Group ware solution needed

[John Bray]

On Sun, 2005-07-03 at 06:13 +0200, Oliver Leitner wrote:
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> Chris Ruprecht wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > I have received a request from a friend of mine to provide him (and his
> > 10 people company) with a Linux based server that also gives them a
> > group ware solution.
> > 
> > I was initially thinking of Lotus Notes, but it refuses to run under
> > Fedora and doesn't play nicely under RH 9 either (I have been testing 4
> > different Linux-en all day long).
> > 
> > I googled around and didn't come across anything that looks remotely
> > promising.
> > 
> > Here are the requirements:
> > (1) Server based email
> > (2) Server based calendaring for all their people so that they can
> > schedule meetings and know when all the other staff members are
> > available
> > (3) Server based document storage
> > 
> > Their workstations are Windows XP, they have a number of business
> > applications for which there are no equivalent Linux versions.
> > 
> > The solutions I have in mind are:
> > 
> > for (1): sendmail/cyrus-imap/procmail;
> > the problem here is that there is no easy way to add rules for procmail
> > in a way an end-user understands mail filters. They can just about grasp
> > the concept of mail filtering when they use POP3 (POP3 is not an option
> > here, though because they want to be able to access their server mail
> > from anywhere)
> > 
> > for (2): I have not found any solid open-source calendar tool for this.
> > 
> > for (3): I can make shared directories available through SMB but that
> > just moves the Word/Excel/PDF/whatever-else-format-file chaos from the
> > workstation to the server. Trying to find a specific document amongst
> > the 1000s of arbitrarily names files is near impossible.
> > 
> > 
> > Any open-source solutions that run under Linux (FC3/FC4 preferred) are
> > welcome.
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Chris
> > 
> > 
> 
> there are many solutions:
> 
> 1. every linux is able to do that.
> 2. www.freshmeat.net "calendar"
> 3. thats actually the job of an admin to keep folder perms, so that ppls
> cant move things to all possible places, and secondly its job of
> educating your co-workers, to do their jobs right.
> 
> as a lil addon, you might wanna check www.freshmeat.net deeper, they
> have alot of very useful tools, cms, groupware, and other engines for
> everyones use.

i played with some software called phpgroupware recently for one of my
clients.  it appears to be quite adequate.  and growing.  it does
calendars, todos, etc.  all via php in apache, so its easy to access.

i don't know anything about the security implications, if you're
planning on making it available external to the lan.

john