Zentyal Forum, Linux Small Business Server

News and Announcements => News and Announcements => Topic started by: J. A. Calvo on August 16, 2010, 01:41:48 pm

Title: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 16, 2010, 01:41:48 pm
Hi eGroupware users,

I'm afraid I bring bad news for you. We are thinking about dropping ebox-egroupware as official module because the egroupware packages are no longer maintained by Ubuntu nor Debian. The current package of the latest version backported by us has known issues, some applications even don't work at all.

Of course, if any eGroupware expert would like to help us maintaining a working version of eGroupware for Ubuntu 10.04 we could change our mind without problem.

We are currently analizing other alternatives for our officially supported groupware solution.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any doubts about this. Any kind of feedback would be also welcome too.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 16, 2010, 02:24:57 pm
Hello there!

First of all, I again have to say thank you for this wonderful software package called "EBox"!

Secondly, there have been discussions in the past about eGW and other groupware solutions. My mindset is like this:
- for a small and medium sized business it is definetly great to have a groupware software, at least from my point of view
- a groupware should have some kind of desktop client apart from the web client to make the transition from Outlook easy for everybody (don't forget the power of secretaries!! ;) ) -> if the users can't get used to it, it won't be accepted!
- another reason for a desktop client is the drag&drop argument: I'm tired of endless clicks on the web-GUI, I prefer to use drag&drop whereever possible
- my personal dream would be to have a mobile sync working with the groupware, so that I can enter contacts outside the office and when I come back I just type the the new contact's name and can write an email to him right away...
The same goes for calendar entries -> nothing more annoying than forgetting some detail of a meeting and don't have it with you outside the office...
- to me, a working package with the reasons mentioned above could be a real selling argument for small and mid sized businesses....
- there are a few "but's" according this:
*) the groupware should be working 100%, it should not contain half-ready solutions...as I mentioned it before, I better pay a smaller fee for a WORKING solution than have something that's free but buggy
*) I had my issues with eGW, could not import my imap-folders, could not set up AND use my identities, how in the heck does one create a new entry in the wiki (other than saving an existing topic under a different name,....), funambol sync is a mess, tbird sync is a mess as well....this was the point for me to stop investing any more time in this

I can see several other alternatives:
- open-xchange (http://www.open-xchange.com)
- kolab (http://www.kolab.org)
- groupwise (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/)
- funambol server (http://www.funambol.com/solutions/enterprises.php)
- zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com/)
- sogo (http://www.sogo.nu/english.html)
...

but before there is a decision on the solution I think the need of EBox users must be evaluated. I for myself offer testing and part of package maintenance services if wanted.

Cheers
BBKing
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: jquintao on August 16, 2010, 02:52:29 pm
Hi Jose,

In the past i did use eGroupware... I had a lot of problems with eGroupware (bugs in felamimail, calendar, syncronization, etc)... I was losing customers to Microsoft Exchange and another groupware solutions when i met Zimbra... Today i can say that i can offer to my customers a good solution (Zimbra)... I believe that eGroupware is a amateur solution when compared with Zimbra... I think the eBox staff should not waste time with eGroupware...

Maybe a good solution could be write a "HOW TO" called "eBox Integration" explaining how to integrate eBox with another solutions (eGroupware, Zimbra, MailArchiva, Zabbix, etc)... See an example from MailArchiva:

http://www.mailarchiva.com/knowledge/bin/view/Main/MailSystemIntegration

Thanks,
Jorge Quintao
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: carlswart on August 16, 2010, 03:02:51 pm
Hi,

Being very new to eBox, I'm a bit disappointed to hear this, however it is the right thing seeing how some of the eGW programs do not work.

Which alternatives are you currently considering?

We currently use Zimbra extensively, but we use the Network Edition (NE) and unfortunately according to me the costs involved with Zimbra NE may deter many from using it.

I'm looking at the alternatives suggested by BBking.

Perhaps you would like to take a look at:

AtMail Server - http://www.atmail.com/ (http://www.atmail.com/)
Zarafa - http://www.zarafa.com/ (http://www.zarafa.com/)

Unfortunately it seems all the half decent groupware solutions are commercial. :(
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 16, 2010, 03:13:30 pm
The roadmap shows that EBox is going towards Zarafa, which is OK for me, as long as it works. I will get some more details on linux clients and stuff like that. I'm curious how they integrate the Blackberry server into their product...

