Office scheduling software

[Dunepilot]

Hi all,

I work in a predominantly Windows 98/ XP small office (12 users or so) with A Windows 2K server (plus my iBook and soon a Mac Mini on the network). We need to buy some sort of software that will run across the network so that we can keep track of each others' whereabouts, and maybe add notes or whatever.

Does anyone know of a good product similar to this that they use, and that they'd recommend for a small-ish office?

Cheers
Dune

 

[iGary]

We're all Mac-Heads here in the office, with .Mac accounts, so we just publish our work calendars from iCal a few times a week and send eachother ther links.

Prolly doesn't help, but it works for us.

 

[mpw]

Are you using MS Office? If so then I'd find it had to beat Outlook for your colleagues and Entourage for you with an Exchange Server.

However I'm a user not a network or IT guy so I don't know how much of a pain the back office side is.

 

[Dunepilot]

We're all Mac-Heads here in the office, with .Mac accounts, so we just publish our work calendars from iCal a few times a week and send eachother ther links.

Prolly doesn't help, but it works for us.

I know that seems like a solution for a mac-oriented office, but I'm the only person here with a mac/.mac account, so we really need something cross-platform. But thanks for participating anyway.

Anybody else?

 

[Dunepilot]

Are you using MS Office? If so then I'd find it had to beat Outlook for your colleagues and Entourage for you with an Exchange Server.

However I'm a user not a network or IT guy so I don't know how much of a pain the back office side is.

Our email is done by a programme called Mailtraq rather than Exchange. I guess we could pay someone to migrate our email to Exchange and buy an Exchange license. I'm not sure how difficult this would be...

 

[mkrishnan]

Our email is done by a programme called Mailtraq rather than Exchange. I guess we could pay someone to migrate our email to Exchange and buy an Exchange license. I'm not sure how difficult this would be...

So if you run an exchange server, is it required that it handle your e-mail as well as other Outlook aspects, or can't it just handle your non-email demands? Or do you not use Outlook at all?

 

[nichos]

There's always Mozilla Calendar which requires you to connect to a webDAV server if you want to be able to share calendars.
The other option I know of (and the one I use) is a web-based calendar, phpGroupware. Though it's pretty beta, I've yet to have any troubles with it. It requires you to have a server.
The above are all free.
Good luck

 

[mkrishnan]

There's always Mozilla Calendar which requires you to connect to a webDAV server if you want to be able to share calendars.

Hmmmm...based on iCal...interesting. Doesn't iCal in Tiger come with some kind of way to share calendars without a server? (Not a solution to the OP's issue, just a random aside.)

 

[nichos]

Hmmmm...based on iCal...interesting. Doesn't iCal in Tiger come with some kind of way to share calendars without a server? (Not a solution to the OP's issue, just a random aside.)

Good point, I didn't even look at iCal. In the Calendar menu, there is a "publish" option. You could publish your ical to a webDAV server, and the PC users could publish their mozilla, sunbird, whatever webDAV compliant calendar to the same server. problem solved Ofcourse, youd a need webDAV server. I'd say go over to the local university, some CS students should be able to do it for small fee, or no fee at all, just for the experience. Good luck.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Good point, I didn't even look at iCal. In the Calendar menu, there is a "publish" option. You could publish your ical to a webDAV server, and the PC users could publish their mozilla, sunbird, whatever webDAV compliant calendar to the same server. problem solved Ofcourse, youd a need webDAV server. I'd say go over to the local university, some CS students should be able to do it for small fee, or no fee at all, just for the experience. Good luck.

We're doing this now at our nonprofit, using an XServe G4/1GHz as the WebDav server. Since we're 90% Macs, the iCal part works pretty smoothly. However, I have to say that Sunbird is nowhere nearly as robust on the Windows platforms as iCal is on the Macs. Remember, Mozilla just released Sunbird version .2 as the first public non-beta.

If I recall, NowUpToDate just released a Windows version - it's pricy (which is why we're not using it), but seems to get good reviews.

 

[PlaceofDis]

i just downloaded sunbird, i hadn't tried it since .1, and yeah its definitely nowhere as robust, i dont know if the Mozilla Calender is any better though....