Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [145]
Figure 8-47. Sending your vCard
Figure 8-48. Receiving a vCard
As we have seen, it is quite possible to carry out basic group organization using only email mechanisms. This has two advantages: no groupware server is needed, and the operations work across different platforms and clients. On the other hand, things such as sharing a common calendar between several people or allowing read-only access to centrally managed information are not easily done with this scheme. This is where a groupware server starts to make sense.
Groupware Server Solutions
Linux is supported as a platform by a wide range of groupware server solutions, including both open source projects and proprietary products. They all offer a core set of functionality for email, calendaring, and address and task management, but also contain various extensions for things such as resource management, time tracking, and even project planning. In general, these systems can be extended with custom components to offer functionality that is not provided by the standard package. Such components are sometimes available from the creators themselves, but are also often developed by third-party developers or as part of individual consulting projects.
The following sections describe the most well-known solutions available as free software at the time of this writing, with their respective focus areas and peculiarities.
Kolab
The Kolab project grew out of a contract given by the German Federal Agency of IT Security to a group of companies to build a groupware solution accessible by both Outlook on Microsoft Windows and a KDE client on Linux. The developers created a sequence of concept documents and reference server implementations (called Kolab 1 and Kolab 2). They also built the abilitity to access these servers and operate on their data into the KDE Kontact suite client. Additionally, a closed-source plug-in for MS Outlook and a web-based client were developed.
The server implementation (Kolab 2) includes popular free software server components such as the Cyrus IMAP server for mail storage, the Postfix mail transfer agent, OpenLDAP as a directory service, and the Apache web server. It is a complete, standalone system that installs itself from scratch onto a basic Linux machine without any outside dependencies. The Kolab server is unique in that it does not store the groupware data in a relational database, like many of the others do, but instead uses mail folders inside the IMAP server for storage. Finally, it provides a unified management interface, written in PHP, to the components.
The Kolab server allows users to share calendars and contact folders with each other using fine-grained permissions for groups or individual people. It also offers management of distribution lists and resources such as rooms or cars, and the ability to check the free or busy state of people and resources. There is also a form of delegated authority, in which people can work on behalf of others, such as a secretary acting on behalf of his boss.
You can find more about Kolab at http://www.kolab.org.
OpenGroupware.org
The groupware server project (nicknamed OGo) came into being when Skyrix Software AG put its established commercial product under free software licenses and continued as the most significant contributor in the community to improve the product. This move worked out nicely for the company, as both its business and the groupware server project have been thriving ever since.
The OGo server provides a web-based interface to email, calendaring,