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I've long been waiting for the update to the open source Alfresco. The original product was a very competent document management system. Then late last year they add a new social/collaborative interface to the open source "community" edition. This version was a little rough around the edges interface-wise, but it added things like blogs, wikis, and discussions.

A new version "3.0" was set as a milestone release that would full integrate these features, and a beta of that version was released under what is now known as "Alfresco Labs". From what I can tell, Alfresco Labs is the open source releases of Alfresco (there is also an Enterprise release scheduled for this fall).

Before I get into the details of Alfresco Labs 3.0a, I have to say that it took me some time to wade through the many versions and interfaces even though I've followed Alfresco for some time. It seems like the new version actually comes with two interfaces to the same repository. The old "Alfresco" interface that is quite document and workflow centric, and the newer Share interface that is collaboration centric. You need to log into them separately, but they have common data that can be accessed through either.

The old interface suffered from a complex array of fancy drop-down menus. This allowed savvy users to do things quickly, but novice users just got lost. The new Share interface not only focuses on collaboration, but also provides a much simpler interface. The new interface is reminiscent of the simplicity of Basecamp, and makes it much more feasible to invite outside users into a collaboration space. Share's other big feature is support of the Microsoft Sharepoint protocol. This is great since it can be integrated with MS Office. Sharepoint is the clear target competition for this version.

I actually can't say much about the installation process, as I just picked up the Windows executable full installer. It installed a JRE, tomcat, Alfresco and Open Office (for document conversion). I didn't have to do much, though if I wanted to do anything more than test, I probably should have installed MySQL on my Windows machine, rather than using the built-in Java database.

After install, I logged into the Share interface and was greeted with a simple Dashboard.

I was able to quickly create a new "site" that provided me with the basic Share components - a wiki, blogs, calendar, forums, and the document library.

Each of the components is simple, albeit a little rudimentary at this point. For example the Wiki has a nice clean interface with a small palette and WYSIWYG functionality.

But in order to embed a picture you need to upload it somewhere and provide the URL for the image. Many wikis do this, but it winds up relegating that task to experts, which somewhat defeats the purpose of a simple collaboration site. Similarly, adding links to other pages in the wiki requires some expertise. I am hopeful that these features will be refined in future iterations (this is a beta), but right now they are showstoppers for deploying to basic users.

Alfresco does really excel at document management. Not only can you easily upload, download and version documents...

...but you can also access the repositories via webdav, CIFS, and now Sharepoint. This is really easy and fantastic for document collaboration. I've been using Sharepoint recently on a project and I found Alfresco a lot easier to use.

There are some very basic "social" components to Alfresco, mainly profiles and avatars. But I think that is sufficient for its intended purpose.

There are some shortcomings to this release that made it somewhat painful to use. I couldn't change my password in the Share interface, nor could I add new users. For that and several other activities, I need to log in separately to the old interface. This made it feel a bit more alpha than beta, but I think Share is the interface of the future for Alfresco and I suspect all of this will eventually get rolled in. Then I might look to Alfresco for document centric collaboration, as best of breed.

Shortly after I posted about IceCore, I noticed that there was a VMWare image available on their website. That was the easiest way to get going with IceCore, so I fired it up on VMWare Fusion on my Mac. I did have some problems connecting at first. It turned out that the image was only listening to eth0 and my connection was being detected on eth1. I went to edit the network settings, but alas my favorite editor (nano) was not in the image. I limped through vi, and got the settings to work, and poof there was IceCore.

In terms of features, I think IceCore has the perfect (and I do mean perfect) mix. It is easy to create new groups ("Teams") of users to work on projects, and then provide them with a common set of tools that includes Blogs, Calendar, Discussion, Files, Milestones, Surveys, Tasks and a Wiki. This is great combination of tools



There is tons of ajaxy responsiveness in IceCore (note that the proprietary version goes by "Novel Teaming"). But the UI design needs some work. Threaded discussion take up a lot more space than they need to, and some of the features and layout will not be obvious to novice users.

