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
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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.
Greetings Oliver Leitner Technical Staff http://www.shells.at
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:
- every linux is able to do that.
- www.freshmeat.net "calendar"
- 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
Am So, den 03.07.2005 schrieb Chris Ruprecht um 5:39:
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
All 3 criteria fulfilled by Open-Xchange:
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/
Try the online demo and judge yourself:
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/online.htm
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)
Using Sendmail and Cyrus-IMAPd there is no need for Procmail. Cyrus-IMAPd comes with Sieve, which is much simpler to setup filtering rules with, than using Procmail. And, which is certainly important for you, web frontend exist, like websieve or smartsieve.
http://smartsieve.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
for (2): I have not found any solid open-source calendar tool for this.
OK has the calendar and sharing facilities.
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.
OK uses WebDAV, which is IMHO the best solution.
Any open-source solutions that run under Linux (FC3/FC4 preferred) are welcome.
Open-Xchange
Chris
Alexander
On Sat, 2005-07-02 at 22:39, Chris Ruprecht wrote:
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.
Here are the requirements: (1) Server based email
This is built into almost every distribution. I'd recommend adding MimeDefang (http://www.mimedefang.org/) to control server-side spam and virus scanning. Even if no one runs windows it's best to drop anything identified as a virus at the gateway so users don't have to deal with them.
(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)
Dovecot is probably OK for 10 people and easier to configure than cyrus. Either way, if you have the version of outlook that comes with MS office you can do client-side rules that apply to outlook mailboxes. If you run MimeDefang/spamassassin on the server side you can add a header with the spam score to allow individual decisions about filtering. The one thing you probably need to do with procmail, though, is to set up vacation messages. There is a reasonable interface for that in the usermin part of webmin. You really don't want people doing outlook rules for autoreplies because it is too dumb to avoid lists and loops.
for (2): I have not found any solid open-source calendar tool for this.
Openexchange is supposed to work and be cross-platform. If everyone runs exactly the same version of outlook you can export the free/busy times to a shared directory but you can't mix 2000/xp/2003 versions because of incompatibilities.
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.
You can supply a filing cabinet, but it is up to the user to put the document in the right file. A wiki with file attachment capabilities like twiki (http://twiki.org/) is a good way to combine documentation and descriptions with access to the files but since there is some extra effort it takes a certain critical mass of user interest to get it going.
Any open-source solutions that run under Linux (FC3/FC4 preferred) are welcome.
You might want to look at Centos as the platform. It's not a big jump from fedora and you can expect updates longer without needing a re-install.