One such tool for Ubuntu Linux is Ubuntu One. UbuntuOne is not just a music store or a means to sync pictures and music. With UbuntuOne you can also keep your contacts in sync. This is especially easy when you are using Evolution (there is something to be said about using the default applications). In this article I am going to show you how you can keep your Evolution contacts in sync with UbuntuOne so you can use those same contacts on any Evolution groupware suite that happens to be connected to your UbuntuOne account.

First things first

The first thing you have to do is make sure you have yourself a UbuntuOne account. NOTE: For more information on UbuntuOne check out the UbuntuOne content on Ghacks. After you have your account set up make sure you add your machine to your account. To do this open up the UbuntuOne Preferences window (click System > Preferences > UbuntuOne) and then click “Manage account” from the account tab. This will take you to your UbuntuOne account page where you can then add your machine to the account. Leave the UbuntuOne Preferences Window open (you’re not done with it yet).

Once the machine is added click on the Services tab in the UbuntuOne Preferences window. In this tab you will see a few services that are available for the account (Bookmarks, Broadcast Message Archive, Contacts, File Syncronization). You will need to make sure Contacts is checked (You can enable any of those services you want of course).

Now that you have the service set up, let’s start working with Evolution.

Evolution

Click on the Contacts tool in Evolution. You should see two different sets of contacts by default:

• CouchDB (UbuntuOne)
• On This Computer (Personal)

CouchDB is a document-oriented database that UbuntuOne uses for contacts. Select that database (click UbuntuOne) and see if you have any contacts listed. If not you need to copy your contacts from Personal to UbuntuOne. To do this follow these steps:

1. Select the Personal contacts by clicking Personal.
2. Click Actions > Copy all contacts to…
3. Select UbuntuOne.
4. Click OK.
5. Walk through the various steps either adding or merging a contact to ensure you don’t duplicate your contacts.

Now you have to start using the UbuntuOne contacts as your default. If you do not do this you will continue to add contacts to your Personal contacts which will not be automatically migrated to your UbuntuOne contacts. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on the UbuntuOne address book.
2. Righ-click the UbuntuOne contacts and select Properties.
3. Check “Mark as default address book”.
4. Make sure Desktop CouchDB is selected under Server.
5. Click OK.

That’s it! You will want to do the same thing for all of your machines that use UbuntuOne and you want to keep your contacts in sync.

Final thoughts

Keeping your contacts in sync will go a long way to keep you from having to always take extra steps to make your work more efficient. If your machine is already attached to your UbuntuOne account, it’s a no-brainer to make the switch to syncing your Evolution contacts.

So, in this article I am going to reveal some of the little secrets you may not have discovered with Evolution yet. Hopefully, after reading this, you will come away using one or two of these.

Assumptions

This article will assume you already have Evolution up and running and are familiar with it’s normal use. That is the only assumption made.

Search folders

Figure 2

Do you do a lot of searching through your email? If you do you might want to consider creating search folders. A search folder is a hybrid between a filter and a folder. Basically you set up a search folder and that folder will constantly be searching your mail for messages that meet your criteria. The main difference between a filter and a search folder is that the email that “lives” in a search folder isn’t actually moved there so you can have emails that span across multiple search folders (so long as they meet each folders criteria.).

To set up a search folder click Search > Create Folder From Search. This will start a filter-like “wizard” (see Figure 1) to walk you through the creation of the search folder. As you can see, in Figure 1, I am creating a search folder to contain search results of any incoming email with a subject that contains the phrase “Author notification”.  As soon as that wizard is finished the Notification folder is under Search Folders and contains 30 hits.

Saved searches

In the same vein as the Search Folders, you can also save a search criteria. To do this follow these steps:

1. Run a search as you would normally.
2. Click Search > Save Search.
3. In the new window give the search a name and click OK.

To use this search click the Search menu and select, from the bottom of the menu, the search you want to perform.

Mailing lists

Did you know you can subscribe to mailing lists or get information about mailing lists right from evolution? If you have an email from a mailing list, do the following:

Select that email (from the list).

Click Message > Mailing List and look through the sub-menu.

From that Mailing List sub-menu you can:

• Get list usage information.
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe to list.
• Post message to list.
• Contact list owner.
• Get list archive.

Very handy if you like your mailing lists.

Create from

From a simple email you can create an Event, Meeting, Task, or Memo. All you have to do is select the email, right click the email, and select any of the  Create entries from near the bottom of the menu.

