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Quality Open Source Calendaring / Scheduling?
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Nov 29, 2007 01:30 PM
from the date-for-a-date dept.
from the date-for-a-date dept.
Jim R. Wilson writes "In past jobs, I've used Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, Novell Groupwise, and Google Calendar for handling business appointments. I'm sorry to say it, but I have yet to see a rival to Microsoft's scheduling features. On Slashdot I have occasionally read rumblings that there are better open source email and calendaring solutions out there. Can anyone substantiate this claim? What are the OSS alternatives? Can any compete with Microsoft's resource scheduling?"
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no (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're not coming up with something new and innovative we're stuck making outlook clones. People don't like writing software like that.
Re:Compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Being in your company has nothing to do with wanting information in your calendar, and you are the person that gets to decide if it is worth putting in the calendar or not.
Parent
What features? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, what features do you use in MS products that you haven't found in the free/open source applications?
Re:What features? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry I wasn't clear enough in my initial question. What really impresses me about Outlook/Exchange is when you go to schedule a meeting, it allows you to see when all the participants, rooms and resources (like projectors) are available in a horizontal chart of sorts. People who are busy are marked off in blue, out of office is purple, etc. To find a time that works for everyone, you just scan across until you see a vertical bar of white (everyone free), or try to minimize conflicts.
I don't know of MS holds a patent on the UI, but I haven't seen it anywhere else. Also, with respect to calendaring, in Outlook you can open up several calendars (yours and others) side-by-side in order to see who's free when. It's a pretty simple bit of eye candy, but nonetheless, I've only seen it in Outlook.
Parent
Re:What features? (Score:5, Informative)
This function is available with the CalDav server standard and that particular feature is available in the implementations in the open source Zimbra client/server and the 10.5 version Apple's iCal server/client. I don't know about other implementations, but I imagine most other ones either include this or will soon, as Caldav has really taken of in adoption by major projects. Zimbra even offers that feature via the Web interface to their server.
I think Evolution has an interface like this (works with CalDav), but if I recall Zimbra allows you to overlap as many calendars as you want in one window, making the comparison quite a bit easier IMHO.
I'd definitely look at Zimbra if you're serious about a OSS solution with lots of features and compatibility with both standards and proprietary interfaces (they have a full featured Exchange plug-in so users can still use Exchange as their client if they want). The server will run on all the popular Linux distros, OS X, and as a VMWare appliance.
Parent
Could you help us help you? (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to say this, but unless you give us a few reasons why some of the solutions you have looked at are not sufficient I doubt you will get any meaningful response.It's a pretty common problem when people ask for an open source replacement for a program they have used and were reasonably happy with.
Without some starting point for comparison you will just get dozens of stories about how product X works fine for them.
Re:Could you help us help you? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It needs to have a client/server architecture (for mobile clients who don't have always-on connectivity). Pure web-based calendars don't do this.
2. It needs to have Windows and Linux clients.
3. Outlook plug-ins don't work. This is a limitation of Outlook. The plug-in can't be the default calendar, and Outlook will only pop up reminders for the default calendar. Also, my experience of OpenGroupware's plug-in is that it is unstable.
4. It needs to have a means for one person to schedule an event on someone-else's calendar (if the appropriate permissions are given).
5. It needs to have a way for people to view the details of other people's calendars (if the appropriate permissions are given). Free/Busy information is not enough in some cases.
If someone can tell me of a calendar system that meets these requirements, I would be thrilled!
Oh, one more -- it desn't need to try to replace other things, such as email servers, etc..
Parent
CalDav (Score:5, Informative)
What about Darwin Calendar Server? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Scalix http://www.scalix.com/ [scalix.com]
are the two closest, but honestly, neither is a perfect replacement.
Zimbra (Score:5, Interesting)
Citadels pretty nice too, and Ignatius foobar is a cool guy, but its a pretty eccentric product. I think they've kinda been fucked around a bit with outlook compatibility, but I admit I havent checked in a long time.
iCal Server (Score:5, Informative)
The server just officially went gold with Leopard but has actually been done for a while now. Apple's iCal Server and (closed source) Client are currently the most polished products but now that there is a solid CalDAV server I expect that the various clients with gain alot of polish and other CalDAV servers should start to roll out as well.
