[SoCoSA/discuss] Outlook-compatible group calendar?

[Walter Hansen]

> 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.



I did a little reasearch into this sort of thing for one of our sales
associates (she's now left the company) and found vtiger. It's an open
source project and is free. It looked pretty good then and I'm going to do
a test setup here when I get a chance. Note that 'get a chance' is pretty
low priority.

http://www.vtiger.com/