Final thoughts

There you have it…a few lesser known features of Evolution. Although they are not show stoppers or deal breakers, these features do come in handy quite often. In future articles we’ll revisit this topic and come up with more lesser known features.

Linux, of course, has no shortage of tools to keep track of your tasks. In fact, one might say Linux has too many todo list tools. So I thought I would show off a few of the lesser known tools so you might expand your own repertoire. I will even show you an ncurses based todo list tool for those of you who prefer to not bog yourself down with GUI tools. Enough said. We all have too much to do, so let’s get on with the tools.

Figure 1

tudu

I have to show this one off first. The tudu tool is the ncurses based to do list that will make any Alpine/Nano lover happy as a clam. This tool is very simple to use. You can install it with a command like apt-get install tudu , or you can find it in your Add/Remove Software tool. Once installed, you use the tool from a terminal window and issue the command tudu. When you open the tool you will see a single task that you can delete and then start adding your own. You add/edit tasks with commands.

tudu has a very unique command structure. The more handy commands are:

• f – Set the prioroity of a task.
• h – Move the cursor one level out in the tree hierarchy.
• l – Move the cursor one level in in the tree heirarchy.
• j – Move to the next task.
• k – Move to the previous task.
• J – Move to one position down.
• K – Move to one position up.
• m – Mark a task done.
• dd – Delete a task.
• o – Add a new task.
• t – Set the priority of a task

You can lean many more commands from the man page for tudu. Now let’s go back to GUI.

Figure 1

Tasks

It doesn’t get much more simple than the tasks tool. You will find this in your Add/Remove Software tool (and most likely it will be labeled tasks-hildon). What you can do with this tool is simple: You add and remove tasks. Oddly enough, it doesn’t have all the “bells and whistles” that tudu has, but it will be easier for many to use. There are some quirks involved with this tool.

Although you are able to create Categories, the only way to do so is after you have created a task. To create a task you enter the text in the New task… text are and hit Enter. Once you have done that double-click on the task you created to open up the task properties. Within the task properties you can click the Category drop-down and select New Group. This will allow you to create a new Category. There is one problem. As of this writing, as soon as you create the new group, Tasks will segfault and close. You can open it back up and everything you just created will still be there.

Outside of that odd segfaulting, Tasks is a nice little application. You can prioritize your tasks, give them deadlines, and even add links and notes.

Other task tools to consider

Of course you can’t think about todo/task tools without looking at your integrated groupware tools. Both Kontact and Evolution have outstanding task tools. You can even look at the Thunderbird plugin Sunbird which has a good tasks tool. There are so many of these tools to choose from. So if you’re looking to keep your tasks organized in Linux, you might need a todo list to help you decide with todo list to choose!

Zarafa is an open source collaborative software solution meant to be an alternative to Exchange. It works like Exchange, includes a web interface that has the same look and feel as Exchange, and even integrates with Outlook! Zarafa integrates with your existing mail server and includes IMAP4 and a POP3 gateway as well as an iCal/CalDAV gateway. In this article I am going to show you how to get this server up and running quickly and easily on top of a running Fedora 13 distribution that includes a working Apache server.
Features at a glance

Before we get into the installation, let’s take a quick look at the feature list Zarafa offers:

• Addressbook
• Calendar
• Notes
• Tasks
• Personal Folders / Public Outlook Folders
• Permissions for every User and Folder configurable
• Meeting invitation and free/busy option
• Resources planning
• POP3
• IMAP
• iCalendar
• Caldav
• synchronization via Z-push
• BlackBerry integration over BES
• Out-of-office message
• Brick-level backup
• Single sign-on

So it looks like there’s very little this server is actually missing eh? That’s right. Now, let’s get this baby installed.

Installation

As I mentioned earlier, Zarafa will need a working email system. You can integrate Zarafa into Postfix by adding the following line to the /etc/postfix/main.cf file:

mailbox_command = /usr/bin/zarafa-dagent “$USER”

You will also need to make sure users are in the Zarafa database as well as the Unix database on the system.

Now, to the installation of Zarafa itself. This is done completely via the command line, so open up a terminal window. The first thing you need to do (after you su to the root user) is to install the system with the command:

yum install zarafa zarafa-webaccess

This command should pick up any dependencies necessary to complete the installation. Depending upon the speed of your machine and network connection, this could take some time.

