While updates haven't been very frequent (to say the least), that doesn't mean I have stopped my obsession with collaboration. My two latest efforts are an update to Zimbra 5.0 (in both the FOSS edition and the paid edition), and a start with DekiWiki. While both of these experiences brought with them some installation and upgrade pitfalls, I am overall impressed with both products.
Zimbra 5.0.1 I have been using Zimbra for over a year now. Zimbra's purchase by Yahoo hasn't had a noticeable impact on the product (if you discount the "accidental" inclusion of a Yahoo search feature in one of the new skins). I use the FOSS version of Zimbra on a RHEL 4 VMware virtual machine at home, and the commercial version on a RHEL4 server at work. Both are great, and this update actually brings the functionality of the commercial and FOSS versions closer together.
Version 5.0 introduces many new features. Most notable among them are full-fledged CalDav support, a briefcase that provides a useful interface to online documents, much more flexible sharing, IM, tasks and a totally reworked infrastructure that feels a lot snappier. The interface itself has some more polish, but is fairly similar to 4.5, with the exception of the inclusion of an iPhone/iPod Touch interface that is fantastic.
From a Mac User's perspective I think the biggest update is great CalDav integration with iCal for Mac OS X 10.5. When I first fired up my Mac after updating the server to 5.0.1, iCal somehow detected that I was connected to CalDav server (presumably through my email client settings) and just set up the CalDav client. I thought that all my old events had been duplicated with the iSync conduit, but in fact they were there twice because the old iSync calendar was turned on as was the new CalDav version. Subsequently I have turned off the iSync conduit for calendar and only use it with Address Book.
There are still quite a number of small bugs, judging by the traffic on the forums. I ran into one that threw me for a loop for a few hours after upgrading both servers. The major change in architecture (from Tomcat to Jetty) seems to have resulted in a change in the way that certificates are handled, and migrating certificates from 4.5.X to 5.0 and 5.0.1 has not gone well. I ran into this problem as well. It turned out I needed to destroy my old certificates for all to work well in the end. But the forums are very active and it didn't take long to figure that out.
Outlook still requires the Exchange substitute that comes with the commercial version (though there are works on progress providing CalDav support in Outlook). Though on Windows one could use the Sunbird calendar. There is also a beta of a plugin for Evolution on Linux.
Overall Zimbra is top notch for a mail and calendar server and seems to be the most platform agnostic of any I have found.
Deki Wiki I'm still in the early stages of experimenting with DekiWiki. Deki Wiki is the most novice-friendly wiki that I've found. It is very polished, provides a WYSIWYG interface for editing, supports attachments, and sophisticated permissions. While there are a number of "WYSIWYG" wikis, most of them feel like (probably because they are) grafts of WYSIWYG editors onto standard wiki format text boxes. This is not the case for Deki Wiki where WYSIWYG feels central.
The architecture for Deki Wiki is a bit unusual. It is your standard LAMP (WAMP) with the additional requirement of Mono/.Net 2.0. This is a very strange thing to do IMHO. It means that it isn't quite at home on either Linux or Windows. I had stayed away from it for this reason for some time. But now they make an easy to install and update VMware image that you can just drop in. I thought that was my opportunity to give it a whirl.
Configuration for running on a LAN was a breeze. It was essentially a wizard setup. Follow a few prompts and log in to the DHCP assigned address. The End. Turning this into an Internet accessible server, was then a bit of a chore. Some command line tools to change to a static IP which was well documented on the site. I also used an additional pointer from the forums. I didn't want to use up a real IP address, so I set about learning Apache Proxy (and reverse proxy) procedures. I found this tutorial and this one really helpful. This got me 90% of the way there, but some links weren't being rewritten correctly, until I found documentation on ProxyHTMLLinks, which was missing.
Success! At least for most operations. I'm still troubleshooting and experimenting and will try to offer a more complete review soon.
Zimbra 5.0.1 I have been using Zimbra for over a year now. Zimbra's purchase by Yahoo hasn't had a noticeable impact on the product (if you discount the "accidental" inclusion of a Yahoo search feature in one of the new skins). I use the FOSS version of Zimbra on a RHEL 4 VMware virtual machine at home, and the commercial version on a RHEL4 server at work. Both are great, and this update actually brings the functionality of the commercial and FOSS versions closer together.
Version 5.0 introduces many new features. Most notable among them are full-fledged CalDav support, a briefcase that provides a useful interface to online documents, much more flexible sharing, IM, tasks and a totally reworked infrastructure that feels a lot snappier. The interface itself has some more polish, but is fairly similar to 4.5, with the exception of the inclusion of an iPhone/iPod Touch interface that is fantastic.
From a Mac User's perspective I think the biggest update is great CalDav integration with iCal for Mac OS X 10.5. When I first fired up my Mac after updating the server to 5.0.1, iCal somehow detected that I was connected to CalDav server (presumably through my email client settings) and just set up the CalDav client. I thought that all my old events had been duplicated with the iSync conduit, but in fact they were there twice because the old iSync calendar was turned on as was the new CalDav version. Subsequently I have turned off the iSync conduit for calendar and only use it with Address Book.
There are still quite a number of small bugs, judging by the traffic on the forums. I ran into one that threw me for a loop for a few hours after upgrading both servers. The major change in architecture (from Tomcat to Jetty) seems to have resulted in a change in the way that certificates are handled, and migrating certificates from 4.5.X to 5.0 and 5.0.1 has not gone well. I ran into this problem as well. It turned out I needed to destroy my old certificates for all to work well in the end. But the forums are very active and it didn't take long to figure that out.
Outlook still requires the Exchange substitute that comes with the commercial version (though there are works on progress providing CalDav support in Outlook). Though on Windows one could use the Sunbird calendar. There is also a beta of a plugin for Evolution on Linux.
Overall Zimbra is top notch for a mail and calendar server and seems to be the most platform agnostic of any I have found.
Deki Wiki I'm still in the early stages of experimenting with DekiWiki. Deki Wiki is the most novice-friendly wiki that I've found. It is very polished, provides a WYSIWYG interface for editing, supports attachments, and sophisticated permissions. While there are a number of "WYSIWYG" wikis, most of them feel like (probably because they are) grafts of WYSIWYG editors onto standard wiki format text boxes. This is not the case for Deki Wiki where WYSIWYG feels central.
The architecture for Deki Wiki is a bit unusual. It is your standard LAMP (WAMP) with the additional requirement of Mono/.Net 2.0. This is a very strange thing to do IMHO. It means that it isn't quite at home on either Linux or Windows. I had stayed away from it for this reason for some time. But now they make an easy to install and update VMware image that you can just drop in. I thought that was my opportunity to give it a whirl.
Configuration for running on a LAN was a breeze. It was essentially a wizard setup. Follow a few prompts and log in to the DHCP assigned address. The End. Turning this into an Internet accessible server, was then a bit of a chore. Some command line tools to change to a static IP which was well documented on the site. I also used an additional pointer from the forums. I didn't want to use up a real IP address, so I set about learning Apache Proxy (and reverse proxy) procedures. I found this tutorial and this one really helpful. This got me 90% of the way there, but some links weren't being rewritten correctly, until I found documentation on ProxyHTMLLinks, which was missing.
Success! At least for most operations. I'm still troubleshooting and experimenting and will try to offer a more complete review soon.
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