I have pretty bad experiences with open-xchange.
Kolab is not that bad and they have a Windows based client (but I haven't tried it yet). There is also a plugin called "syncKolab" for TB, which is AFAIK starting to make progress but is under heavy development.

I don't have any experience with the other groupwares I listed above.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: stuartiannaylor on August 16, 2010, 03:14:22 pm
Erm I picked eBox as a solution even though I did like ClearOS. One of the main reasons was groupware as the Horde interface isn't much good.

Egroupware Calendars, Contacts, Tasks, Projects, Resources... Is perfect for in terms of offerings but I didnt know about the known Issues. I did try installing eGroupware on 10.04 LTS and I must admit I did give up in the end.

I have been casting an eye over various groupware products and without doubt Zimbra looks the most professional and Ubuntu tout it as a software partner also being a Yahoo offering will provide commercial stability.
My only worry is that of the future and commercial pressures in what is going to remain Opensource.

Zimbra desktop is also a great looking piece of software but the Imap and Pop3 connections dont seem to work for me but they do disclose those functions are still at a Beta stage.

If eGroupware is being dropped then out of various offerings I guess I would say Zimbra

Stuart

Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: carlswart on August 16, 2010, 03:41:03 pm
FYI - vmware bought Zimbra from Yahoo a while back ... http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/yahoo-sheds-zimbra-vmware-gains-a-foundation-for-web-apps/ (http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/yahoo-sheds-zimbra-vmware-gains-a-foundation-for-web-apps/)
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: ctek on August 16, 2010, 03:54:16 pm
My 2 cents if it is accepted.

Before dropping eGroupware completely an switching to other gw solution i suggest that you leave the eGroupware package in the distro but ask the user witch solution wants to install as MAIN groupware solution between the two of them let's say:

Please select the Groupware solution you want to install:
- eGroupware (no longer supported, will no longer receive updates for this solution in the future)
- Zimbra (currently supported and will receive updates for this solution in the future)

Some of the users of eBox are still using eGroupware and will be a huge step in accommodating with a new gw. solution from zero, thus making them turn to other solutions or abandon eBox...

I have to say that i'm not surprised that you have (finally) decided to drop eGroupware. And indeed i think that this is a good move.

Just my opinion :)

Regards
Bogdan
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: kgw on August 16, 2010, 04:48:11 pm
eGroupware being part of the ebox package was what drew me to ebox in the first place.  I am presently in the process of setting up a new server using ebox, a process that is up in the air while the move to v2 is going on.  If eGroupware is dropped, I will be attempting to include it as a separate unmanaged package on the same server but if that doesn't work I am sorry to say it will be ebox that will be dropped here rather than eGroupware.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 16, 2010, 08:12:56 pm
Because the Ubuntu/Debian "support" for eGroupWare was consistently behind and because the eBox implementation was seriously problematic in my experience, I abandoned the eBox integration some time back. We put eGroupWare into production under a standard, supported installation on a separate server (where it performs reliably, though not bug free) and will have no plan to adopt whatever solution eBox ends up with for the foreseeable future.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Svein Wisnaes on August 17, 2010, 04:43:33 am
Mye personal opinion about groupware is colored by the needs of a SMALL group. So some things here don't need a heavy use of shared functions. But there are always some thigns that would be great to share:

Addressbook - VERY important
Calendar - Important

Web interface - important, but not critical
Connect with various desktop clients - VERY important: Kontact (KDE), Thunderbird and Outlook.
Mail - not critical, can be handled directly in the various desktop clients
Sync addressbook and calendar with mobile/handheld devices - VERY important

From what I have seen and heard so far, Zimbra really works well. I still need to test it. Also, it seems that Funabol can be used for syncing mobile/handheld devices and that it really works for most of the important devices today.

I see it as important that people are allowed to use their preferred interface to do their tasks. I do not see any point of forcing anyone over on a web interface.

