Slashdot Mirror

Might be a little overkill, but should be able to do what you want. Take a look http://www.phprojekt.com/index.php?&newlang=eng

Try PHProjekt - I use it, and am quite happy with it. Group policies, project/task tracking, time logging, threaded discussions, etc. Pretty full-featured, simple to use, I can grant and limit access to whomever I choose.

Ditto the postfix bit. I have used it for several small companies, and it runs beautifully. Spam filtering (blacklists, spamassassin, greylisting) works nicely, you can easily view statistics via munin or something similar, and there are a ton of log analysis scripts and proggies out there.

My preferred combo is FreeBSD + Postfix with TLS/SMTP (for "outside" clients) + Dovecot secure imap + OpenSSL + Openwebmail. If you absofuckinglutely must, you can drop this setup in a DMZ or third interface of a PCEngines WRAP box running M0n0wall and have it talk to an exchange server in your "inside" network. That way the monkeys can use MAPI, although you'll probably run into problems with different mail spools and all that.

For added fun, some decent PHP-based groupware like PHProjekt or PHPGroupware is a nice touch.

As for redundancy, do nightly incrementals, use a decent RAID-5 controller (adaptec 2810SA or equivalent) with hot standby and don't forget to use hard drives from different lots, and maybe mirror your drives to another box if you're paranoid (I've never needed to do this but if you're really worried you can do RAID-10. Also don't forget to have a secondary MX that will actually deliver mail (can be a backup hot standby mail server that's just a mirror image of your primary) and a tertiary MX that just queues mail until you're up and running again.

I'm assuming, of course, that you're willing to do this in-house. Get good support contracts (despite what people say, I've had good experiences with Dell) and hardware warranties, make a complete backup of your system once you've installed it and before putting it online.

To conclude, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with an entirely homebuilt freeware-based solution, assuming you have (a) good backups, (b) redundancy as described above, and (c) hardware support contracts from your vendors. That's the only thing I would not ever skimp on.

http://www.phprojekt.com/

open source groupware - includes calender, export & import of contacts, web-based email (sorta hurting mind you, no anti-spam etc), todo management as well as web-based file management among other things.

i've been using it for a few years and it does the trick very well - particularly if you are frequently online and need to get that one useful piece of info from anywhere.

todo's can be assigned to projects, specifically to individual contacts, you can have any number of notes per contact (useful for phone discussion logs) and also has built in 'bug tracking' as well.

we use it for all of our project management simply because i haven't found anything else as useful.

no matter HOW useful outlook is, there's no way that it is worth the license fee and yearly tax that is required to set it up and keep legit...

other web-based options:

http://www.phpcollab.com/

phpcollab is a bit easier on the eyes than phprojekt, but seems to complicate the process more than it should be.

I'm just playing with the demo now, (this is the URL btw). It suffers from the same ol' syndrome of "very functional," looks like ass.

Now, my own design skills are somewhat limited. I can't make a snappy graphic-filled website without a lot of work (as my own demonstrates, my graphics are blah at the moment) - but even I can see that this needs a remodelling job. Default colour scheme is blahhh.

Look at slashdot... yes some of the schemes are hard on the eyes but overall it's not too bad.

Look at some other sites for an example of basic but friendly colours, Less cluttered interface, and layouts with many options but good organization

Should be: http://www.phprojekt.com/

That URL should be http://www.phprojekt.com/

Another project in the same vein is eGroupware (which is a fork of phpGroupWare).

The advantage that Open Source has over closed, proprietary source because of its "tinker friendliness" still holds true, irregardless of the author's conclusion that it is "very, very difficult" to fix problems in OSS. The source code is still available, right?. This means that it is at least possible for someone motivated enough to try and fix it. You just don't have that when the source code not is avaliable (legally).

Well stated, thanks. Also what a lot of people forget is that not all OSS is convoluted, badly commented C/C++/whatever code. I installed a web-based groupware called PHProjekt for a client once (I highly recommend it--it's great for what it does) and encountered some crappy bugs in it. I'm no great coder, but I was able to look through it, find the problem, alert the developers to it and then fix it myself. They said "thank you" nicely, and got rid of the bug in the next release.