These shortcomings sent me in search of related projects, when I found Liferay. At first, I couldn't tell the difference between Liferay and IceCore, but then Liferay did an update to version 5.0 and I was able to tell them apart. It turns out that IceCore is built on (the earlier version) of Liferay. Both have a similar portal display that allows you to add lots of widgets (both internal "portlets" as well as external sites and google gadgets).



It does add quite a number of features that facilitate working in teams, but much of the underlying functionality remains. There are numerous bundles of Liferay available, and I chose a bundle with Tomcat 5, which simply required me to run a start script. This uses hsqldb (which is fine for testing) and also installed a lot of sample data (which users on the forums have told me how to get rid of if I choose to continue with Liferay).

The new release of Liferay (which I assume IceCore will eventually incorporate) makes some welcome changes. For example, this is how threaded discussions appear in Liferay 5.



While this is how it appears in IceCore



Notice the popup frame that I'm sure seemed like a good idea at the time, but it isn't how much discussion forums work. New users like to have familiar functionality.

Similarly, this is how you see Wikis in Liferay.



And this is how you edit them.



These are pretty straightforward. But IceCore adds additional complexity with a Wiki that takes up more space, multiple views that are confusing and popup frames.



But where IceCore shines is in having all of the functionality that is needed in a one step install. Liferay is missing tasks most importantly. These could probably be added with a portlet, though I couldn't find one that was free and easy to integrate. IceCore also makes it really easy to manage teams. Liferay has similar functionality in Communities, but the Teams, along with the spaces that get created for them, are easier from an admin perspective.

I've seen some new UI designs for IceCore in their forums, and if they follow through on those and then build on the new Liferay, I think they'll have a real winner. Still, at this point in time IceCore is one of the best products I've seen. Speaking of which Chronopolys has gone 1.0 final and now includes an easy installer. I've also started looking at the community edition of Alfresco which has some new collaboration features in there. I'll try that next (after I can get it to install - it has been fighting with Liferay).

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.

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

You may think I'm a glutton for punishment trying to install more software of release candidate quality, but I've been tinkering with Zimbra for some time and wanted to give this new version a whirl.

For those of you who don't know what Zimbra is, it is a mail, calendaring and groupware solution. It is one of the so called "Exchange Killers" that provides both web based and client based access to mail and calendaring. It is probably most noted for its very slick Ajaxy Web 2.0 interface. It feels like you're using a desktop application even when using Zimbra's web client.

Zimbra operates under an open source license, but only part of the product is open source. There are two primary flavors of Zimbra, the Network Edition (i.e. the commercial version) and the open source edition. The primary differences between the two are that the Network Edition (at least the Professional version) provides client synchronization for Outlook (on Windows) and iCal (on Mac OS X). Allegedly there is work underway to provide synchronization with Evolution on Linux as well. The network edition also provides the option of adding on wireless clients that can sync with the server OTA using an activesync hook (for added cost) along with backup facilities, support and clustering. A full comparison is available on the Zimbra web site. The professional version is borderline (at best) for the "cheap" category that is one of my criteria at $35 per seat with a minimum of 25 seats. So I went ahead and installed the open source version (as a side note, we're also exploring using this in my workgroup, for which Zimbra offered a substantial academic discount).

I've been intrigued by Zimbra for quite some time, in that it offers a great interface for users and claims to have much simpler administration than Exchange. I like the potential for Outlook and ICal clients, even if that is only in the professional version. While there are a number of open source groupware solutions out there, the most directly comparable is likely Scalix. I have also evaluated Scalix, with its primary advantage being full blown client access from Outlook for up to 25 users in their "Community" edition. Scalix also does a slightly better version of playing nicely with existing resources on your server, but still takes over many services and ports. Zimbra is a one stop solution, which means it takes over your web server, MTA, databases, tomcat, etc. That means it is easy to install, but requires its own server (or virtual servers, as I use VMWare's free VMWare server for testing). However, it offers no iCal/iSync pathway.

