-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 David C. Rankin wrote:
G T Smith wrote:
Andreas van dem Helge wrote:
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 6:01 PM, John Andersen <jsamyth@gmail.com> wrote:
When I show them that wine will run those two packages (without belaboring the details) and absolve them of their Outlook sins, bless them with Kmail (spam filtered of course) they become converts rather quickly.
Hmmm... T-Bird with appropriate plugins is way better than KMail in some respects and by far a better tool than Outlook...<snip>
For server end Synchronisation there is also Funambol/Sync4j <snip>
There is also e-Groupware <snip>
<snip>
Grant has given you the solution...and...the solution is eGroupWare (egw) (1.4.004 is the current stable branch). It is THE open source groupware solution. It has served as the back-end for my law office for several years now in a mixed linux/windows environment without a single instance of data loss. It is far more robust than outlook from a number of perspectives. Project management, knowledge base, wiki, accounting, ACL permissions, e-template customization of existing or production of new page functionality, scheduled data backup, ease of data migration on server change, just to name a few.
?Grant? <snip some useful stuff> eqw overall is very good and I do think it is a good option for SMB enterprises and individuals, the calendar, email, time management and task modules are quite good.. but there are some things I have noted from my experience of using egw on a kind of extended trial... a) Performance. I found fairly early on there was an issue with PHP timeouts. I one needed to change the timeout to ensure that it did not just hang at some moments because the script had timed out. Performance does seem to sluggish on occasion but I suspect that this may be because PHP is being use to perform activities that it is not well tuned to do. (PHP from the benchmarks I have seen seems to be very good at form definition and basic MySQL integration but is not a performer in more complex areas). b) Sync with mobile devices seems to be in its early stages, and works well at some things. However, this is something I believe Funambol does better. Funambol provides a good client to server architecture that allows for device mapping according to the OMA spec at the server end of the sync process. The synchronisation of objects is well defined within the OMA spec, the actual schema of objects are not (beyond some mandatory fields). Funambol has a connection definition specification that allows for the server to optimised for particular devices. A Funambol client for egw might be worth exploring. Data synchronisation is technically a very complex issue, if the sync requirement are basic egw is adequate, but for more demanding requirements integration with more specialist tools is probably best. c) The project manager in the stable distribution does not do CPA (or constraint checking). I would be pleasantly surprised if it did PERT, but the lack of CPA is an issue. Unfortunately, it only imports and exports a fairly basic CSV that most standalone Project software cannot use, so one faces an uphill task in integrating the results of such software with eqw. On a small project manually adjusting dates is no biggie, on a more complex exercise this is a PITA. Having said this the integration with the calendar is very promising and the basic project building interaction is some ways a lot easier than some tools I have come across. (Which is why the lack of functional CPA is unfortunate). d) Minor niggles, there seems to be no provision for printer friendly reports, everything is web based. A template for providing a query for mailmerge for open office might also be useful. Time reporting to 4 decimal places is bit of an irritation, (hours and minutes would be nice). Overall I would suggest that egw is good framework for a starting point to build a tool for an organisation or individuals Management Information Management (no that is not a typo :-) ) needs. - -- ============================================================================== I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. Bjarne Stroustrup ============================================================================== -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIFbBrasN0sSnLmgIRAj+CAKDam+QfM+EUylsuMFnfAT/3ZWOuBwCfXxzN 6ULfB5FbkCbdGD7GQWj7cak= =rD7c -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org