Exploring web-based groupware tools
Contents
1. and other objects are repre sented as folders Like folders on a file system each object is connected to the system via a mountpoint which then shields the user from the connection details In one of the modules that none of the other groupware tools have an inven tory resources are the primary objects Under these resources you have device types brands and distributors which are then characteristics of the specific re source Rooms can be resources as well but in the context of Simple Groupware a room is part of the organization along with the objects department offices position groups and users Of note is a module that provides a simple way to edit HTML files as well as a spreadsheet module It is no surprise these tools do not provide the range of features available in a full blown appli cation but they are definitely a useful addition Characteristics like an object s status and category are treated as folders In es sence this gives you access to each as pect of the system in the same way This hierarchal structure even extends to the system configuration and information A very interesting aspect of this prod uct is the Simple Groupware Solutions Markup Language sgsML which can be used to add new modules quickly 48 ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBER 2007 This option is obviously much easier than writing PHP or Perl code Your new code is then added as a module which can access other data sources such2. nism does not allow you to search through all address books so you have to select each one in turn Also you can create multiple notepads and task lists Unlike address books you can search across all notepads and task lists so be havior is not consistent The hierarchy of permissions extends to very specific aspects of the applica tion For example you can define the maximum number of notes or calendar entries for a specific group or individual user Among multiple address books you can assign access in different ways such as limiting who can read or edit the addresses Horde is very easy to navigate and the interface is one of the more intuitive However it is not entirely consistent For example menu items underneath the address book and calendar let you add a new entry or search However no sub entries appear under tasks or notes A new button appears in the address book but not the calendar toolbar Al though you can define multiple address books or multiple note books only the address books appear in the menu and you can assign a category to calendar entries but not to contacts Another aspect worthy of note is the large number of different authentication methods Horde supports In addition to the SQL based authentication that basi cally every groupware tool supports Horde also comes with support for LDAP IP based Unix passwd Radius SMB IMAP and even Yahoo just to name a few One of the major lim
3. which curiously opens in a new browser window This provides a simple editor and supports standard HTML as well as a special wiki markup One feature worthy of mention is the integration with the HylaFax server This functionality is optional but if you do install it you can manage both outgoing and incoming faxes in a comfortable and easy to use interface IGSuite took a unique approach to or ganization The components are broken 46 ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBER 2007 into four different areas Services Re sources Protocols and Controls Ser vices contain the standard groupware applications Resources allow you to manage things like staff users con tacts opportunities and products thus forming a good basis for CRM In fact looking through all of the various com ponents it seems that the product is more geared toward CRM than the more traditional groupware tools The Protocols sections is where you access communications you need to keep track of such as contracts offers letters faxes and so forth The Controls section is used to configure the product at several different levels although the configuration options are not as exten sive as with other products In addition to defining which applica tion each user can access you can also assign privileges for the various applica tions For example you can allow users to only view but not edit As far as I was able to tell IGSuite only supports user authenticat
4. R 2007 45 REVIEWS our Compare bne Ele MAM iw Ge Beourmuren Toot Hep J tow Compan ine 6 35 Ser gg Peumigps are ra mra Cal Jo seed ager y Cj eds Oe Oa A a reps aveet jall Tiday EN 160 meriin mii Mibe Tawri aj Toiy im p prer s ara CE O aao r C n o Fair SF Cae bbb FILET Bami Hed B i i Copewobe ine i i z i Coweta Mae tf i Eri een il eco eet ET cers 18 tie uy Sart Web based Groupware y oaen Ay a nD Ly ao Ly Figure 4 IGSuite offers a professional look and feel once you get it installed to English pages or links in English led to pages in Italian Although I can make a good guess what documentazione means the time I spent in Italy on vaca tion didn t help me translate the rest This also applies to the product itself in that many things were not translated from the original Italian When I finally got IGSuite installed and I logged in I liked the look and feel The user interface definitely had a more professional appearance than other products The interface is fairly intuitive although with several exceptions By comparison the applications them selves were very simple with limited integration between modules For exam ple you cannot invite people to events in the calendar and the ToDo list is not hierarchical so you cannot create sub tasks Also tasks are not added to the calendar In addition to the standard applica tions is a wiki
