The Obsessive Collaborator

Last week Zoho, the online office applications suite, launched its new Wiki service. I have been quite impressed with Zoho's online office offerings, and as others have noted, their suite (including spreadsheet, word processor, presentation software, organizer, and now their wiki) are all conveniently linked together through one account. They are clearly making moves to advance their suite in the face of other giants by providing quickview plugins for Firefox and IE, plugins for MS Office applications (on Windows) and even an API for other would be developers. All of this seems to cause a bit of a load under the popularity of Zoho, as evidenced by the responsiveness of their servers, but it is still a pleasing (and free) experience.

The other offering that Zoho has is their Virtual Office. Zoho Virtual Office provides the basic email, calendaring, document sharing, task management, and group organization set of tools. It comes in two flavors - a hosted on-demand version and a self-hosted on-premise version. The on-demand version is free for a single user (kind of useless for groupware) and $9.95 per user per month after that (not cheap). The on-premise version is free for up to 10 users and $295 per year for 25 users. That isn't too bad, certainly satisfying my definition of "free or cheap" for the up to 10 users version and still reasonably priced for 25 users. The free version does not provide SSH or WAP access, but otherwise appears to be the same.

I tried out the on-premise version since that is the only that satisfied my criteria. This version is available for both Linux and Windows (it is a java application behind the scenes running in JBoss I think). I chose the Windows version which offered an easy wizard-based install. It didn't take more than a few minutes to get it up and running on my Windows XP test machine. During the installation it asks what port you'd like it to run on (defaulting to 8080), but it easily lets you use a different port. There are no client connections so that is the only port that appears to be used. Internally it connects to a MySql database that it installs, but there are instructions for how to connect it to an existing database should you choose to do so.

Zoho Virtual Office (ZVO) does not use a mail server of its own, and relies on existing email servers for all members of the site. In some ways this is quite refreshing, as I suspect many groups interested in installing ZVO may have some sort of existing email infrastructure that they are looking to expand into full groupware services. Unlike Zimbra that takes over a whole server, and forces users to migrate mail to their system, Zoho would just run on top of or next to existing services. Of course on the other hand if a group is looking to get started from scratch they must install ZVO and another mail server.

When I went to configure the mail services for my test user I found another idiosyncrasy of ZVO. It supports IMAP and POP over SSL, but if you are using an unsigned certificate on your host mail server (as many small organizations do) then you get an unhelpful Java exception when you try to connect to the mail server. A little hunting around and I found that this is a common problem for Java apps, and you can add certificates with the built-in keytool application to Java's keystore. Since ZVO installs its own version of java, that certificate must be added to the correct keystore.

Beyond that, I found ZVO easy to use and administer. Adding users is done through an easy to use administrative console, and while some of the labels are not particularly helpful, it isn't much of a struggle to run for small groups.

As an end user, ZVO provides much of the necessary functionality for group collaboration, but is lacking a lot of the easy of use, UI enhancements, and client connectivity of competitors. Like most of the other component applications, the email application provides an odd mix of rich AJAX interface with traditional popups and slow page refreshes. While AJAX is clearly an overused buzzword that is unnecessarily added to many web applications, in my opinion it is essential to the workflow of calendaring and email. Dynamic previews of email, drag and drop of multiple emails into a folder, and live sorting all facilitate user experience and make organization easy. ZVO's experience reminds one how important these advances are.



There are inline previews (if you can find the hidden icon that you need to click on), but navigating and sorting (by clicking checkboxes and using menus) large volumes of email is cumbersome. It seems as thought he dynamic features are creeping in though, and may in time make this part of the product more competitive.

Using the calendar is a similar experience. Most of the calendar is navigated by clicking hyperlinks and inputting information in popup dialogs.



However, you can add appointments to the weekly (or daily) calendar by clicking on a particular time and adding the title to an inline pointer that pops up.



The monthly calendar also permits addition of appointments in a similar fashion, but since there is not time specified on the calendar it only can add appointments at 8am. Moving appointments requires opening up the popup associated with the appointment. Again, this may seem trivial, but I find quickly moving around appointments with click and drag essential to organization.

The UI inconsistencies abound in ZVO. The desktop that loads on login provides a nice overview of all of your activities.



At the top of the desktop (as there is on most pages) are quick-add links for notes, appointments, etc. Most of them take you to a popup where you have to enter your information, though the notes link brings up the entry inline. The desktop response without refresh to some, but not all, additions.

Perhaps that is sufficient critique of the UI. It certainly is aesthetically pleasing and definitely seems like a work that is progressing in the right direction. There are indeed many other features to like.

The document support is excellent. You can add documents, keep multiple versions, send alerts when they are posted, and even edit some types of documents right inline.



There is also a wiki, that while not as refined as the one contained in the previously mentioned wiki announcement, is ok for single page entries. I found the UI confusing again for multiple page entries, and don't even know if that is possible. The "new page" icon really just clears the current entry.



Finally, what would groupware be without groups? Group management on ZVO is quite easy. There is a separate groups tab in the administrative console where you can create groups and assign members (forgiving the UI idiosyncrasies of searching for group members). I was able to easily create a group, and add resources for that group. All of that information is accessible through a separate desktop for the group.



In the end, there are other groupware offerings that provide more consistent interfaces and greater ease of use for end users. But ZVO has most of the features that one would want in groupware offerings (minus client connectivity) and it is among the easiest to install and maintain, making it particularly useful when there is no system administrator around. A small group could easily install ZVO on a single PC on a LAN and run a group intranet out of the office with little technical expertise. That is something that most of the other offerings can't provide.

Pros

• Easy to install
• Good support of groups
• Connects to existing infrastructure
• Document maintenance and versioning is excellent
• Offers most of the important group applications

Cons

• Doesn't provide its own mail server (this is a pro and a con)
• Inconsistent UI
• Too many popus
• No client support