>>>>> "CWS" == Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom <chrome at real-time.com> writes:

    CWS> On 08/17 11:00 , John T. Hoffoss wrote:
    >> A coworker is doing an assessment comparing groupware solutions for a
    >> client. They're currently using straight-up SMTP + POP3 clients.
    >> Exchange is an option, but these guys are a non-profit and pretty open
    >> source-friendly, so they're looking for open solutions as well. I've
    >> found what seem to be the big two, eGroupWare, and OpenGroupWare.

    CWS> I and some other people here at Real-Time evaluated OpenGroupware; and found
    CWS> it to be pretty vile. Lousy user interface, bad packaging, wasn't easy to
    CWS> set up, limited add-on modules (at least that were readily apparent), and
    CWS> the documentation was spotty at best. it appears that opengroupware is a
    CWS> crippled version of Skyrix; so it doesn't fully stand on its own, it's
    CWS> propped up by a commercial company.

    CWS> I've been trying phpgroupware for the last couple of days; and it's a world
    CWS> better. Easy to set up, easy to use, and offers a lot of functionality in
    CWS> add-on modules. I'm also told that it can directly interface with KDE
    CWS> desktop components via kioslaves; so the KDE calendar can read the
    CWS> phpgroupware calendar, etc.

    CWS> phprojekt looked interesting, and definitely has some good ideas.
    CWS> phpgrouware seems to have a lot more features and polish tho.

I know I said something about this before, but it's worth saying
again:  I recommend very strongly AGAINST phprojekt.  It seems to be
set up to fit a VERY HIERARCHICAL organization.  I work at a much more
fluid place, where we wanted our groupware to help us share
information --- like have a good overview of what everybody's tasks
were, etc., etc.  I found myself over and over again going into
phprojekt to break some information-hiding structure or other.  It's
been a while, but for example, I recall it was very hard to get the
tasks to work right --- we wanted to be able to have people put tasks
up to be done, have people accept them, etc.  Nothing that seemed too
odd.  But you had to be the project leader to make almost any changes
to the task objects, and so forth.  It even seemed hard to simply mark
a task as done, unless you were the right person!

If phpgroupware is as good as Carl suggests, it's probably a lot
better.

I might add that it's a real conundrum to test out any one of these
groupware set ups.  We certainly found that until you had sunk a bunch
of time into pushing data into them, you didn't find out there
limitations.  So somebody's quick article in a linux mag is often not
very useful.  Then, by the time you did find out limitations, it was
often very late in the day.  Wish I'd taken better notes on our
problems, but by the time we backed out of PHProjekt, we were feeling
that we'd already lost too much time on it...

Having now worked with three of these beasts, I'd have to honestly say
I wouldn't recommend any to anyone who wasn't willing to read a little
PHP code.  On the other hand, the good news is that PHP code is pretty
simple, and even if you didn't know it before, it's easy to pick up
enough to fix even pretty substantial bugs.  The O'Reilly book Web
Database Applications was quite hepful to me in doing this.

Oh, that reminds me of one other thing about PHProjekt:  the code and
comments are written in a very Germany English.  I have some
rudimentary German, but still found it to be a handicap.  another
reason I'd recommend against it.

Best,
R





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