Kontact is the KDE entry in the groupware client race. It is the proverbial tortoise in a race with one giant hare, but as the race continues, Kontact improves and evolves at a faster pace than any of its competition. Does that mean Kontact is ready to usurp your current groupware client? Probably not, but it is definately worth a long, hard look. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the features it offers.

Tools and features

Kontact has the usual suspects when it comes to groupware clients: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and todos. But along with these tools are a few surprises you might not expect but will gladly welcome.

• Summary: Overview of everything happening in your Kontact including: Upcoming events, new email, news feeds, etc.
• Notes: An infinite book of digital sticky notes. You can also drag and drop your notes into emails!
• News: Collect your RSS feeds in one place.
• KitchenSync: The universal syncing component.
• Journal: Keep your own digital journal within the confines of Kontact.
• Time Tracker: Keep track of time spent on projects and work.

Kontact can also communicate with many groupware servers. The list includes:

Kolab

SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server

eGroupware

OpenGroupware

Citadel

Microsoft Exchange*

* Support for Exchange is only partially implimented at this point.

Novell Groupwise

Obviously the single most important groupware server work must be done on Exchange. Once Kontact can fully commnicate with an Exchange server, Kontact will find far more support in the Enterprise level.

As far as features are concerned, the list is impressive. Outside of the usual groupware client features, Kontact also includes:

Mail

• GnuPG support built in
• Out of office replies
• Favorites folder
• Certificate manager
• Anti virus/Anti spam/Filters managers built in

Calendar

• Publish calendars
• Timeline/Time spent/What’s next views

Contacts

• Distribution lists
• Crypto settings for individual contacts
• Custom fields

Why you should use Kontact

If you are looking for a groupware client that offers more than the standard features, enables you to keep your life well organized (and Thunderbird isn’t enough for you) then Kontact is for you. You will enjoy the stability Kontact offers as well as the outstanding anti-spam tool (SpamAssassin) and anti-virus tool (ClamAV).

Why you should not use Kontact

Figure 1

If you need full Exchange support look the other way. It will be a while before the Kontact team manages to pull off full support for the most-deployed groupware server. You should also avoid Kontact if you prefer a less-is-more approach to your tools. You will understand completely when you first open up Kontact and see it’s “tools aplenty approach” (As you can see in Figure 1 to the left.).

Final Thoughts

I have used Kontact on and off for a number of years. I’ve seen it grow from an unstable, barely usable afterthought to a full-fledge, business-ready groupware client. Until recently I wouldn’t have recommended Kontact to anyone but the biggest KDE afficionados. Now, however, I think most people will find Kontact on par with most groupware clients. Outside of the lack of Exchange support (which is a deal breaker for many) I can’t see a reason not to give Kontact a try.

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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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