5. REVIEWS Web based Groupware Po GROUP DYNAMICS Open source groupware tools have come of age You are no longer limited to email and an address book Some of these tools surpass the commercial alternatives once you get them installed BY JAMES MOHR eb based groupware tools offer simplicity for today s busy workgroup From any web ready computer with access to the groupware system you can read your mail examine your calendar and check off items in your ToDo list But which tool is right for your network I decided to compare some of the more promising open source web based groupware col laboration alternatives Because I cannot do justice to all of the various products in this growing field I have limited the study to prod ucts for which the emphasis is not on a specific task but rather on providing a collection of classic groupware colla boration options such as email calen daring contacts and task management Some of the shared task components included in this article are simple lists and others are more like full blown project management tools 42 ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBER 2007 For this review I used Fedora 6 with MySQL 5 0 27 and Apache 2 2 3 Each application was tested with different browsers and I noticed nothing with the browser access that caused any of the products to fail All the tools were downloaded from SourceForge with the exception of Horde which I obtained from the horde org we
6. as the filesystem IMAP and other data bases You can find out more about de veloping applications with sgsML in the October 2006 issue of Linux Magazine 6 Another thing I really like about Sim ple Groupware is that you can notify users when you add or change objects It has a box with which you select the user group or even contacts Admittedly I am not too happy with the overall look and feel of Simple Groupware and I don t think the inter face is as intuitive as the GUIs of the other products However Simple Group ware definitely grew on me the more I used it and the more I saw what it could do Because I am more concerned with configuring the tool to my personal needs Simple Groupware definitely pro vides the right tools This arrangement is far better than having to change the way I work because of the limitations of the software On the downside the documentation is very thin and consists primarily of documents describing how to perform specific tasks like data export import and data synchronization with SyncML The user manual for Simple Group WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM ware consists of a stack of screenshots that simply name different buttons or portions of the screen One nice feature was the Edit as New option which enables you to take an existing object make changes to the key characteristics and then save it This option provides a sort of template func tionality Conclusions Every person
7. bsite Each tool in the test was the most current version at the time I wrote this article and each tool runs as a stan dard web application not a standalone server that happens to provide a web front end phpGroupWare phpGroup Ware is obviously written in PHP and after many years it s still a 0 x version with 1 0 planned for late 2007 early 2008 I downloaded and in stalled version 0 9 16 011 In addition to MySQL phpGroupWare also supports WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM Postgress Of the alternatives I tested phpGroup Ware seems to provide the largest number of modules by default although I found a few of the compo nents are not really appropriate in a business environment Instead of an installer script you un pack the tgz file in the DocumentRoot of your web server and point your browser to the appropriate URL to set up the products The installation is very straightforward I did not have any prob lems getting it to run the first time During the install you create the ad ministrator account and you have the opportunity to create three demo ac counts Each has a slightly different con figuration which gives you a better feel for what is possible and you can test the product with live data on your own system Authentication is performed by account information in the database by accessing an LDAP server or through email accounts When considering phpGroupWare for your company I would go so far a
8. budget Annoy ingly sub tasks cannot start on the same day as the parent task because the sys tem thinks this is somehow before the parent Overall the product is highly configu rable Access to applications can be as signed to both user and group In some cases you can also define a user as an administrator for the specific application e g projects However you unfortu nately also can still assign access to at least one application that has been removed from phpGroup Ware Several different themes display icons and text either at the top of the window or on the left side In some cases you can choose text icons or even both Typically when the icon bar is at the top module specific menus are on the left With the theme I chose applications are accessed through the menu on the left side of the screen as you can see in Figure 1 if too many applications are as signed to the user they do not all appear in the menu CA a GS E repun na seayereeroneware nema gheas 1 G Web based Groupware REVIEWS i i at DEELER Figure 1 phpGroupWare lets you display the available tools in a menu on the left side of the screen Another key way you can configure the product is by defining custom fields for a number of the objects for exam ple the calendar address book and info log Also you can change the text for most of the fields if the term used does not suit you This can also be used to c