The other issue for both Zimbra and Scalix is that while their web clients are rather slick, they are bandwidth intensive. This makes it impractical when traveling and using slower connections. Some people have installed Squirrelmail or Roundcube as backup webmail systems, but that seems suboptimal. So I was intrigued when I heard the latest release candidate of Zimbra included an html only web client as a component. I just had to try it out.

Installing Zimbra isn't hard if you have one of the requisite systems for which binaries already exist. Binaries are available for Fedora Core 4 and 5, Redhat Enterprise Linux 4, and several other platforms (including Ubuntu and Mac OS X). I used the Redhat version, on VMWare server running RHEL 4. I see no reason why it should be any different if you were using Cent OS, or probably even Fedora.

Installation is a matter of ungzip/untar the binary and run the install script. You are prompted with some confirmations and ultimately one configuration step (changing the admin password). If all goes well, there is little interaction. It is important for Zimbra (the same goes for Scalix) to have a FQDN that resolves correctly. Since I was running on a virtual server behind a router, I needed to configure the etc/hosts file to pull that off. It is important to follow the instructions on this configuration to the letter. I spent the better part of the evening struggling with some unhelpful messages about the database being unable to connect. But making sure my hosts file looked exactly like the one in the docs, made it work just fine in the end. I also needed to make sure I manually turned off Sendmail as it also says in the documentation.

I did notice that the install script really takes care of everything - certificates, spam settings, everything. That was a bit nicer than my Scalix experience in which you need to do a bit of hacking to get SSL working. It also configures SMTP authentication.

I then tried to connect to the Zimbra administration console. It failed. I realized that I hadn't punched the holes in the firewall for all of the necessary ports. This should be a more explicit part of the installation process, rather than just telling you to turn off the firewall completely.

After that I was into the Administration console. The admin console itself is a quite user friendly Ajax application itself.



It was very easy to create a new user, and configure simple settings on the server. It hiccuped when I tried to configure the Documents portion, with a generic error, but otherwise worked flawlessly.

A quick tour of Zimbra itself, shows some of the great features of the application.

The webmail interface is fast and easy to use. With large volumes of email, I find interfaces where you have to jump in and out of directories and click on check boxes to be quite cumbersome. Zimbra excels in this area.



It even has some useful context sensitive menus that pop up around relevant text in your emails. Such as when someone sends a message concerning a date, you can mouse over it for your schedule or right-click (in the browser) to add an appointment.



This is further enhanced by keyboard shortcuts that help you quickly navigate within and between sections. I'm a UI-clicker myself, but the shortcuts can speed up work flow.



There are also address book, calendar, and documents sections.

Getting back to the reason why I tried this update of Zimbra in the first place, there is also easy access to a "basic" (HTML Only) version of the UI. Upon login you can click on the basic html link and you are taken to a nearly identical login box. Once inside the interface indeed looks like an HTML version of Zimbra.



The webmail and address book sections behaved well. Unfortunately the calendar section is absent. This was disappointing, though it is possible it will appear in future versions.

Of course the open source edition is missing the iSync and Outlook sync components. This makes this edition of Zimbra problematic for road warriors who may be needing access to their calendar offline (email can be synced up through any imap or pop client). Allegedly Zimbra is working on offline sync through the standard web interface in the near future. That could take this version over the top, and make it a complete package without the need for Outlook.

Update (21 Dec): I realized that I hadn't actually tried to get email in to my Zimbra server, assuming this wouldn't be hard. That wasn't true. I had a lot of trouble with mail being rejected or something Zimbra calls "deferred" (which means it is stored in a queue but not sent to mailboxes). I tried reconfiguring my hosts file, but that didn't help. It turned out that the problem had to do with Zimbra running inside my router with an internal IP address that was mapped to an external one. There were good instructions for setting up BIND to handle this situation on the Zimbra wiki.