Once the installation is completed you need to issue a few commands:

• service zarafa-server start
• service zarafa-gateway start
• service zarafa-spooler start

The above three commands will start all of the necessary services for the Zarafa system. Now you need to create a public store which is done with the command:

zarafa-admin -s

Once the store is complete you need to create a test user with the command:

zarafa-admin -c USERNAME -e USERNAME@localhost -f “Zarafa Tester” -p PASSWORD

Where everything in ALL CAPS is user specific.

Now restart your web server with the command:

service httpd restart

It is now time to log in. Point your browser to http://localhost/webaccess and you will see the glorious-ness that is Zarafa (see Figure 1). As you can see the web interface looks a lot like that of the Exchange web access page. And the usage is very similar as well.

This of course doesn’t set up a complete, usable experience. In order to get email delivered into Zarafa you will need to employ the zarafa-dagent with your local mailer (as I mentioned earlier with the Postfix example).

Final thoughts

Zarafa looks extremely promising. It’s easy to install, offers full functionality (nearly equal to that of Exchange), and is open source. Give Zarafa a go and see if you think it can be an open source Exchange “killer”.

This task isn’t terribly difficult, but does require a bit of setup in order to get the system working properly. But once you have this up and running, you will find Evolution to have one of the more reliable junk filters around.

What you will need

Obviously you will need a working installation of Evolution. For the purpose of this article, the release of Evolution is 2.28.3. The junk system I will be using is Bogofilter. So let’s first make sure we have everything installed. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool and do the following:

1. Search for “bogofilter” (no quotes).
2. Mark Bogofilter for installation.
3. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. You are now ready to set Evolution up to start keeping Junk mail from that Inbox. Let’s do just that.

Configuring Evolution

Figure 1

Open up Evolution and then click Edit > Preferences and then click on the Mail Preferences section. Here you will find the Junk tab (see Figure 1). Here are the settings you need to make sure are set:

Check incoming messages for junk: Make sure this checkbox is checked.

Check custom headers for junk: Make sure this is checked and looks similar to that you see in Figure 1.

Do not mark messages as junk if sender is in my address book: This will prevent false-positives for known safe addresses.

Default junk plugin: Set this to Bogofilter.

Bogofilter Options: Make sure Convert message text to Unicode is set.

Once you have these options set you should be good to go….almost. As with any junk filter, it is best to train the system before you try to rely on it. To do this I like to keep a folder of known junk to ease in the training. To do this, follow these steps:

• Import the junk folder into Evolution
• Open up the Junk that folder
• Highlight all of the email in that folder.
• Mark of that email as junk.

Now go back to your Inbox and follow these steps:

1. Make sure there is zero junk left in your Inbox.
2. Highlight all of the email.
3. Mark of this email as Not Junk.

Now your Bogofilter is close to being trained. As it works it will continue to train. You might want to go through the Junk filter every once in a while to make sure there were no false-positives that slipped through the system. If you do find one make sure you mark it as not junk.

The nice thing about Evolution and Junk mail is that it defaults to placing junk mail in the Junk folder. This way you always know where junk has been sent and you don’t have to worry about creating a new junk folder.

Final thoughts

Junk email has never been easier to handle than it is with Evolution. With the help of Bogofilter, your Evolution groupware Inbox will be Junk-free in no time.

You will be surprised to see how simple this set up is…as I will show you in this article.

Assumptions

Obviously the main assumption here is that you have an account already configured on your Exchange server. I will also make the assumption that you have added your machine to your domain. If you have not added your machine to the domain, check out my article “Join a Ubuntu machine to a Windows domain“. Having your machine on the domain will make life a lot easier for you. Finally, I will also assume you have Evolution already installed on your machine.

What you need to install

There is only one missing piece you need to install on your Linux machine. To do this follow these steps:

1. Open up the Synaptic package manager.
2. Search for “mapi” (no quotes).
3. Mark the package evolution-mapi for installation.
4. Allow Synaptic to pick up all of the dependencies.
5. Click Apply to install.
6. Wait for the install to finish.
7. Close Synaptic.

You are now ready to configure Evolution for your Exchange 2007 server.

Configuration

Figure 1

Open up Evolution then click Edit > Preferences > Mail Accounts > Add. This will open up the new account wizard where you will need to walk through the steps of adding an Exchange MAPI account. Most of the steps are fairly straight-forward. In fact, there is only one step where you might need a bit of help. Once you get to the Receiving Email step of the wizard you will want to set up the following:

• Server Type: Exchange MAPI
• Server: It will be preferable to use the name (and not IP address) of your server. If this is on the domain, just use the name of the server.
• Username: Your username for your Exchange account.
• Domain name: The domain name you are on.

