After deciding to go with Knowledgetree to manage documents, I reconsidered. I started a project using Knowledgetree but wanted more than document management. While checking in and out documents went really well, there wasn't any other way to communicate with team members through the site - notes, messages, calendars, etc. So I fell back on another system that I had been testing - opengoo. Opengoo has been working really well for the small project.
Opengoo opens with a dashboard for each user. The UI has improved since the last beta.
While Opengoo is generically for collaboration, it is quite good at document management. Think somewhere between GoogleDocs and Basecamp. You create different projects within you can also tag different documents and items (instead of using folders). Documents are presented in a list that allow easy access to downloading, checking in and out and viewing (screenshots from beta 1.1).
Each document presents further options, as well as a record of previous versions and related notes. Team members can subscribe to documents for alerts, though right now alerts are only sent on document notes, not check in and out. It is worth noting, however, that the development team has been very responsive to bugs and feature requests in the forums.
Opengoo also allows for live editing of documents within the browser. This includes text documents, and presentations currently with spreadsheets on the way.
The big drawback to date is that uploaded documents and documents created within opengoo are totally separate. You can't edit uploaded documents inline or download new documents as word processing documents. But that is likely to come.
Opengoo also has tasks, blogs, wikis, notes and a calendar. Just about everything you'd need.
Email in is a little limited to a beta component that pops email into a special section. But emailing in notes and documents could come in the future as well.
As much as there are features to wait for, there is enough to use as a serviceable collaboration application right now. Opengoo has been working well on my current project, and when 1.1 final comes out I'm likely to use it even more.
Another anticipated application surfaced recently as well. Liferay Social Office, a variant of the Liferay portal, came out in beta this week. It is a social collaboration platform billed as a Sharepoint alternative.
When users log in they are presented with a dashboard. It differs from a number of other collaboration platforms by the social components.
As is the focus of Sharepoint, Liferay Social Office has solid document management features.
You have the ability to lock documents, comment on them, update them, and convert formats (when OpenOffice headless is installed correctly). Webdav is also built in, but is somewhat buggy, at least in this beta when tested in Mac OS X and Ubunutu.
But Liferay Social Office has a lot of other features as well. It has wikis and blogs (both of which are somewhat unremarkable but fine). It does have pretty decent forums though.
While I haven't tried it yet, there is the ability to link forums and email lists, which is quite handy. Tasks are missing, but have been requested in the feature list. It is still in beta, with estimated release some time this spring. Worth keeping tabs on.
