Collaboration tools
The more I look at it, the less I like eGroupware.
Collaboration web solutions is the wrong approach; they are front-end centric; the GUI is the main feature hiding its core services (calendar, directory, file sharing). At best you might have some import/export features…
It should be the other way round; the GUI should just be one interface amongst others to the core services.
Behind the scene we should find LDAP for directories, WebDAV for file sharing (or a wiki replacement?), iCalendar for calendars.
This way we could find the contacts from any mail applications, files directly in our finder/explorer, calendars in our calendar tools.
Information would be available in our software of choice or mobile devices.
And it would work online and offline (merging or adding a record offline might not work, be update woud be automatic at the next connection).
June 26th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Loïc, you’re right!
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
eGroupware doesn’t do what I want it to do, eGroupware is broken, eGroupware is ugly, wah wah wah…
Think about this - do you remember how we did things before eGroupware? It wasn’t so great. My point is that the tools we already have work fine. They are not perfect but they do the job. If we were really serious about this we would just buy Lotus Notes or something. I don’t see that happening though.
Now for LDAP, WebDAV and iCal (god i hate these mixed case names):
LDAP: We already have a two nifty LDAP servers, one is a slave to the other. They are fully redundant, so the system is well covered for failures. A lot of our web services are using it. Funny thing though, no one is trying to use LDAP in their applications (hello ServiceContainer). Everyone still uses “local” authentication. LDAP is here, I’d be happy if you developers actually tried to use it.
WebDAV: This is supported by eGroupware, meaning that it can be a WebDAV server. I haven’t put much time into it. Who would actually use this? That would be Loïc, Vito and me. I include myself because I would have to test it. Everyone else would use email to send files, like they always have.
iCal: eGroupware can be an iCal server. Again I haven’t put much time into it. eGroupware’s calendar is based all around the iCal standard (you might have noticed the .ics file that is included with every email you get from egroupware).
Wow that is a long rant. Aren’t you glad we have this collaborative blog?
After all that I have to say in theory I agree with what you wrote, but theory is a long long way from practicality.
July 4th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Hi Gary, what was before eGroupware… well, past evolution is not a reason to stop evolution.
Standards based services
“eGroupware […] can be a WebDAV server”, “eGroupware can be an iCal server”, my post was all about eGroupware not being the server but at most a GUI.
You are right about WebDAV, but I think it would still be usefull and much simpler than twiki attachments or whatever. In fact I thought we already had a WebDAV server up and running.
iCal server for eGroupware, we ruled it out last time we thought about it (the developer recommends not to use it for production in his 2006 last release) and the situation didn’t change.
It looks like the best iCal server is CalDAV… and maybe even only putting .ics files on WebDAV might suffice.
LDAP: so we can start using LDAP for contacts right now? Cool, could we have a login (IP, Base DN and login)?
Integrated solution
About Lotus… yes, maybe we should just go for an integrated solution… but Lotus talks mainly through its client because it is not using standards. So it would just be like eGroupware (Lotus can be a iCal server…), but working.
In this area an OS X server (or Darwin), would do the same… based on standards.
externalized solution
But then… maybe we are just not thinking far enough; if we go for an integrated solution, for not worrying about things, we might as well externalize. Online integrated services that I looked at show weaknesses; Google and Zoho serve calendar read-only, and don’t serve the rest except to through their client.
It could still be possible to use different online services; ldap here, webdav there and caldav if needed.
I give a few refs… if we go for that we should go for someone to robust.
Maybe nine.ch would do all of that for us? (others do, but it is further)
Ref:
OSX Server : http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/
hosted LDAP : http://freeldap.org/
hosted WebDAV: http://www.venuecom.com/hosting/WebDAV_Calendar/
hosted iCal : http://www.icalx.com/