Once you have configured this it is very important that you click the Authenticate button. This will test your configuration. You will be prompted for your password and, upons success, will be brought back to this same screen (see Figure 1). Now click the Forward button and you can continue on. The rest of the set up should not be a problem.

After configuration is complete Evolution will then want to sync with your Exchange server. Upon completion of the sync you will find all of your email as well as you calendar and contacts available. You will notice both your Local inbox as well as your Exchange inbox are available!

Final thoughts

If you have been following closely, you will most likely notice how the argument against Linux in the buisness world is becoming less and less valid. Being able to connect to your Exchange server with Evolution makes that argument even less relevant.

In this article I am going to walk you through the section of the eGroupware installation that takes care of the final stages of the eGroupware installation. Once you are done with that, your eGroupware site will be ready to go.

Where are we?

Figure 1

The last thing you did was create the configuration file /var/www/egroupware/header.inc.php. Now it’s a matter of finishing up the installation from a page that is set up in stages (see Figure 1). You will have logged in by now and are ready to take care of the first stage in this final step.

Stage 1: The first stage is to create the database. You have to supply the charset, DB root username, and DB root password. For the charset, just let it as the default. The username/password will be for the username that can connect to the database you created for this setup. Once you have entered that information click Create Database. You should get the warning: Your database is working, but you don’t have any applications installed. When you do get that warning you will also see a button labeled Install all applications. You are now ready to click that button.

Stage 2: When you click the Install all applications button. When this

Figure 2

stage finishes you should see If you did not receive any errors, your applications have been installed. At that point click the Re-check my installation button. Now your setup page should look similar to that in Figure 2. As you can see there are only two stages left in the installation.

Stage 3: As you can see, in the Step 2 Configuration section we have neglected to create a couple of directories. This is simple. Open up a console window and issue the following commands:

• sudo mkdir /opt/egroupware
• sudo mkdir /opt/egroupware/default/
• sudo mkdir /opt/egroupware/default/files
• sudo mkdir /opt/egroupware/default/backup
• sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/egroupware

Now, oddly enough, we need to click on the Edit Current Configuration button and enter the following:

Full path for users and group files: /opt/egroupware/default/files

Full path to the backup directory: /opt/egroupware/default/backup

Click Save and you should be complete. Of course those directories could have been created during the prerequisite stage of the install, but I wanted to highlight how you could go back and re-configure at any stage of the installation. NOTE: If there are any other issues in your Current Configuration, now is the time to take care of them.

Stage 4: The final step is to click on the Create an Admin Account button. When you click on that you only need fill out the information for the admin account. All of the information is straight forward. You will notice two check boxes. One is to allow the admin access to all installed applications. Although they warn you this can be annoying, I tend to prefer it this way so my admin user can see everything. You can also opt to have eGroupware create demo accounts. This is users choice. You will be creating accounts anyway – so this is up to you.

That should do it. When you click Save on this you should have all green checks and be ready to log into your eGroupware installation. You will find a TON of stuff to configure now. Start playing around and see what eGroupware has to offer.

Recently I revisited the installation of eGroupware and thought I should give a bit more detail on the procedure of installing this rather challenging tool. So in this article I will walk you through the steps on installing eGroupware.

Download and unpack and prerequisites

I will assume you have a working Apache and MySQL installation, on your Linux server,  ready to go. If not, go ahead and take care of that major prerequisite first. Once you have completed that task you are ready to being. Almost. There are still a few other prerequisites to get out of the way. You will want to fire up Synaptic (or whatever package manager you use) and make sure you have the following installed:

• PHP
• php-pear
• An SMTP server (Postfix is a good choice)
• IMAP server (Dovecot is a good choice)

There will also be a LOT of pear extensions to install – we will deal with those in a moment. Before going any further create the database you intend on using (let’s stick with the name egroupware). If you’re not sure how to create the database give my article “Complete database administration with MySQL Workbench” a read.

Now it’s time. move the the downloaded tar file for eGroupware into the /var/www/ directory and then unpack it with the commands:

bunzip2 eGroupware-XXX.tar.bz2

Where XXX is the release number.

tar xvzf eGroupware-XXX.tar

Where XXX is the release number.

