[SoCoSA/discuss] Outlook-compatible group calendar?

[Steve S.]

Hi, all...

Over where I work, folks are looking for a better way to share
calendars, schedule meetings, and share "unique resources" (meeting
rooms, vehicles, etc).  Ideally, I'd love to go open-source (specially
if it had an option to "buy" a "professional" version -- open source,
in this case, likely functioning as an indefinite demo-period 'til
everyone who was interested could try it out, but then we could "buy"
it (e.g. get support, maybe a few extra features, etc)).  Cost *is* an
issue, but free isn't really desirable...

Most people here use MS-Outlook; I'm not likely to get that to change
(alas for iCal!), so we need something that works with the Outlook
calendar.  For e-mail, it's Communigate Pro for the server, with
mostly Outlook or Outlook Express clients, and a few oddballs (e.g. a
couple of Mac users, at least one Thunderbird, and some folks who use
the web-interface to CGP)... but, back to the calendar issue.

MS-Exchange has a poor reputation on both the complexity front and the
cost; it's likely we won't go that way.

Anyone have experience of non-Exchange programs for
Outlook-calendar-sharing, that they can share here?

At the moment, we are in demo-mode with "Workgroup Share;" see:
   http://www.softalk.ws/products/workgroupshare/more_info.asp
for more details.

It has a few weaknesses, though.  It's being a bit tough to configure
for everyone (it appears to be very sensitive to Outlook vs. Outlook
Express; everyone needs to be on Office03sp2, etc).  It wants to share
data via e-mails (making the oddball mailclients possibly
non-compatible -- but one of the Mac users is one of the owners, and
another is a VERY senior (& invaluable) person here; etc.).  It
doesn't seem have a category for meeting-rooms -- it looks like we're
going to have to set up a bogus "meeting-room" account, and send an
e-mail "inviting" the room to the meeting; ditto for vehicles.  It
can't run on its own -- it needs  to have the Admin account logged in
on the server, for the Workgroup Share server to operate.  And so
on...


I asked this before... I think on the nblug list (sorry if I'm
repeating here!).  I'm hoping the different orientation here will get
me folks with more-relevant experiences.


- Steve S.