SuSE's OpenExchange and Windows Integration?

enrico_suave asks: "I work for a small-ish Non Profit Organization (less than 20 users) who would like to utilize 'groupware' (calendaring/contacts/etc) sharing software but aren't in a position to spend large amounts of cash on Microsoft Exchange Server. We currently use Outlook 2000's kludgey Net Folders which is often more trouble than it's worth. I've been looking at SuSE Linux's OpenExchange Server as a low cost groupware alternative, and wanted to know if anybody has used this package in a similar setting. A previous Slashdot article was more of an announcement, than a hands on review, and most of the reviews I've seen don't seem very objective or don't delve deep enough into details/practical usage. Has anyone used SuSE's OpenExchange in a primarily Windows shop with Outlook as the desktop mail/groupware client? How is the Outlook integration?"

Comments

We've used it

[cotcomsol]

We've had OpenExchange for a couple months, and have been pretty happy with it. The web interface works great. There are a few things that need work, and every once in a while we run into something that hasn't been translated from German, but for the most part it works.

The outlook integration is handled via a system tray program that runs and sync's your outlook on a schedule (every 30 minutes I think by default), so it's not really "live" integration with outlook, but it seems to work ok. SuSE just released a new version of the sync program today.

The palm sync works ok too. It's implemented in Java/soap. Has a few bugs, mainly in all-day events (palm lists it as an all day event, OE shows it as an event that starts at 00:00:00. Every time I sync it pops up a change dialog for any all day events I have, and I have to click through each of them each time).

Backup is kinda kludgy... there is no built in way to back up all the groupware functionality, other than doing a full system backup, or backing up the PostgreSQL databases, the LDAP directory, etc separately.

Overall, it works well for what it does, but it could be cleaned up a bit. I'd really like to see an updated palm conduit.