You will now have a newly created directory /var/www/egroupware. Point your browser to http://ADDRESS_TO_SERVER/egroupware and you will begin the installation process. This is where it gets fun. On the first page you will have a link that allows you to run the installation tests. Click that and you will be presented with a long list of items. Each of these items will be preceded by either a green check, a yellow lightning bolt, or a red X. Anything marked with a red X MUST be resolved. Yellow lightning bolts are only warnings. Some of these you can ignore (for instance features you know you won’t use). The green checks – those are all right.

Most likely you will need to deal with some php issues and some Pear modules. Let’s examine each.

PHP

In the directory /etc/php5/apache2/ is the main php configuration file (php.ini). You will need to make some modifications to this file in order for the installation to work. Typically the modifications you will need to deal with are:

upload_max_filesize >= 8M By default PHP has a 2MB upload limit. You will need to change that.

mbstring.func_overload = 7 By default this is set to 0. You will need to change this.

Pear

Now you will enjoy quite a few pear module installations. This is hit or miss on how many your system will have installed by default. What you need is the following:

• HTTP_WebDAV_Server
• Net_Socket
• Auth_SASL
• Net_IMAP
• Net_Sieve
• XML_Feed_Parser
• Log

Some of these modules can be found in Synaptic. The best way to locate them is do a search for “pear” (No quotes) and then mark the necessary modules for installation (and then, of course, install them). Those that you do not find you will have to install from the command line, like so:

sudo pear install MODULE_NAME

Typically these install very quickly.

You should now be at the point where all of the X’s are gone and all of the necessary warnings have been replaced with green checks as well. The next step is to click Continue with the Header Admin. That we will deal with in our next article.

Final thoughts

It may seem like eGroupware is a pain to install. It’s not really as bad as some I have tried to work with. But it is, most certainly, worth the effort.

But how many people can actually rattle off the names of five linux-based office applications? I would venture to say not many. And that’s where I come in. In this article I will list five must-have office applications that will allow you to introduce Linux into your office. Naturally this list won’t be perfect for everyone. There will always be those with proprietary needs that are simply not met by Linux. But for those who needs are more standard, this list is just for you.

1. OpenOffice. This is the obvious answer. What office isn’t complete without and office suite? How can you do you work without the ability to manage documents? But since this entry to this list is so obvious I will offer up this tip. Instead of going with the standard OpenOffice, give Go-OO a try. This office suite offers a few benefits that OpenOffice.org does not. First it has built in OpenXML support. It also offers: Better Microsoft binary support, macro fidelity, Visio embedded object support, a Solver component for Calc, and much more.

2. Kontact. I have discussed Evolution in a previous article (Replace Outlook With Evolution: An Open Source Groupware Suite) and so I thought I should offer another alternative groupware suite. And Kontact is quite a groupware suite. Kontact is the KDE groupware suite that offers quite a bit more than your average suite of tools: Email, Calendar, Todos, Contacts, RSS feeds, a Journal, Notebooks, Popup Notes, Time Tracker, and Syncing. Kontact supports groupware servers such as: Kolab, OpenXChange, eGroupware, OpenGroupware, Citadel, Exchange Server 2000, and Novell Groupwise 6.5. Kontact supports full drag and drop support with the KDE desktop.

3. Planner. This is one of the most useful of all project management tools available for open source. But Planner is not just for the GNOME desktop and Linux. A Windows installer has been created which makes Planner even more justifiable as one of the most important open source office tools. Planner handles resources, resource usage, Gantt charts, projects, and more. If you have a need for project management (and what office doesn’t), Planner is the tool you are looking for.

4. Meeting Room Booking System. Meeting Room Booking System is a web-based booking system for rooms, resources, employees, etc. MRBS is very easy to use, reliable, and flexible. I have deployed this system for various types of companies as a room reservation system, a client reservation system, a resource booking system, and more. It has a very small footprint, is written in PHP, and can use either a MySQL or Postgresql database. MRBS can be set up to automatically notify, via email, when a room/resource/employee has been booked.

5. Firefox. I hesitate to mention a piece of software that is so well known, but it goes without saying you can do little to no work without a browser these days. And what better browser to mention than Firefox. But instead of just mentioning the browser, I thought I’d share a couple of outstanding office-related firefox extensions. Zotero is an extension that enables you to easily collect, manage, and cite research sources. DataAnalytics is an extension that helps you import, analyze, and graphing of data. What can this do? Imagine being able to extract data from a web site tables and actually use it.

