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.

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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.

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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.

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