i'm a total newbie to groupware.

i would like to setup groupware calendaring for our business, and perhaps shared contact info and/or project mgmt, but am unsure where to start.

we have a linux hosted website, but i am unsure if it supports groupware. if not, it would be fine for a year or two, to serve it only over our lan.



Is there a good OS alternative that interfaces well with evolution or mozilla calendar (or comparable client)?

How would be the easiest way to set it up (how do i configure the client interfaces)?

-thx

Groupware / Collaboration is a huge topic with many complexities. There is really no short answer. I only have a few suggestions but it should be enough to get you started.

1) There are so many options your best bet is to figure out what it is that you want feature wise and find a package that will fill the gap. Really study the users needs (even if it is just you) or you will be very unhappy.

For example; end users use outlook and it is to expensive to change (current issue with many open source projects). Exchange is the best way to go (well at least for now).

2) While Exchange is current king in the enterprise environment you do have options:

Open source:
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/ (can't wait for the outlook client to work, scheduled to be out sometime soon!)
http://www.egroupware.org/
http://www.sourceforge.net (do a search for groupware)

Pay, but showing to be a viable threat to Exchange:
http://www.scalix.com/ (there is an audio stream on zdnet that talks about this product)



Hope this helps & Good luck.

Later,
M

that does help quite a bit. curious how lotus fits into that mix. read somewhere that up to 80% of all groupware is served by lotus (or maybe that is the client?). is that released as OS?

there will actually be only 3-4 of us using the groupware. my wife (CFO), myself, COO, and possibly one other management person. all linux computers except one notebook still running xp (COO) which comes through the office occasionally.

evolution looked to be the client of choice if it supports calendaring well enough (project management is really unneeded for several years yet).

so i guess the best question would be:

What would be the best OS groupware server to interface with mainly Evolution (or comparable) calendaring clients (and one XP calendar client)?

i'm more than happy to do a sourceforge and/or net search for groupware servers, but am unsure how to identify the one or two best alternatives for this rather basic need (calendar/evolution).

-thx

Don't really know anything about lotus notes. Where did you read that? I have always heard that exchange has the death grip on groupware in the enterprise. Either way they're out of my price range at home/SOHO.

The only thing Evolution is claiming to hookup to is Exchange and Lotus (now under Novell's wing), all of the others (open source ones) are web based.

If you can deal with the web interface (actually they're not bad, check out the demo's on their websites) you don't need to worry about a client install and of course you can allow it through the firewall and access it anywhere.

If you find a groupware other than Exchange and lotus that Evolution connects to I would love to know also.

SourceForge: As with any open source project it's all about meeting your needs, however I would start with the most popular. The popular one tend to have more support, better updates, etc.

For project MGT: do a search for customer relationship management on source forge too. SugerCRM is one I can think of off the top of my head. http://www.sugarcrm.com/home/

Later,
M

well the latest numbers i can find are more than a year old, and it shows a close tie:

MS 32%
IBM 28%

guess the 80% figure was terribly inaccurate (or i misread ;-).

-sry