Regarding eGroupware, I never even got around to try it out as it seemed way too complex for what we need. I wish there was a groupware solution that had a modular approach. A core, and everything else were plugins. Calendar, mail, address book, mobile sync, to-do etc.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 17, 2010, 10:44:17 am
I see this is a very important part of EBox, so why don't we pick a candidate each and get the hard facts together?

I am going to have a phone conversation with the Zarafa sales this afternoon.
My questions so far:

Maybe you guys can jump in as well with a few questions and everybody can pick one candidate each and do the "survey" for that solution?
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: jquintao on August 17, 2010, 01:18:20 pm
I can answer about Zimbra...


Unlimited... I have a customer with 35.000 accounts...


Yes... But here in my company a lot os employees prefer use the ajax web interface... It's very cool.. Very similar with a desktop client...


You can install Funambol with Zimbra and use to sync calendar, contacts, etc with windows mobile, blackberry, iPhone, symbian, microsoft outlook, etc... It's free too...


Unlimited...


What's your problem with funambol? Funambol is very nice...


I don't know... The commercial version isn't necessary... The community version is suficient...


See this: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/enterprise-software/TCH_ENT/705934-6203673


Thanks,
Jorge Quintao
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 17, 2010, 02:34:21 pm
Mye personal opinion about groupware is colored by the needs of a SMALL group...

Sync addressbook and calendar with mobile/handheld devices - VERY important...

I also am thinking in terms of a small group. Since I personally know of no small group SMBs that actually supply their entire staff with mobile/handheld devices, I've been curious about the emphasis on the sync aspect in these discussions here.

In fact, when I was supporting sync for staff personal devices within Outlook, we had calendars and address books cluttered with personal information. What a pain. I requested that we not support personal devices when we implemented eBox--and the "excuse" that it was a pain to do in the Linux world was actually an asset! :)

But even in a small group, building a corporate intelligence is VERY important. None of us lasts forever, and an accumulation of shared knowledge is a tremendously valuable legacy. So it baffles me a little that so few people here value the knowledge-building tools of a groupware product.

Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: cougarmaster on August 17, 2010, 06:54:09 pm
Hi all,
    I myself add zimbra for my clients so I vote zimbra :) Of course its really upto the developers as they are the ones that will need to support the integration. Whichever way you choose must be that the package will not end up like egroupware. It definitely needs to be easy to setup and manage.

Please pick zimbra
Eric
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 17, 2010, 07:10:05 pm
For what it's worth, the openSUSE Build Service appears to have up-to-date eGroupWare packages for Debian and Ubuntu:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/eGroupWare/

I use the openSUSE repository for our eGroupWare installation.

EDIT: The instructions for adding the correct repository to sources.list are here:

http://www.egroupware.org/download
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: centaur5 on August 17, 2010, 10:01:08 pm
My concern is this; how long after we choose the replacement whether it be Zimbra or Zarafa are we expecting to have a usable module?  I used to manually configure all the services offered by Ebox a couple years ago.  Now that I use Ebox I don't want to manually configure services because if I manually modify a file that I don't know Ebox depends on then all my changes will be gone.  I've been using Egroupware for a year now and although I would rather have better client sync support on Linux I've been able to deal with it.  I don't want to use a web interface for groupware.  I've been using the Ebox platform for a couple years and have anticipated every release hoping for a complete solution for everything I need and for more stable functionality.  After 2.0 is released I was going to see if it was good enough for me to stick with instead of finding an alternative project.  If I did decide to keep Ebox I had every intention of purchasing support to help contribute.  I understand this move needed to be done but if a new solution takes too long to implement I'm not sure what I'll do. 
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 17, 2010, 11:02:59 pm
Hi,

First of all, thank you very much for your feedback. I see that there is
a huge interest in Zimbra being integrated in eBox. This is not
surprising as we already saw that in the poll about the 2.0 features in
this forum. Because of that, we already evaluated the feasibility of the
Zimbra integration as the first choice for an eGroupware replacement.
Sadly, we concluded that it wasn't easy at all, as Zimbra includes its
own packages for ldap, web server...