I can't emphasize enough just how much I appreciated being able to find and fix the problem within half an hour, compared to spending x hours on some random tech support hotline and waiting for an official patch to come out.

PHProjekt is one fabulous tool. It's available in many languages, database-independent und quite easy to install (created a working demo on thanx to xamp in less than 30 minutes). Mostly developed by only one man though. There're also two Outlook-Connectors and good import/Export filters.

Why not use something web-based, like PHProjekt? There are a number of nice tools to let you manage discussions, threads and files online, and http is a "more open" standard than SMB--I only use Samba for file shares (including home drives) and printers.

With something PHP-or-whatever-based running on a web server, there's no mucking around with file locking problems and their ilk, and you can use SSL to protect user traffic (patch those OpenSSL installations, kids!)

The open source web based groupware system PHProjekt includes project management, time tracking and request tracking. Reuqests can be submitted via the grouwpare web interface, via email and via forms on a separate web site. The system runs on PostgreSQL or MySQL and a few others ... manfred

Untrue. PHProjekt and PHPGroupware both fill that function nicely, and they do it through a browser at a tiny fraction of the client CPU/memory overhead of Lookout!

Ximian also has a few nice products in that area.

I am a big fan of web-based solutions anyway--they're easier to run and maintain, you have control of the presentation, and in a company using Windows clients, where the browser is such an integral, inseparable, vital part of the OS , users should be perfectly happy reading their IMAP mail with Outcrook, and clicking on links in their mail.

The only thing nobody has "solved" to my satisfaction yet, and this is probably more of a user education issue than anything else, is being able to open attachments from a mail, edit them, and have the attachment in the stored mail automagically updated with your changes. This is, as far as I'm concerned, a non-issue, but it's the kind of detail that management care about (that's some free advice for you evangelists out there).

Try PHProjekt. It's actively being developed and supported.

I installed it at a client's site, after looking at alternatives, such as PHPGroupWare (which also looks quite good, albeit a tiny bit immature and others, and PHProjekt was the most robust of the bunch.

I don't know how well it will scale if you ever expand REAL BIG, but as it just relies on a standard SQL backend, you should be able to import/export data anywhere.

I am not exactly sure what you volunteer managements software does but if you need to manage them for projects, track time, contact them and so on you might want to check the web-based groupware system PHProjekt. We use it for all our time tracking at work as well as calendaring and so including public calendar on the website and more.

Another alternative is to implement PHProjekt. This is a web based groupware system running in a LAMP type scenario.

It allows you to set up different groups separately and includes a forum system

It also includes timecard, contact, project management, chat and so on. I set it up at work for our company and it works very well.

I totally agree with this.

You should get a clause signed that any work you do on GPL or Open Source for yourself or the company can not be claimed by the company as well. You can explain that this will allow you to be much more efficient (by using open source tools) as well as being able to get improvements back to the Open Source world. I did this for example with changes to a groupware system (www.phprojekt.com), a web mail system (www.horde.org) and a content mgt system (www.postnuke.com).

You should be able to push this through either in the contract itself. Or if that doesnt work, you can get a separate amendment for you only signed (for those silly standard contracts).

For sample contracts you can check out this page on the SAGE Australia site.

PHProjekt looks fairly decent.

There are several projects in this direction. I will mention the ones with web-based interface. The one with (apparently) higher number of features is indeed PhPGroupware. Most of the modules are usable (e.g. Calendar, Address book, Trouble Ticket system, File Management, Chat, ToDo, etc.). Some of the modules are quite advanced but show some problems (e.g. Project Management, Inventory).With a little custom setup this looks the best choice at the moment. There is also Twig that is also quite mature but does not have as many modules as phpgroupware. Another project that claims to be Production/Stable is PhProjekt. The modules are much simpler than the ones in phpgroupware, it looks more like a viewer. But it has time cards, calendar, chat, e-mail and others. Another project is the Horde project, quite at the beginning. These are only the php - sql projects, you may find other approaches too.

Sorin M