9. efine blocks that access in formation from various modules as well as the layout of the blocks on the page or you can create multiple portals with different appearances and different sets of applications and permissions Al though also present in phpGroupWare the eGroup Ware version is much more configurable and you even get a WYSI WYG mode to configure the layout Horde For the most part Horde provides a well rounded groupware application but it did disappoint me at several different levels First I downloaded Horde Group ware Webmail Edition 1 0 1 as a tar ar chive and tried to install it Then I un packed Horde into the DocumentRoot and started the setup from a PHP script provided with the tool The script creates the appropriate database and tables However for Horde to work I had to dig through the files provided and change various configuration settings On the other hand the documentation overall definitely earns Horde a bonus point or two Although not written for the Linux newbie the installation pack age provides a lot of useful information including installation security and even WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM tips on contributing and developing code The Horde website includes a wiki in addition to the documentation distrib uted with the product Unfortunately however this documentation was neces sary because of the state of the applica tion To just get the product installed I had to look throu
10. erbial kitchen sink In a number of modules there are extra applications as well as more functionality One additional application is a timesheet that lets you keep track of time spent on different activities To do this you can specify one of the projects you define in the project management module and thus have an easy way of tracking your time Also noteworthy is the Manual help link at the top of each page This link provides useful information about the current module For cases in which no help is available instead of getting a blank page or a not found message you are brought to the top of the docu mentation tree The integration between the applica tions is much more extensive than with phpGroup Ware For example when de fining a calendar event you can create links to project tasks contracts wiki en tries and even other calendar events This connection is bidirectional so that a link to a project task shows the link back to the calendar event This means that no matter which view you have of the data you have access to all of the applicable objects This bidirectionality does not just apply to the information but activities as well For example you can create a ToDo item directly from an address book 44 _ ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBER 2007 contact The ToDo item is then automati cally linked back to the contract One really nice application is the site manager Here you create a portal in which you d
11. every workgroup every company is different so finding the per fect tool is likely to be an impossible task Each of the groupware tools des cribed in this article has characteristics that set it apart If you want to experiment a bit before you permanently install a groupware application all of the prod ucts with the exception of Simple Groupware provide a demo site If you want to explore some alternative prod ucts I didn t discuss in this article or if you are interested in similar products that are not even specifically classified as groupware take a look at some of the options provided at the OpenSource CMS site 7 E 1 phpGroupWare http www phpGroupWare org 2 eGroupWare http www eGroupWare org 3 Horde http www horde org 4 IGSuite http www igsuite org 5 Simple Groupware http www simple groupware de 6 Workspace Building a Custom Groupware Solution with Simple Groupware by Dmitri Popov Linux Magazine October 2006 pg 78 7 OpenSource CMS site http www opensourcecms con James Mohr is responsible for the monitoring of sev eral data centers for a business solu tions provider in Coburg Germany In addition to running the Linux Tutorial website http www linux tutorial info James is the author of several books and dozens of articles on a wide range of topics ce e I H lt Ld lt
12. gh the documentation more than for any application I have installed in years Sadly the mailing list was not as helpful as it should be Although I found posts in which people posed the exact same problems I had the response from members of the Horde develop ment team was often almost conde scending and I began to wonder if they were at all interested in getting Horde into widespread use or if it was intended solely for an elite group of experts who know how to track down obscure prob lems After I got it installed my joy was short lived because when attempting to perform the very basic function of add ing a user I got another error message saying it could not access the database The reason was that the necessary user had not been created The setup script created the database and asked for the necessary information so it does not make sense that a user was not created and I found nothing in the documenta tion that said it was necessary to create the user by hand Because I know of ISPs that provide Horde to their users and I am not one to give up easily I decided to try and install Horde Groupware 1 0 1 This time the installation went much more smoothly Once I got running I found a very slick well thought out application All of the features are accessed through the navigation tree similar to a traditional file browser The toolbar at the top of the window changes depending on the module currently loaded By defau