Anyway, if any of you can contribute with detailed instructions on how
to do a good integration or even code it would be great.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Svein Wisnaes on August 17, 2010, 11:41:47 pm
In fact, when I was supporting sync for staff personal devices within Outlook, we had calendars and address books cluttered with personal information. What a pain. I requested that we not support personal devices when we implemented eBox--and the "excuse" that it was a pain to do in the Linux world was actually an asset! :)

But even in a small group, building a corporate intelligence is VERY important. None of us lasts forever, and an accumulation of shared knowledge is a tremendously valuable legacy. So it baffles me a little that so few people here value the knowledge-building tools of a groupware product.

About syncing personal devices... How do you differenciate? For some, a mobile phone is a personal device, for others it is an essential tool for doing the job...

I totally agree with you regarding building a bank of knowledge. Which is why I suggested this:

http://forum.ebox-platform.com/index.php?topic=4556

I am not too happy to use tools that claim to do EVERYTHING. I prefer specialized tools that are able to work together with other tools. This also makes it easier for those that do not need one particular tool - they can just drop it and use the rest.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 18, 2010, 01:57:33 am
How do you differenciate? For some, a mobile phone is a personal device, for others it is an essential tool for doing the job...

So an organization is obligated to support personal mobile devices of whatever sort on a business network? That sounds problematic on several levels. So it's reasonable to differentiate by ownership, it seems to me.

I totally agree with you regarding building a bank of knowledge. Which is why I suggested this:

http://forum.ebox-platform.com/index.php?topic=4556

I am not too happy to use tools that claim to do EVERYTHING. I prefer specialized tools that are able to work together with other tools. This also makes it easier for those that do not need one particular tool - they can just drop it and use the rest.

eBox, of course, as a modular turnkey solution is a product that claims to do everything in the same sense that a modular groupware product claims to do everything. And in the case of eGroupWare, there is no reason to enable modules an organization doesn't need.

I'm not saying that eGroupWare is indispensable to a satisfactory eBox experience. It isn't, IMHO. At the same time, a product that has a wiki here, some webmail there, etc., isn't obviously easier to manage, IMHO, either from an end user point of view or from an eBox integration and maintenance point of view. A case can be made that eGroupWare is not an ideal solution without insisiting that half a dozen or more specialized tools makes more sense. That would be like trying to argue that a CMS is an inherently bad idea relative to individual software packages that do what the CMS tries to cover in a single product. I don't see the benefit to eBox either as a product or as a community of that kind of argument.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Svein Wisnaes on August 18, 2010, 02:30:55 am
I was not arguing anything regarding devices :-) Merely trying to figure out how to differentiate, thinking it might be difficult... Is it possible to block someone from syncing their phone if the sync feature exist? If someone in management have a job phone (Nokia of some sort) and this model can be synced, how can I block someone with the exact same model from syncing? I absolutely understand what you mean, I am just curious on how to achieve a different treatment.

Regarding modularity etc - yes, eBox as a WHOLE would probably try to do at least everything (did not see any coffee making module yet  ;D ), but you can even avoid installing some of them if you do not need it.

For the most groupware solutions I have seen, you have to install everything. You do not need to use everything, but it will still be active and will be running in the background. So a real modular approach would be appreciated.

Regarding eGroupWare - anything that is not sufficiently maintained should go out. That totally makes sense. I see this as a big opportunity to go through whatever is available in the market and get something in that

1. Has a big userbase
2. Has a solid developer base and no uncertain future
3. Support desktop clients, handheld devices and has a good web interface for those that prefer that.
4. Has a good administration interface

And definitely not in that order ;-)

I am looking forward to the outcome of this. I think that a good replacement for eGroupWare can be a solid plus for eBox and a reason why people would want to set up an eBox server. I don't know all possible solutions out there and I am checking all the different ones that come up in this thread.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 18, 2010, 02:47:02 am
For the most groupware solutions I have seen, you have to install everything. You do not need to use everything, but it will still be active and will be running in the background. So a real modular approach would be appreciated.

PHP scripts take up disk space, not RAM, when not in use. A PHP script has a relatively short time to do whatever it is that it's going to do before it times out. :)

Regarding eGroupWare - anything that is not sufficiently maintained should go out. That totally makes sense.

