Opting out of MM

[Lee Samuel Finn]

If they had made *wired* Palm devices *completely free* and then
indicated you'd have to pay through the teeth for new wireless
devices -- we'd have moved to 8.6. But for what was (and *is*
free) in 8.5.3 to now be charged for in 8.6, is about as customer
unfriendly as you can get.

This about says it all, and not just regarding the PDA fiasco. We'd
learned to endure sales reps who misrepresented release dates and
features in upcoming releases, and lack of responsiveness to
questions and bug reports. This most recent episode of the badly
buggy 8.6, promises broken, and failure to provide even adequate tech
support, has led us to conclude that meetingmaker is no longer a
viable solution to our Center's scheduling needs. We are in the
process of transitioning to Oracle now and I expect the transition
will be complete by mid-Feb, at which point we will bid meetingmaker
good riddance.

--
Lee Samuel Finn Phone: +01 814
863-9598
Director, Center for Gravitational Wave Physics Fax: +01 814
863-9608
Professor, Department of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Pennsylvania State University
104 Davey Laboratory, PMB#145
University Park, PA 16802





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[Mathew Shember]

Oracle?

Much as I dislike MeetingMaker; I would not go down that route. It's
basically trading one mess for another. Just basic database stuff and
we got crappy support from Oracle to the point where we decided to dump
oracle.

Oh well.

Hope it works for you.

Post by Lee Samuel Finn

If they had made *wired* Palm devices *completely free* and then
indicated you'd have to pay through the teeth for new wireless
devices -- we'd have moved to 8.6. But for what was (and *is* free)
in 8.5.3 to now be charged for in 8.6, is about as customer
unfriendly as you can get.

This about says it all, and not just regarding the PDA fiasco. We'd
learned to endure sales reps who misrepresented release dates and
features in upcoming releases, and lack of responsiveness to questions
and bug reports. This most recent episode of the badly buggy 8.6,
promises broken, and failure to provide even adequate tech support,
has led us to conclude that meetingmaker is no longer a viable
solution to our Center's scheduling needs. We are in the process of
transitioning to Oracle now and I expect the transition will be
complete by mid-Feb, at which point we will bid meetingmaker good
riddance.
--
Lee Samuel Finn Phone: [phone]
Director, Center for Gravitational Wave Physics Fax: [phone]
Professor, Department of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Pennsylvania State University
104 Davey Laboratory, PMB#145
University Park, PA 16802
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[Ian Eiloart]

--On 27 January 2007 16:36:37 -0800 Mathew Shember

Post by Mathew Shember
Oracle?
Much as I dislike MeetingMaker; I would not go down that route. It's
basically trading one mess for another. Just basic database stuff and we
got crappy support from Oracle to the point where we decided to dump
oracle.
Oh well.
Hope it works for you.

Hmm, time to go open source, perhaps?

[Merka Phoenix]

If you chose to investigate the Open Source route, there is a product
on SourceForge:

http://www.opengroupware.org/

that may work for scheduling (plus with access to the source code,
could be tweaked for playing nice with other enterprise applications.
The commercial version (opensource + paid support) of this is offered
by Skyrix ( http://www.skyrix.de/en/ ). And, yes, it does have Palm
Synchronization.

Cheers!

Post by Ian Eiloart
--On 27 January 2007 16:36:37 -0800 Mathew Shember

Post by Mathew Shember
Oracle?
Much as I dislike MeetingMaker; I would not go down that route. It's
basically trading one mess for another. Just basic database stuff and we
got crappy support from Oracle to the point where we decided to dump
oracle.
Oh well.
Hope it works for you.

Hmm, time to go open source, perhaps?
--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
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[Bob Paver]

The Chandler project <http://chandler.osafoundation.org/> looks
really good if one can wait long enough. Preview version is due this
Spring.


Bob
--
Bob Paver
Assoc. VP, Information Technology Services
Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX 78626
http://www.southwestern.edu/

Need help? Call the HelpDesk at 819-7333.

Post by Merka Phoenix
If you chose to investigate the Open Source route, there is a
http://www.opengroupware.org/
that may work for scheduling (plus with access to the source code,
could be tweaked for playing nice with other enterprise
applications. The commercial version (opensource + paid support) of
this is offered by Skyrix ( http://www.skyrix.de/en/ ). And, yes,
it does have Palm Synchronization.
Cheers!

Post by Ian Eiloart
--On 27 January 2007 16:36:37 -0800 Mathew Shember

Post by Mathew Shember
Oracle?
Much as I dislike MeetingMaker; I would not go down that route.
It's
basically trading one mess for another. Just basic database
stuff and we
got crappy support from Oracle to the point where we decided to dump
oracle.
Oh well.
Hope it works for you.

