TABLE OF CONTENTS Understanding Exchange and Outlook Groupware and Calendaring Features
Understanding Linux-Based Groupware and Calendaring Services
Migrating to Linux Groupware / Calendaring Services
Summary
Solutions Fast Track
Frequently Asked Questions
Groupware means many things to many organizations (and vendors). Groupware primarily means calendaring, and in the context of groupware, that means shared schedules. For some, it s just having a web-accessible way to view and edit one s schedule. For others it means having the ability to schedule a meeting with access to the free/busy times of all meeting attendees, sending out a graphically-formatted invitation, and allowing users on multiple platforms to accept/decline the meeting with updates provided to a calendar server.
Another form of groupware is a collaborative content management / development system such as TWiki and other WikiWikiWeb derivatives. Sourceforge is an additional example of a collaborative content development groupware environment. Sourceforge s CVS- and web-based software development and distribution capabilities enable it to host much of the world s open source software.
Groupware also means something else. Because groupware can mean any software that s related to collaboration, almost anything that has to do with electronic communication qualifies as groupware. In this context, e-mail, file sharing, voicemail, fax, and online conferencing are all forms of groupware.
Deploying Linux-based groupware usually requires a LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python) environment. A detailed description of the LAMP framework is outside of the scope of this book, but is a prerequisite for some of the web-based groupware applications described in this chapter.
Complex groupware often...
