Quality Open Source Calendaring / Scheduling? 492
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?"
no (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no (Score:5, Insightful)
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Zimbra! (Score:3, Informative)
You dweebs cant even do a google search before just saying "no", can you?
Re:Zimbra! (Score:4, Funny)
You dweebs cant even do a google search before just saying "no", can you?
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I upgraded them to two servers: RHEL with Zimbra for everything mail-related and CentOS for fileserving. They were even considering Evolution for the client, which I found funny for a church! Anyway, they've been like this for
Haven't found much (Score:4, Informative)
Evolution works great with Exchange; all they need now is to create their own back-end =)
PS. Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007; big mistake if you ask me. It was a selling point for Exchange.
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It's going to seriously slow the adoption of E2k7 because many companies really use them. One company I contracted at a couple years ago had over 25,000 public folders, many of which were used daily.
Outlook integration isn't quite as sea
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.
Re:Haven't found much - Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
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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 )
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.
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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...
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Considering Linux, Apache, and MySQL are a part of the LAMP stack I'm pretty sure they are well past "choice".
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Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007
They are in there, just disabled by default. If you use Outlook 2003 or older they are required, so Exchange 2007 includes them.
Re:Haven't found much (Score:5, Informative)
Power Failure Resistant: (Score:3, Funny)
Application: Pen and Paper.
Re:Power Failure Resistant: (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Power Failure Resistant: (Score:5, Insightful)
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However most modern companies in modern industries (like tech) don't believe in assistants any more, when they are a key resource to take away scheduling etc. from people who can use their time more productively (writing code, testing a site, whatever).
Just because the computer can do email, scheduling, and you can use IM and phone... some people aren't good at that and waste way too much time when they could just say to their assistant "I need this tomorrow, let xxx know about that meeting next w
.....or (Score:2)
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Sam
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Shocking, I know.
MS must be open (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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I think the main problem is we can't really come up with an open source scheduling system that's compelely new and innovative because you need compatibility with people outside your organization.
That's not all that true of the companies I've worked for. I'd be kind of annoyed if someone outside of my company sent me a meeting invite. You're not in my company; don't make assumptions about my scheduling.
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.
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if my dentist sent me a meeting invite, it will not be how i want it. he'll likely mark it as "busy" or "out of office" for the exact time of the meeting, with the default 15 mins reminder. that's not how i want it. i'll need it to expand much further than that, because it takes at least an hour to get from work to there; and i'll want a 1 week reminder.
i agree with the GP. sender-created meeting invites work fine for the office, but not
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You apparently don't work on a team that requires interaction with lots of clients and/or vendors and require $time_interval meetings to coordinate the development efforts of tech teams from each company involved.
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That's why, at least in Outlook, there are "Propose New Time" and "Decline" buttons. We should get together next Tuesday at 1330 so I can show you these features.
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What are you talking about?? Writing clones of commercial software is the prime directive of open source! I'm going to go out on a limb and say that actually there are quite a lot of people who like nothing more than doing exactly that.
php web calendar from k5n.us (Score:2)
Citadel is the best i know of: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.
WebCalendar (Score:3, Interesting)
Works well for our needs.
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Yes, it looks a little low-rent, and there are some features I would love to see, but it gets the job done.
Kontact (Score:2)
The KDE organizer/calendaring system is extremely good -- I use it all the time. It supports multiple calendars as well as calendar export and sharing (although I don't use those features).
Apparently there's an enterprise info sharing server available based on it too.
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..
This is Slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I've used Outlook before. I used it for over four years as it's the official corporate e-mail/scheduling client. The scheduling they did a pretty good job on, I'll give them that, but as an e-mail client I've never cared for it. I much prefer thunderbird or the web interface on gmail. Really the question people are looking for is, how do we replace the scheduling portion of Outlook and still retain all it's nice features while using the e-mail client of our choice?
This is particularly tricky because one of
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I have to use Exchange at work every day. It sucks. My main gripes are:
CalDav (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, I'm really hoping the rest of the non-Microsoft world will center around the standard, and it will end up that CalDav:calendars::IMAP:mail.
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That's not saying much, considering how many mail hosts still only support POP3.
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So, CalDAV maybe worth more i
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What about Darwin Calendar Server? (Score:5, Informative)
What Is The Point??!! (Score:2, Insightful)
This makes no sense to dump something that works and is clearly the best solution right now.
Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.
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An organization that is using an open source package has some chance of making a tweak to the application to make that one little piece fit their needs and environment better. An organization using a closed source solution is essentially at the mercy of the software publisher in this regard.
(That isn't to
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EX: A coworker was having major issues with a closed source DLL so he decompiled it fixed the bug and then sent the update back to the company. We used his copy until they sent out and update.
However, IMO extending open or closed source software is mostly a waste of time, because minor tweaks to software you don't really understand tend to create more issues than they solve.
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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.
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The OWA client for Exchange 2007 is so good that there are companies who are getting rid of Outlook for all normal mail users and having everyone use the web client. The only people who get Outlook 2007 are Exchange Admins and special case-by-case basis (usually execs). So heterogenous environments are better from a client perspective (plus its easier to administer the web client anyway).
"licensing costs"
marketing websites and r
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Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Scalix http://www.scalix.com/ [scalix.com]
are the two closest, but honestly, neither is a perfect replacement.
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Zimbra's programmers were daft. They would only make installs for certain releases of the OS and then they would get rude to those who were seeking support. They essentially created a product and abandoned those in the open source arena, and they don't care about you.