Hmm, time to go open source, perhaps?
--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
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[Mike Miller]

Here are some open/free products that have been recommended to me
recently:

http://www.opengroupware.org/en/applications/index.html
http://www.zimbra.com
http://www.skyrix.de/en/
http://chandler.osafoundation.org/

I don't know if they are ready for adoption at a big university like the
one where I work, but I would like to learn more about these programs.
Does anyone know of a comparative review or even a comparative list of
features? Have any of you used these programs?

At U Minnesota, everyone has dumped MM for Oracle except for the Academic
Health Center where I work. I believe that we have no plan to upgrade
from version 7.5.

Mike
--
Michael B. Miller, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
and Institute of Human Genetics
University of Minnesota
http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/


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[Jeep Hauser]

Post by Mike Miller
http://www.opengroupware.org/en/applications/index.html
http://www.zimbra.com
http://www.skyrix.de/en/
http://chandler.osafoundation.org/
I don't know if they are ready for adoption at a big university like the
one where I work, but I would like to learn more about these programs.
Does anyone know of a comparative review or even a comparative list of
features? Have any of you used these programs?

I haven't gone and installed all of them, but there's one feature that
pretty much ALL of the open source projects fail miserably on: viewing
multiple people's calendars at once.

Meeting Maker makes it incredibly easy, where you can create groups and
users on the server, where they get pushed out to any client. When you
want to view another person (or group), it's a really quick and easy.
But MOST importantly, when you're viewing multiple calendars all in one
window ("Show Proxy in Calendar"), they are separated out so in a
split-second you know who's events you're looking at.

Also, permissions for sharing are set at the server. The open-source
projects I've installed as potential replacements (Horde,
http://www.horde.org; Group-Office http://www.group-office.com) both
have sharing as an end-user setting, same for group lists (and even time
zones). Group-Office couldn't even import an .ics file with recurring
events -- the 'support' forum post I put up only got one reply, and it
was "adult" spam.

Chandler looks interesting, but seems to have a lot of philosophy and
not much content (not to mention a UI that's a blatant rip-off of
Apple's iCal -- if I wanted that, I'd wait for Leopard and use that
calendar server).

Zimbra is by far the most promising. I just set it up on a Mac here, and
it's quite nice. However, it also has calendar sharing as an end-user
option only. Where does this come from? Why is that the way most
products go?

Don't take this as a blind slam on the alternatives, but as a reason why
we're sticking to Meeting Maker... for now. They do still need to repair
some damage. The one big slowdown that has been hounding us for years
was supposedly fixed in 8.6. Well, we moved to 8.6 and see little to no
change (the speed in viewing multiple proxies in a single calendar).

I don't know how many people use this feature, so I can't say for
certain that it's mission-critical for a lot of people and should get
more attention, but it sure is bad enough that I get a steady stream of
complaints from my users.

Well this e-mail turned out much longer than I thought...

Jeep
--
Jeep Hauser
Director, IT & Communications
Career Planning & Placement Center
University of Southern California
***@usc.edu
http://careers.usc.edu


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[Peter Kaldis]

Post by Jeep Hauser
Zimbra is by far the most promising. I just set it up on a Mac here, and
it's quite nice. However, it also has calendar sharing as an end-user
option only. Where does this come from? Why is that the way most
products go?

Its my understanding that unlike open source (OS) projects for Mail
where there have been established open standards for some time (SMTP,
POP, IMAP), there haven't been analogs in the calendar space. iCal, and
vCalendar are widely adopted by the OS community but those don't handle
server scheduling, and security. CalDAV looks promising, and has alot of
support behind it at the moment (Zimbra, Apple, Chandler, etc), but even
that is months away from shipping in any product that I'm aware of.

-Pk


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[Andrew Fisher]

What about TeamAgenda?

Post by Peter Kaldis

Post by Jeep Hauser
Zimbra is by far the most promising. I just set it up on a Mac here, and
it's quite nice. However, it also has calendar sharing as an end-user
option only. Where does this come from? Why is that the way most
products go?

Its my understanding that unlike open source (OS) projects for Mail
where there have been established open standards for some time (SMTP,
POP, IMAP), there haven't been analogs in the calendar space. iCal, and
vCalendar are widely adopted by the OS community but those don't handle
server scheduling, and security. CalDAV looks promising, and has alot of
support behind it at the moment (Zimbra, Apple, Chandler, etc), but even
that is months away from shipping in any product that I'm aware of.
-Pk
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[Peter Kaldis]

Just checked out their website. Looks very interesting. If anyone has
any experience with this product, I would love to know more about it.

Post by Andrew Fisher
What about TeamAgenda?

Post by Peter Kaldis

Post by Jeep Hauser
Zimbra is by far the most promising. I just set it up on a Mac here, and
it's quite nice. However, it also has calendar sharing as an end-user
option only. Where does this come from? Why is that the way most
products go?

