eGroupWare (was Re: [opensuse] where's novell? (bit of a rant))

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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@xxxxxxxxx>
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
==============================================================================
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