13. her things Although a fork eGroupWare has definitely surpassed the original The installation the configura tion the product itself and the entire environment surrounding the product gives a more finished impression A number of subtle and not so subtle dif ferences between the two give eGroup Ware a very professional feeling Overall the installation was like php Group Ware and went very smoothly Al though I did have a couple of problems the installation script was very helpful and I easily fixed these problems Both eGroupWare and phpGroupWare have the same overall look and feel and the primary applications are also basi cally the same However eGroupWare provides fewer tools by default and the tools it does offer at startup are more oriented toward businesses as opposed ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBER 2007 43 REVIEWS Web based Groupware Ele JAR ew Ge peairaiki Toot jeep Livi admis Joe D rimapa deaa o Liew gt Group Ware hi j A a g of PATS ee an MT oo See parye ol fasia AGA ig KSAT ACT So Bai hhh Ee Admin Arbar FOO uly Horilla p Q gt a a Pepys Sheep inden phaina ig jal Ar i E ROEE ON Calendar Listview admin poa Admin Abar POO puly kinn Ma hihun PER a a M ha fen im dee Hienja ima Aa Codie Sec kien Jaimm lee ree ha Figure 2 eGroupWare is based on a fork of the phpGroupware code base to phpGroupware s goal of providing the prov
14. ion di rectly through the application i e SQL However you can restrict the hosts from which a given user can connect as well as define when the account expires An interesting feature is the ability to create an organization chart of your staff How ever before you start you are told to look at a document on the IGSuite web site which is in Italian WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM One useful tool is a list of Last Docu ments which shows you the most re cent objects you viewed However in a couple of instances when I clicked on an entry I got a message saying the doc ument was missing When I looked for the specific document it actually was missing although I had just created it a couple of minutes ago Apparently Last Documents stores things that do not actually get changed One annoying thing about people s names for staff and contacts is that they are a single unit and not separated by first and last names This means that Smith John is different from John Smith Also the name is stored in capi tal letters so if the person s last name is LoPorto it is saved as LOPORTO so you do not know how to write it if you were to send them a letter Still one nice as pect is the ability to associate a photo with the staff member but not contact One aspect of the IGSuite that I liked was the easy way to define various fields such as category contract type priority and other field
15. itations I found was that the Horde applications are not as well integrated as in other products For example users are not automatically added to the list of contacts or when you set a deadline for a task it is not added to the calendar Despite my initial frustrations when installing it and annoyances at a number of the mailing list responses Horde is still worth taking a look at IGSuite Despite quite a few problems during the installation an honorable mention defi nitely should go to IGSuite The installa tion was by far the most frustrating I searched for documentation changed parameters and tinkered with file per missions hoping to get it to work but after each success I always ran into one more stumbling block Noteworthy however is the response I got to my forum posts The first response was within an hour The response to my reply came as quickly Over the course of the next couple of days responses came very quickly after I posted Al though I solved the problem myself the Web based Groupware REVIEWS developers displayed a definite desire to get the problem solved IGSuite is a Perl based application that supports the PostgreSQL MySQL and SQLite databases Of note is its use of AJAX which increases the responsive ness of the application but in a number of places the entire frame still was re loaded when AJAX should have been able to update just parts of the page I downloaded and insta
16. lled version 3 2 3 The initial setup and configuration is done from the command line with a Perl script which attempts to create the database tables Whereas setup scripts for other applications ask you for the necessary account information to create the database or at least tell you to create the database by hand IGSuite does nei ther therefore it fails during the instal lation After I created the database and added the user manually the install script seemed to go smoothly the second time and it even remembered my answers to most of the questions However when I pointed my browser to the start URL I ran into a number of inexplicable per missions problems that prevented me from using the product at all An obvious place to look for answers is the IGSuite website which is a very odd mixture of Italian and English Some pages were only available in Italian in other cases parts were in English and parts in Italian links with Italian text led Gis pon yew go pomana Toot Hep aoc BjHerde i Pry Fertai elcome admin ee Fen ee Pe ioe be Notes i Ben eke yes Sayer De wept Das b panas Eal E Fep Cee ce ee SETEL a DF Ieiet Ti iener h E Apa oap onore Dimi C ED f Taibhs 0 a im 1J insatnm i Centact Fasch Umra L Cae Faak E rece Gees Drei Ore Figure 3 The Horde portal is easy to configure and customize WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM ISSUE 82 SEPTEMBE
