrally managed adressbook or something?

If not, any recommendations as to a good OpenSource groupware webbased thing?

Other suggestions?

AFAIK in the moment there is no SUSE based Groupware Server which offers autoinstalled and preconfigured groupware functionalities out of the box which is free of costs.

A good and IMO the best and very powerfull server distribution which will fit your needs is the former SUSE Open Scchool Server (OSS). It is still offered and supported by Extis a german company. They also adopted its future development.

IMO OSS is the most powerfull Linux based Server solution for education environments and the needs of a school you will find. There is a free (of cost) evaluation version at: http://www.extis.de/oss_eval.html precisely it points to: http://www.schul-netz.de/dh/?pfad=/openschoolserver/OSS2.0/iso

Don't worry that it's primary documentation is in German, nevertheless it is one of the best documentations in this field I'm aware of. And not to forget Lars Rupp and Peter Varkoly (in alphabetical order ;-) are very competent people behind it. On the long run the costs for update, installation and general support are worth one's salt.

As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

There is a free (of costs) Debian based groupware server distribution offered by univention Germany. Since end of last year univention offers it as free downloadable distribution. The univention groupware server (ugs) is targeting the needs of a professional environment in a company. But IMO it is also worth a closer look: http://download.univention.de/download/ucs-cds/ucs1.3-2/ (as mentioned in a German article in c't, the leading IT publication in DE, the installation of ugs should be done after the ucs (univention coorporate server) is installed first. This avoids some configuration steps which have to be done if ugs is installed alone. Due to the fact that ugs is based on ucs a later installation of ugs will only add the groupware functionality. german article: http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/79250 ) As for OSS support for ucs is offered for cash. And as said for OSS it is worth one's salt too.

So which one will be the best for your needs? + OSS comes alon with a lot of features which will be of interest for your students, e.g. a web based forum, special preconfigured groups for teachers and students which enables a taylored permisson policy for each group (e.g. internet access for students, class based permissions, age-group (german: Jahrgang) based permissions). + OSS is configured and administrated via yast2 as in Opensuse (+) The integration of opensuse workstations is well documented. (+) because in the moment I don't know if it is available in English. + OSS is developed for schools

+ UGS offers KOLAB2 as groupware solution, which IMHO is better than the one in OSS. + UGS is free of costs - ugs is not primarily targeting the needs of a school

+ both offer full groupware support for GNU/Linux, Windows and also MacOSX + both offer the perspective to have students accounts (-) both are documented in German only. (-) because as far as I know

I've installed both OSS and ugs in a couple of schools and youth centers ?youth clubs? (german: Jugendzentren). Both of them work like a charm!

In the end the staff people's preference / knowledge for either suse or debian was the reason for a decision in the end.

The lack of a German documentation of both OSS and ugs offer a big chance for your school. You may enter the Linux hall of fame and claim the merits to be the first who made one of them available for native english speakers, worldwide, if you will find a way to translate the documentation. May be it might be of interest for a german course at your school?

regards, thomas

A big thank you to all of you, giving me so much valuable info.

First; I'm danish, ahem...the school is danish. Ouucchh, shame on me...

<corrective detention> You shall not forget to read the sender address, You shall not forget to read the sender address, You shall not forget to read the sender address, You shall not forget to read the sender address, You shall not forget to read the sender address, ... <friesk> Da hebb ick nun jumms de zo goed as 'n naarbuur is vals insoorteert... <friesk>

...

Never the less, I (we) read german documentation just as well. No sweat. I'll give Kolab a run first though. In fact, I just surfed to the website and it's downloading as I write this.

Ahem, if you are not familiar with Debian systems you should try the OSS first. (Beim OSS wirst du dich eher zu Hause fühlen als beim ucs/ugs) Or at ask a Debian'ist to attend the installation. If you are familiar with Debian Systems, forget what I said... :) farvel, thomas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marcus Hüwe

20:16

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

On 2007-02-06 17:55:05 +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote:

...

As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

I would vote for kolab too;) Btw. it's possible to install it on suse _without_ the openpkg stuff etc. For more information have a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Kolab Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Verner Kjærsgaard

20:41

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 21:16 skrev Marcus Hüwe:

...

On 2007-02-06 17:55:05 +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote:

...
As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

I would vote for kolab too;)

Btw. it's possible to install it on suse _without_ the openpkg stuff etc. For more information have a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Kolab

Marcus

Thank you for all info! I am downloading the kolab lot right now. I am, however, downloading it to my brand new 64bit SLES10 (on SUN hw)... I'll keep my fingers crossed - and let you know. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Marcus Hüwe

20:46

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

On 2007-02-06 21:41:30 +0100, Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...

Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 21:16 skrev Marcus Hüwe:

...
On 2007-02-06 17:55:05 +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote:

...
As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

I would vote for kolab too;)

Btw. it's possible to install it on suse _without_ the openpkg stuff etc. For more information have a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Kolab

Marcus

Thank you for all info!

I am downloading the kolab lot right now. I am, however, downloading it to my brand new 64bit SLES10 (on SUN hw)... I'll keep my fingers crossed - and let you know.

If you're downloading my rpms be careful - they're just cvs snapshots but they should work:) Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Verner Kjærsgaard

21:03

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 21:46 skrev Marcus Hüwe:

...

On 2007-02-06 21:41:30 +0100, Verner Kjærsgaard wrote:

...
Tirsdag 06 februar 2007 21:16 skrev Marcus Hüwe:

...
On 2007-02-06 17:55:05 +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote: [...]

If you're downloading my rpms be careful - they're just cvs snapshots but they should work:)

Marcus

Hi Marcus, - I think I am... I grapped the latest and greatest. But mind you, it's ok. It's on spare hw and if something breaks, I'll just do a new SLES10. We bought 3 SUN X2100's, the third one is a sandbox for testing before committing to the two production boxes. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Verner Kjærsgaard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Will Stephenson

22:20

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Kmail, groupware solution, what is recommended?

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 21:16, Marcus Hüwe wrote:

...

On 2007-02-06 17:55:05 +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote:

...
As mentioned by Will Stephenson I also would vote for a KOLAB based groupware.

I would vote for kolab too;)

Btw. it's possible to install it on suse _without_ the openpkg stuff etc. For more information have a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Kolab

Nice, I didn't know about this :). Does anyone feel like starting a 'This week in the Build Service' weekly blog or similar to keep us up to date with all the cool stuff in there? I'll bring this topic up on Sunday's project meeting if it's not been covered already. Will -- Will Stephenson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

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email.listen＠googlemail.com
Kai Ponte
Marcus Hüwe
Peter Van Lone
Roger Oberholtzer
Verner Kjærsgaard
Will Stephenson