Check out the CALCONNECT standards body for more information: http://www.calconnect.org/ [calconnect.org]
=tkk
PS Microsoft is finally a member but their commitment level is not that of the other partners.
Citadel is *the* solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The best part about Citadel is that it is very easy to install. There's an automatic installer script right on the web site. No fuss, no muss, just enter the install command and watch it go. No tedious mucking about with integrating all of the pieces yourself, as the entire Citadel system is self-contained.
And the whole thing is GPL, unlike solutions such as Zimbra and Scalix which claim to be open source, but when you actually go there you find out that to get the full feature set you have to buy a commercial version. The Citadel project makes its very best work available to everyone on the same terms.
Re:Citadel is *the* solution (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/topquestions.mspx?wt.svl=overview [microsoft.com]
Q. What is happening with Public Folders?
A.
Public Folders are included and supported in Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft has communicated that future releases of Exchange Server may not include public folders. If you use Public Folders, read the Exchange Team Blog on the topic of public folders for more guidance.
Parent
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.osafoundation.org/ [osafoundation.org]
It's been a long time coming, but it's finally approaching a useable release and it's quite interesting. I think it will be a real choice in 2008...
Parent
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Insightful)
That is so painfully wrong.
Paper calendars work great for scheduling with the rest of your family, because you all pass through the kitchen. But that does not scale to large enterprises, you know, like with more than 50 people. It does not scale to distributed organizations, where you don't share a kitchen. It does not connect appointment scheduling to nag 'bots that remind you to attend the meeting.
But I think this is the core reason why open source calendaring sucks: it is a problem that most open source community people don't have, and only really is a problem in large organizations.
Sadly, this has lead to open source completely failing to take over the mail server market. Linux & *BSD, Postfix, and Qmail all make great mail servers, and are used by many ISPs, but they are largely unused in enterprises, precisely because of the lack of calendaring. As a result, corporate mail servers are invariable Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise.
Hula [wikipedia.org] was an attempt to address this, but either due to Novell not doing it right or the community just not caring, it did not work out so well [novell.com] :-(
I would really like to see the open source community get this right. If we don't, then the mail server market will continue to be dominated by proprietary products.
Parent
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Informative)
1. They are more pointed than pens, and thus more likely to puncture things that shouldn't be punctured.
2. They create dust, which is a no-no on space missions. Wood pencils (obviously) from sharpening. Mechanical pencils are prone to have their leads break off, and float about. More to the point, the operating mechanism of both kinds of pencil is to rub off graphite dust onto paper. Some of this dust may be released by smudging.
Remember that graphite, and thus graphite dust, is conductive. Do you want to take the risk of conductive graphite dust causing a component to short out?
Why do you want NASA missions to fail???? ( oblig bit o funny )
Parent
Re:Power Failure Resistant: (Score:5, Funny)
0) Geeks will argue which pen and which paper is the best.
1) The Gentoo crowd will make their own paper from pulp.
2) Where's the ^H on Pen?
3) There are some serious latency issues
4) Sometimes the output is so horrible that others can't read the file.
5) Sometimes the output is so horrible that I can't read my own file.
6) You can backspace on a word processor. You can shake an etch-a-sketch. If you mess up on paper, you need new hardware.
Parent
Re:Power Failure Resistant: (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What Is The Point??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until a few years ago, I would have agreed it was the best solution for most businesses, but times have changed. I don't know what industry you're in, but a lot of larger companies are introducing more Linux and Macs on their networks and the ability to function cross-platform and across a variety of clients is a huge feature for a lot of companies.
According to MS, in order to license the current version of exchange it will cost you $4000 per server + $97 per user + some unnamed fee if you want to interconnect with other companies servers. So, assuming you have 1000 people and two servers, you're looking at over $100K. And for that price you can only use all the functionality if all your clients are on Windows, so your advertising people on Macs and your software development team on Linux both end up running their own little calendaring servers or using a shitty Web interface that has not kept up with the regular client. People with smartphones also end up costing you extra for connectors that allow them to access some of the functionality of your Exchange server, instead of all the functionality of a CalDav server.
To summarize, the failures of Exchange are:
Umm, not magical, but being OSS is a feature, one that Exchange is lacking. It is not the only feature that matters, but it does bring significant benefits, including reduced risk and protection from vendor lock-in.
Parent
MS must be open (Score:5, Funny)
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