Agreed. eGroupWare, of course, is still in active development and up-to-date repositories are available, as I mentioned above. The fact that neither Debian nor Ubuntu kept up with recent eGroupWare releases doesn't mean the product doesn't have recent releases or isn't in active development as a community product. :)

EDIT: Just to provide some eGroupWare usage data, let me add this:

http://www.egroupware-server.org/usage-statistic

Carry on. ;D
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 18, 2010, 10:38:32 am
To some extent I have to agree to the above. On the other hand, whom does a built-in wiki disturbe if he doesn't use it?
Just a short story from real life:
At my recent employer we are doing customer acquisition and we keep all our contacts in a single excel file (which has some nice macros), shared over a windows share. Can you image how often I was getting mad, because somebody overwrote my changes after syncing his/her laptop in the network?? I could explode, but that's no use, the boss refuses to change the system.
Then, yesterday I checked out the Zarafa/SugarCRM demo (http://zmdemo.zarafa.com/) and I thougth I gonna fall from my chair. The two systems share address books and calendars. In our case that would mean: no more double-entering of contacts, no more forgotten appointments because you haven't checked the damn excel sheet for a day.

I know, this is an extreme example, but I am aware of not only one company who work like that. Such a solution would speed up the acquisition in our case approx. 10-15%. To me, this is a consistent solution that lets you focus on your work and not on the tools you are using. THAT is a big difference.

Regarding mobile devices: it would be the whipped cream on the cake to have the system above available on the mobile devices. At least in the Blackberry Enterprise Server you can control everything: what kind of information the device is allowed to sync, you can even wipe the entire device remotely, if it gets stolen. I know, this may sound as a bit of an overkill, but I'm a fan of *complete* solutions.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Mammut on August 19, 2010, 05:50:02 pm
How about kolab? I use it elsewhere and it is for mail, calendar, addressbook, antispam, antivirus extremly good. For webmail kolab uses horde. And it is fast!
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: azteech on August 20, 2010, 01:03:29 am
I too am not surprised that eBox is dropping eGroupware, due to it's complexities in setting it up properly through eBox. I have been trying for several days to get this properly working, and have met with little success.

Having reviewed what others have stated in previous entries, I have to echo their sentiments; though I don't have an adequate solution/recommendation for a suitable replacement; we are still evaluating several other options/solutions but have not found any of them truly suitable, mainly due to little quirks here and there.

What I believe eBox developers really need to do is request input from the community at large -- maintainers and users alike.
Put together a survey letter and ask system integrators, current customers, potential customers, and users of the product

1) what they would like to see in all-in-one management package,
2) what they would like to see in a all-in-one user desktop package solution,
3) what they are currently using to accomplish their job today,
4) what are the future plans for further applications that each one will require,
5) does the customer/future prospect already have a groupware solution in place, that eBox needs to be integrated with?
6) If they have their own groupware solution in place, will they need outside assistance to develop integrated package front-ends, or just ide's/API's/modules that interface with said package that their in-house staff can take and make work, easily?

If the survey is crafted right, what may be derived from it is snap shot of the current market requirements and future trends that eBox may need to go. Does the customer want a solution that integrated all that eBox has to-date, but add to that, the requirements for modules that interface with third party groupware/CRM/ERP/ticketing systems as well.

While the development cycle may be increased, once the requirements have been determined, I believe in the end run you will have a much better product to offer the community, commercial and otherwise.

For now, IMHO, drop the groupware package, and concentrate on the remainder to get 2.0 out the door soonest; then develop the rest.

One other item that sorely needs addressing - Adequate, accurate, and up-to-date documentation. While it would be nice to have it when the product is released, if it followed with-in a few days that would be tolerable.
IMHO, complicated, all-in-one products that are released, without adequate, updated documentation, is just as worthless as software that has not been adequately tested/written/documented. A good example of how not to do this, is the 1.5/1.5-1 release that points only to the 1.4 documentation, even though the 1.5 series is clearly heavily modified, screen snapshots dont' match what product screens show, and customer is left to try to figure things out on their own -- you lose customers/prospects that way.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Marcus on August 20, 2010, 03:48:45 pm
I and my customers will be happy as long that there is an integrated groupware solution that comes with eBox.  

Something that will be supported by either Evolution (Gnome), iPhone and RiM.

Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: nachico on August 23, 2010, 08:37:59 pm
One other item that sorely needs addressing - Adequate, accurate, and up-to-date documentation. While it would be nice to have it when the product is released, if it followed with-in a few days that would be tolerable.
IMHO, complicated, all-in-one products that are released, without adequate, updated documentation, is just as worthless as software that has not been adequately tested/written/documented. A good example of how not to do this, is the 1.5/1.5-1 release that points only to the 1.4 documentation, even though the 1.5 series is clearly heavily modified, screen snapshots dont' match what product screens show, and customer is left to try to figure things out on their own -- you lose customers/prospects that way.

As you should know, and as it is clearly specified in every 1.5/1.5-1 announcement, those are just beta versions, not intended for production environments. You should not use them with your customers.

Keeping the documentation up-to-date is a very time-consuming task and should only be done when it is really needed. At this moment, we are spending a lot of sleepless nights and fun-less week-ends to get the 2.0 doc out as close as possible to the 2.0 release date. Once it is ready, we will still need to translate it to English. We will do our best to have it as soon as possible, but our resources are limited.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: elishughes on August 23, 2010, 09:34:58 pm
...

Anyway, if any of you can contribute with detailed instructions on how
to do a good integration or even code it would be great.


While Ebox / Zentyal is based around tight integration of components, perhaps in the case of something as complicated / full-featured as Zimbra, it would be easier to only integrate the basics and delegate to the normal web UI for any advanced features? http://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/LDAP_Authentication covers using an external LDAP server with Zimbra, which would allow authentication and Global Address List lookups to happen against the main / central / master LDAP in Zentyal, while Zimbra's LDAP is only used for Zimbra-specific things. The Zentyal web interface could be used for managing usernames, passwords and email addresses, while the user would use the Zimbra Admin UI for anything else, including email quotas, domains, away messages and all the other little options Zimbra has in the admin interface (like theme preferences for the Zimbra Web UI, distribution list membership, allow/disallow access to features like briefcase, etc ). We've found Zimbra to be easily the most professional / enterprisey solution for our needs, and will be looking to get it authenticating against Zentyal in our setup. Even if an easier-to-integrate option is chosen for the groupware module, a smaller module that just allows using the Zentyal LDAP to manage the mail attribute for a user without pulling in the entire dependencies for the alternate groupware would be useful.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 25, 2010, 10:05:00 am
How about doing an online survey among the Zentyal users and see what their needs really are? A couple of people are favoring this or that solution, without looking into other products deeply.
If we'd have the result of this survey, we could take a look at different solutions and take the one fitting best.

Come on, don't let this be a biased decision, let's do this well!!
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Sam Graf on August 25, 2010, 05:46:49 pm
I agree that this is an excellent opportunity for Zentyal to collect detailed information on actual user needs and/or implementations. That way the trends would emerge and informed decisions could be made.

On the other hand, at the production end of things, it's not always so easy changing user-facing products just because Zentyal adopts (or drops) support for a given groupware solution. If nothing else, as you mentioned earlier, organizational inertia is a major factor in these kinds of things, for good or ill. Those who need or want "just" a back end for Outlook/Evolution obviously are in an entirely different circumstance than those of us who are already using a more comprehensive knowledge worker approach and solution.

That's partly why I eventually opted to separate out my eBox and groupware solutions. eBox (along with Debian/Ubuntu, despite all the fuss over Ubuntu's dedication to the cloud) clearly wasn't focusing on being a fully-integrated, comprehensive groupware server solution, and I needed continuity and reliability (not to mention support) to keep the peace with the people I work with every day. It was just easier to split the tasks and leave eBox--the "middle man"-- out of it altogether.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Jupiter2 on August 26, 2010, 12:01:39 pm
My suggestion for egroupware replacement:
funambol + citadel.org

Citadel is genuine open source (not linked between 'community' and 'purchased' editions)
long standing project
would provide calendaring features and contacts
can be linked with funambol to provide links to mobile phones, outlook and other data pools

cheers
PS Congrats to developers on 2.0 rc
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Svein Wisnaes on August 26, 2010, 02:39:47 pm
Wow - never heard of Citadel before! Looks interesting!

For me, sync of addressbook is the number one priority. Then calendar. Including sync with handheld devices. Then comes a wiki and some other collaboration tools.

At the bottom comes mail!
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: bbking on August 26, 2010, 03:02:30 pm
Wow - never heard of Citadel before! Looks interesting!