Their install requirements, their installer script, and their a
No callenders? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ [mozilla.org]
Compete in what way? (Score:2)
Um. Yeah. They all compete somehow.
If you'd say what feature you wanted and what you wanted to do, someone could tell you how that feature in program X competes with Outlook. Short of that, I think the best answer is "Um. Yeah."
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I'm moving us to Cal
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.
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It comes under an 'attribution license' and hence cannot be forked. Its 'badgeware'.
Ie: you cannot take the source code of Zimbra and produce your own version *without* the Zimbra logos.
not free/open but at least cross platform (Score:2)
Zimbra (Score:2)
It has resource scheduling (even in the free version) I just don't use it, so I really can't comment on its quality. The email and scheduling is nice, its compatible with iCal, so there's tons of public calendars out there to help keep track of generic stuff too.
Check it out.
I am waiting for a good calDAV server (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at Citadel (Score:2)
Citadel of course (Score:2)
Resource scheduling (Score:2)
Google calendar handles resource scheduling, if you go with the Professional (paid) version.
eGroupware with Kontact (Score:2)
It uses XML-RPC to transfer Addresses, Calendaring, etc. It even talks to Outlook, It would be the perfect Exchange replacement except that for the love of god, it doesn't support Kerberos! God damn it!
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.
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=tkk
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- Apple's Calendar Server is indeed open source [royhooper.ca], unlike mentioned above.
- Apple's current implementation of recurring events in their CalDav server has some issues.
Disclaimer:
It should also be noted that I work for Oracle in the very same division responsible for the calendaring stuff and that my intent is not to diminish Apple's offering. Oracle aims for full interoperability with other CalDAV-compliant offerings, including that of Apple.
Zimbra (Score:3, Interesting)
We are replacing all of our Exchange users and dumping exchange by the end of the year.
It is an open source free replacement for Exchange.
Very nice and integrates well with Sunbird (Thunderbird Calander).
-hack
Devices, devices, devices (Score:2)
Bunisoft Meldware? (Score:2)
a calendaring module. I haven't used it, but it might be worth a look.
Zimbra meets GCal ?!? (Score:2)
I rely on Google Calendar for my day-to-day needs. Can an enterprise implement Zimbra and still send out messages that auto-trigger Google Calendar to update itself like Outlook does? Conversely, can a business implement a Zimbra solution to interface with someone else's Outlook solution?
I really don't know the answer to these questions. I have a number of clients who use Outlook/Exchange for calendaring but I am pretty much all-Linux on my end. The thing that seems to work is they schedule events on my Go
Exchange/Google Calender/iCal/Blackberry (Score:2)
If there was a good 2-way platform that would allow me to upload AND download (safely! I know there are hacks) from a service like Google Calendar I would be more likely to use it.
I am thinking of getting a hosted Exchange server but I
I don't think (Score:2)
http://www.bedework.org/bedework/ [bedework.org]
Two options. (Score:2)
I hope that Yahoo follows through on their stated intention to keep the open source version of Zimbra.
The other problem is clients. Right now, there aren't many clients
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)
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Sadly it looks like the connector is being developed by a closed source developer rather than within the Citadel project itself so my prediction isn't quite true. Still it would make a great alternative to Exchange, and fortunately for me Exchange compatibility is not an issue.
I quite enthusiastically plug Citadel wherever I can, not only because it performs extrem
Sun's JES is worth evaluating (Score:3, Informative)
It makes my short list, along with ZImbra, Scalix, and Openchange (so far).
The nice things about JES are (a) it's rock-solid (b) it works well with many mail clients, even horribly broken ones like Outlook (c) while it doesn't have every possible calendar feature in the world, it has all of the ones that people actually use (d) it scales amazingly well -- it's really no problem to get it to support millions of users (e) because it's been around for a while (including a prior incarnation as a Netscape product) there's a pretty solid support community for it (in addition to Sun) (f) it's flexible enough to support integration with other products.
The bad things about JES are (a) the install is complicated, even if you're very accustomed to complex installs (b) the documentation, like much of Sun's documentation, is poorly written, verbose, uses opaque terminology, and lacks cohesion (c) the log files are inscrutable (d) it's somewhat bloated (somebody needs to trim all the legacy code out of it) (e) it's overkill for anyone who just needs a mail server (i.e., no calendaring).
But...given that you get mail, calendaring, LDAP, all rolled up in one package -- it's at least worth looking at. I'm aware of any number of places that have migrated from Exchange to JES, so at least their requirements were met.
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There are TWO things that OS needs to do, and that is one, the other is a Universal Directory Service that isn't a pain in the rear and is supported by everyone.
When Open Source completes the foundation for both, and obviously tying both together, then it can start to compete with the likes of MS. While I don't particularly like Active Directory, it has useful features for managing just about everthing in a Corporate Windows Environmen
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There's a difference between nailing the cheap floosy at the local dive, and meaningful long term relationship built on a strong foundation. If you've never had the latter, and only the former, you'll never know what I'm talking about.
The slut in a tight outfit may look sexy, but I can assure you that it only looks that way. If you really
Google Calendar? (Score:2)
A snippet from http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/calendar.html [google.com]:
Integrated contact list -- Your contact list in Google Calendar is always in sync with Gmail, so you'll never need to look someone up in Gmail to send an invitation.
Integrated into Gmail -- Gmail recognizes incoming meeting requests and invitations, and helps you RSVP without ever leaving your inbox.
Mobile access -- You can get event reminders, check your calendar and even add new events