And there you have it. Five must-have open source office applications. Do you have an application that is a must-have that is not on this list? If so, share it with us.

Evolution offers the following features:

• Email
• Shared (and private) calendars
• Tasks/Todos
• Contact management
• Support for S/MIME
• Pidgin integration
• SpamAssassin integration
• Fully GNOME integration
• Offline IMAP support
• Integrated GPG
• Support for Groupwise and Evolution built in
• Multiple account support

As you can see, Evolution offers everything you would want/need in a groupware suite. To top that off, the interface is very user-friendly.

To open up Evolution look in the Internet entry in the GNOME start menu. In that entry you should see the Evolution shortcut. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple setup wizard. This wizard will set up your default email address. Don’t worry, once you have completed the set up you can go back into accounts and set up as many email accounts as you wish.

Evolution Mail client

Evolution will default to the Mail application. As you can see, in the image to the right, The Evolution Mail client looks very familiar. The Evolution UI was created in such a way that users would have an instant familiarity. If you have used Outlook, the learning curve is practically /dev/null.

And Evolution is very easy to configure. From the Edit menu you will find the Preferences entry. Click that and the Preferences window will open up offering you every possible configuration you will need. The Preferences window is also where you add new accounts.

Evolution Preferences Window

In order to set up a new account you only have to click the Add button and proceed through the setup wizard again.

Another feature unique to Evolution is the plugin system. If you open the Edit menu you will see the Plugin entry. When you click on this entry you will open up the plugin window where you can enable/disable various plugins included with Evolution. But don’t think you are limited to only the included plugins. Doing a Google search you will see that there are quite a few worthy plugins to add. One such plugin is an RSS reader for Evolution. Some of these plugins (like the RSS reader) can be installed easily. In Fedora I simply run yum install evolution-rss and the plugin is automatically installed.

RSS Reader

The image to the left shows the gHacks RSS feed in Evolution. An outstanding news feed read in an outstanding groupware client.

Final Thoughts

I have been using Evolution since it’s beta release days. It was an incredible piece of software from the beginning and remains an incredible piece of softare. If you are looking for an open source groupware suite, it is time you evolved.

What eGroupware DOES have

The feature list of eGroupware looks like this:

• Calendar (including support for groups, resources, and contacts)

• Contact manager (support for both SQL or LDAP)

• Integrated IMAP mail client

• Infolog (tasks and notes)

• Project Management

• Resource and inventory management

• File manager

• Web based authoring system

• Time tracker

• Bug Tracker

• Wiki

• Knowledge base

• On demand support from Stylite

What eGroupware does NOT have

• Support from Microsoft

• Costly licensing

Installing eGroupware

The installation of eGroupware is what will stop many users from deploying eGroupware.  The first requirement is to have a LAMP server up and running. Once that is up you’ll need to download the correct file. You can install eGroupware from source or from a binary file such as an rpm file. After you have installed the system you need to point your browser to http://DOMAIN_OR_IP/egroupware/setup/index.php and finish up the installation. At this point you will be given instructions regarding what is missing from your installation in order to continue.

Of course that is a rather minimal installation description, but it gives you an understanding of how the system is installed.

Who Would eGroupware Best Fit?

The eGroupware suite would best fit any business or enterprise who is looking for a cost-effective replacement for Exchange and is willing to put the time into installation. eGroupware is also perfect for any situation looking for an Exchange-like groupware that offers more features and better reliability.

Who Would eGroupware Not Fit?

The obvious answer to that is an enterprise with an IT staff having zero knowledge of Linux. However, it must be noted that eGroupware can be installed on an IIS server so this isn’t necessarily a credible factor. The real factor that could hinder adoption of eGroupware is if your enterprise is Microsoft-only. If your company has already spent the budget on Exchange servers and licenses they will be less likely to agree on adopting an all together different technology. Those licenses, however, will expire so this would be an ideal time to create a testing environment for eGroupware so that, when the time comes, you will have plenty to show the powers that be how well a free, open source solution can be.

Final Thoughts

eGroupware is one of those tools that will quickly become one of your favorites even if only because of the cost savings it offers. But don’t think the only reason to adopt eGroupware is cost. eGroupware is as powerful and as flexible as anything Microsoft can offer in the groupware category.