For me, sync of addressbook is the number one priority. Then calendar. Including sync with handheld devices. Then comes a wiki and some other collaboration tools.

At the bottom comes mail!

these are almost the answers to a survey....  ;D
I will put something together and hopefully most users will participate...
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: centaur5 on August 26, 2010, 06:35:04 pm
I would hope that Citadel isn't the choice.  I used Citadel before I started using Ebox and it was a great product but doesn't have very many mature methods to sync with Evolution or Thunderbird as a complete groupware solution.  The web interface is also quite confusing for most people so using that instead of a client isn't fun.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 27, 2010, 04:39:08 pm
Hi all,

First of all, thanks again for all your feedback, it's really appreciated.

I would like to announce that we have already chosen the official replacement for eGroupware in Zentyal. It will be Zarafa and the first beta is going to be included in the new Zentyal 2.0-rc2 installer.

We know that many of you proposed Zimbra, but as we have already mentioned, Zimbra is more a separate appliance than a component that can be integrated with Zentyal. Contrary to that, Zarafa is fully integrable, as its dependencies are the same as the Zentyal ones (Postfix, Apache, ...) and it doesn't includes its own software, which also makes the maintenance more difficult.

Additionally, we feel more comfortable with Zarafa as we have been working with a customer on Zarafa integration and they are very happy with an experimental Zarafa integrated with Zentyal. So far, the feedback has been very positive. For example, the synchronization with mobile devices works out of the box.

Finally, Zarafa provides the most popular features that were used in eGroupware: contacts, calendars, tasks... so we think is perfect as a Groupware module.

Anyhow, we want you to know that we have not forgotten the Zimbra integration that has been proposed by many of you a number of times. One community member has already sent a Zimbra integration HOWTO and we hope to give it a good look soon as well as to be able to include it in the official documentation too.
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: mparic on August 28, 2010, 01:06:41 am
Is the Zarafa module available in 1.5.14 or do we need to reinstall with the 2.0 installer?
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: J. A. Calvo on August 28, 2010, 01:30:21 am
Yes, it is also available in the repository, have a look at this:

http://forum.ebox-platform.com/index.php?topic=4428.msg19617#msg19617
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: Svein Wisnaes on August 28, 2010, 03:45:52 am
All,

Please take a look at this:

http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki/Document/FAQ
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: francesco_r on August 28, 2010, 05:12:50 pm
I'm now returned in this forum after a while and i 'm bit surprised to see that eGroupware was dropped.
I use it in my company from 2005 (version 1.0!) and i have many customers that use this product successfully. I know Zarafa, i like the web ajax interface and the ActiveSync compatibility, but there is one aspect that i don't like: the email messages are stored in proprietary format and not like Dovecot (or Courier) in standard Maildir format.

With Ebox/Zentyal 2.0 who will manage POP3/IMAP email messages? Zarafa with IMAP/POP gateway or still Dovecot?
If Dovecot is still the main IMAP/POP3 server and Zarafa is enabled, the messages received with both apps will be separated?
If send a message with Zarafa, wll i have in Maildir the same message in the "Sent" folder?


Regarding eGroupware, i think that have more advanced calendaring, addressbook and email functions that Zarafa, but for me is not a problem if it's not present by default in Zantyal, i can install later with the official ubuntu packages available in the www.egroupware.org.

For zarafa, i advice you install also this script to enable the LDAP Address Book:
http://www.zarafa.com/integrations/zarafa-2-ldap-integration

Francesco
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: jsalamero on August 28, 2010, 08:09:50 pm
You can have both Zarafa and Dovecot running at the same time, you just select the mail going to Zarafa, others go to Dovecot. Mail sent from/to Zarafa doesn't go to Dovecot so won't be present in your maildir. If you don't enable Zarafa Gateways, you can still using Dovecot for POP3/IMAP :D
Also user quota is shared between both system system. I hope that replies to your questions and we are open to any feedback on this new software integration :)
Title: Re: Planning to drop ebox-egroupware support, volunteers for maintaining it?
Post by: pankajunk on July 28, 2015, 06:05:24 pm
there also hyperoffice as an alternative

http://www.hyperoffice.com/sp