Its my understanding that unlike open source (OS) projects for Mail
where there have been established open standards for some time (SMTP,
POP, IMAP), there haven't been analogs in the calendar space. iCal, and
vCalendar are widely adopted by the OS community but those don't handle
server scheduling, and security. CalDAV looks promising, and has alot of
support behind it at the moment (Zimbra, Apple, Chandler, etc), but even
that is months away from shipping in any product that I'm aware of.
-Pk
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[Mike Miller]

Post by Peter Kaldis

Post by Andrew Fisher
What about TeamAgenda?

Just checked out their website. Looks very interesting. If anyone has
any experience with this product, I would love to know more about it.

Just so people know - TeamAgenda is proprietary. Just before it was
mentioned we were discussing Open Source solutions.

Mike


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[Jeep Hauser]

Post by Mike Miller
Just so people know - TeamAgenda is proprietary. Just before it was
mentioned we were discussing Open Source solutions.

I'm a fan of open source, but by no means do I dismiss/embrace a product
just on that factor.

I looked at the Team Agenda site, got the demo and set up a server.
While the speed is phenomenal, and they already have Universal Binaries
for both the client and server, the UI is horrendous. I'm going to plug
away at it a bit, but this application is in dire need of a UI overhaul.
Also on the plus side is their multi-platform support. Documentation
seems quite thin.

Jeep
--
Jeep Hauser
Director, IT & Communications
Career Planning & Placement Center
University of Southern California
***@usc.edu
http://careers.usc.edu


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[Mike Miller]

Post by Jeep Hauser

Post by Mike Miller
Just so people know - TeamAgenda is proprietary. Just before it was
mentioned we were discussing Open Source solutions.

I'm a fan of open source, but by no means do I dismiss/embrace a product
just on that factor.

For example, you probably want software that works. Me too. I have a
strong preference for open source and I avoid spending time learning to
use proprietary programs. That way it is easier for me to switch away
from a proprietary program to another such program or to an open source
program.

Post by Jeep Hauser
I looked at the Team Agenda site, got the demo and set up a server.
While the speed is phenomenal, and they already have Universal Binaries
for both the client and server, the UI is horrendous. I'm going to plug
away at it a bit, but this application is in dire need of a UI overhaul.
Also on the plus side is their multi-platform support. Documentation
seems quite thin.

My experience with proprietary software developers is that they don't
respond to my bug reports or feature requests -- except maybe to say
thanks, but they don't fix things for me. My experience with open source
developers is the opposite because they often fix things very quickly.

Mike


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[Jeep Hauser]

Post by Peter Kaldis
Its my understanding that unlike open source (OS) projects for Mail
where there have been established open standards for some time (SMTP,
POP, IMAP), there haven't been analogs in the calendar space. iCal, and
vCalendar are widely adopted by the OS community but those don't handle
server scheduling, and security. CalDAV looks promising, and has alot of
support behind it at the moment (Zimbra, Apple, Chandler, etc), but even
that is months away from shipping in any product that I'm aware of.

I was more wondering aloud why the option is only configurable by the
end-user, and not globally (or even singularly) by the server
administrator. Like, why I can't I pick a user and make their calendar
shared out to everyone?

Jeep
--
Jeep Hauser
Director, IT & Communications
Career Planning & Placement Center
University of Southern California
***@usc.edu
http://careers.usc.edu


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[Mike Miller]

Post by Jeep Hauser

Post by Peter Kaldis
Its my understanding that unlike open source (OS) projects for Mail
where there have been established open standards for some time (SMTP,
POP, IMAP), there haven't been analogs in the calendar space. iCal, and
vCalendar are widely adopted by the OS community but those don't handle
server scheduling, and security. CalDAV looks promising, and has alot
of support behind it at the moment (Zimbra, Apple, Chandler, etc), but
even that is months away from shipping in any product that I'm aware
of.

I was more wondering aloud why the option is only configurable by the
end-user, and not globally (or even singularly) by the server
administrator. Like, why I can't I pick a user and make their calendar
shared out to everyone?

I hope that the MM users/administrators who are interested in open source
solutions will make their suggestions known to the Zimbra developers. I
have no connection with them, but I looked at the demo on their web page
and I thought it looked really nice. A few people have recommended it to
me, so I would like to see it thrive and continue to improve. You can
look here to decide what you might be able to contribute:

http://www.zimbra.com/community/contribute.html

I would be equally happy if some other open-source program developed all
the needed features and became predominant. I only use MM right now!

Best,
Mike


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[Jeep Hauser]

Post by Mike Miller
I hope that the MM users/administrators who are interested in open
source solutions will make their suggestions known to the Zimbra
developers.

I put in my $0.02 in their bugzilla.
http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12110

We'll see how this goes... the

Jeep


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