17. lt you will find only four applications address book calendar notes and tasks Noticeably missing from that list is an email client This email client is only available in the Web mail edition which had failed previ ously Fortunately Horde is modular so adding the email module was straight forward and went fairly well consider ing the problems I had before Also there are a few dozen modules that you can download A couple of the administration aspects deserve special mention First you have a PHP shell an SQL shell and a CLI to execute arbitrary commands Also Horde provides a hierarchical permis sions structure In addition to being able to create users you can create groups and sub groups Then you can define different permissions for various applica tions which you assign to groups or even individual users As one would ex pect each of the individual applications has different configuration options as well The one aspect that attracted me to Horde in the first place is its homepage portal as you see in Figure 3 With the Layout button configuring new blocks is very easy Each block can be configured individually and you can add or remove blocks define the layout and move the blocks around as you see fit In most cases you can also configure the behav ior of the applet itself Although you can create multiple ad dress books to which to assign new con tacts unfortunately the search mecha
18. reate your own translation for lan guages that are not available A number of interesting characteristics can be defined either globally across all objects or only for specific objects Global characteristics at this level seem to be unique to phpGroupWare and eGroupWare Several applications had fatal errors at both the user end and for the adminis tration of the module Despite googling posting to the forum and reading all of the other forum posts with this exact same error the problem was unresolved In the case of the address book I got the start page fine enough but despite tell ing the app to display all of the entries none were shown One important thing to mention about phpGroup Ware is the level of support provided Although some products have more traffic and questions are answered sooner on average the phpGroupWare development team definitely deserves a pat on the back for the extent they go to help In some cases they have asked for database dumps to be able to locally rec WWW LINUX MAGAZINE COM reate the environment to help resolve problems Having worked with phpGroup Ware before it is disappointing that it has not progressed much in the past couple of years Still the work that has gone into it is respectable and one should not lose sight of it in the future eGroupWare In 2003 eGroupWare forked from php Group Ware primarily because of differ ences of opinion in terms of licensing among ot
19. s that have dis crete values Unfortunately in the case of a characteristic like a category the definition is not the same for different objects such as calendar entries and ToDo items IGSuite is a nice attempt to create an efficient groupware tool Unfortunately because of the problems I had accessing even the most basic information I felt it was too difficult to work with Still I in tend to keep my eye on it Simple Groupware Written in PHP the XML based Simple Groupware supports PostgreSQL MySQL and even Oracle databases I downloaded v0 293 and despite it not having yet reached 1 0 status I was very pleased with almost every aspect of the product The term simple definitely applies to the installation I had fewer problems installing this tool than the other prod ucts After unpacking the tar file moving it into the server s document root and then loading the default URL I was pre sented with a very sleek and simple interface Access to your information is provided through an interface similar to a tradi tional hierarchical file browser This makes sense because applications infor REVIEWS Web based Groupware firme Ele GAM Yew Go Bestar Dood hep aoe ihepiay H53 Ea repii cr Then AA phear A i CL otal oad ener EE CTT f Hre Faida ETETEN g ETE Figure 5 Simple Groupware is sensible and easy to install although the user interface is not exactly intuitive mation
20. s to say that the lack of documentation is sufficient to knock it out of contention On their website the documentation pages are either being updated or cleaned out Unfortunately the docu ments have been in that state for as long as I can remember What does exist is very thin and scattered throughout vari ous places Uniformity is lacking as far as what is documented at what level it is documented or where the documen tation is kept Although a manual exists within the product itself you often get nothing more than the version number of that particular module If you do get more the additional text is still extremely thin and typically just lists what is on the screen Despite the wide range of useful appli cations phpGroupWare often gave me the impression that it is not yet finished and was hurried out the door Although it is understandable that many different people worked on the different applica tions and components it seems to be a patchwork that was almost forced to work together and the integration be tween modules is not complete Of note are a Java application that pro vides an SSH shell to the local machines a graphical viewer of files stored in a CVS repository and a well rounded proj ect management module in addition to the usual ToDo list The project management module al lows you to create a multi level hierar chy of tasks assign users define mile stones and maintain a
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