Survey on Meeting Maker

[Benoit Schmid]

Hello,

I have read the archives for year 2004 and 2005.
I have bot found a thread on the pros and cons of
MM.
Therefore I send this email.

We are interesting in Meeting Maker and I would like
to get your feedback on this product as you have been
using it for years.

1. For you, what are the good points and the bad points
of Meeting Maker?

2. How many users/servers do you run on your site?

3. What are the sizes (in events and in GBs) of
your MM databases?

4. Which problems have you faced with MM?

5. Do you know why we can not run more than 2000 users
on a single server?

6. Which 'echos' from your users do you have?

7. Have you experienced any stability problems
with this product?
If yes, which ones?

8. Is the fact that the MM server does not generate
email alarms a problem?

9. On which OS, do you run you MM servers?

I am looking forward, with a high interest, for your answers
and I would like to thank in advance the ones that would reply.
--
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Benoit Schmid Tel: (++41-22) 379-7209
UNIGE Postmaster

University of Geneva - Information Technology Division

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/


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[Ian Eiloart]

--On May 3, 2005 13:53:20 +0200 Benoit Schmid <***@ADM.UNIGE.CH>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have read the archives for year 2004 and 2005.
> I have bot found a thread on the pros and cons of
> MM.
> Therefore I send this email.
>
> We are interesting in Meeting Maker and I would like
> to get your feedback on this product as you have been
> using it for years.
>
> 1. For you, what are the good points and the bad points
> of Meeting Maker?

Off line working is the chief advantage over other similar systems.
Independence from the mail system is good, too.

> 2. How many users/servers do you run on your site?

200 current users, 500 registered.

> 3. What are the sizes (in events and in GBs) of
> your MM databases?
>
> 4. Which problems have you faced with MM?

Restoring deleted users is hard, and not all the data is restored. Better
to move them onto another server (with unregistered licences). Then you can
move them back later without problems.

> 5. Do you know why we can not run more than 2000 users
> on a single server?

"performance" apparently. However, with 200 users on ten databases, on a
single dual processor host, we have less than 1% cpu.

> 6. Which 'echos' from your users do you have?

Generally good, compared with Brown Bear iCal or nothing.

> 7. Have you experienced any stability problems
> with this product?
> If yes, which ones?

the auto-shutdown feature can be unstable if the shutdown times are not
staggered. You also need to run regular database repairs. This is much
easier if you have just one server.

> 8. Is the fact that the MM server does not generate
> email alarms a problem?

No, email alarms aren't desirable. Email notifications from the client make
more sense. However, the client can't use authenticated SMTP, so that is
holding back our deployment of Message Submission Agent.

> 9. On which OS, do you run you MM servers?


Mac OSX 10.3

> I am looking forward, with a high interest, for your answers
> and I would like to thank in advance the ones that would reply.



--
Ian Eiloart
Servers Team
Sussex University ITS


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[Mike Miller]

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Benoit Schmid wrote:

> We are interesting in Meeting Maker and I would like to get your
> feedback on this product as you have been using it for years.

I think it should be able to generate web pages on the server end, or it
should have GNU/Linux and UNIX clients that can generate web pages. I can
make web pages from the Windows client and then scp them to a web server,
but that's annoying.

The client lacks features. "Right click" ought to do something. We ought
to be able to copy appointments with the mouse instead of just moving
them.

The most important consideration is probably this: What is the
competition? I like MM because I don't know of anything better. Is there
a Free Software / Open Source product that does calendaring for groups?
I don't know of one, but that doesn't mean much.

Best,

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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[Matthew Keller]

On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 09:14 -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
> The most important consideration is probably this: What is the
> competition? I like MM because I don't know of anything better. Is there
> a Free Software / Open Source product that does calendaring for groups?
> I don't know of one, but that doesn't mean much.

Sunbird is maturing very nicely. It's the FireFox of Calendaring. :)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html


--

Matthew Keller
Enterprise Systems Analyst
Computing & Technology Services
State University of New York @ Potsdam
Potsdam, NY USA
http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/


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[Rich Battin]

On 5/4/05 at 8:52 AM -0400, Matthew Keller wrote the following message
about "Re: Survey on Meeting Maker:"


>On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 09:14 -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
>> The most important consideration is probably this: What is the
>> competition? I like MM because I don't know of anything better. Is there
>> a Free Software / Open Source product that does calendaring for groups?
>> I don't know of one, but that doesn't mean much.
>
>Sunbird is maturing very nicely. It's the FireFox of Calendaring. :)
>http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html

And there's WebCalendar:

http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php


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[Mike Miller]

On Wed, 4 May 2005, Rich Battin wrote:

> On 5/4/05, Matthew Keller wrote:
>
>> Sunbird is maturing very nicely. It's the FireFox of Calendaring. :)
>> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
>
> And there's WebCalendar:
>
> http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php


I sent a similar message on another list and I received the following list
of recommendations:


I believe that eGroupware will do this.

---

Sunbird is actually not too bad, but lacks some polish at the moment.
It does speak the iCal protocol, so if you set up a WebDAV server (easy
as pie with Apache 2), you can be sharing calendars fairly quickly.
It's not quite true collaborative calendaring like Outlook/Exchange
Server, but works ok. For what it's worth, I tried it and used it for a
while...hopefully it will equal iCal eventually but it's not there yet.

There's also Evolution, which last I checked has a pay-to-play plug-in
available for Exchange. Combine that with the open-source exchange
server project out there and you have a 95% free/open source option that
is probably better in the long run. Downside, Evolution not available
for win32 that I know of.

---

There was a thread on the Dell Linux-PowerEdge list on this same topic
just last week. Here are the suggestions mentioned:

http://www.hulaproject.org/Hula_Servern (based on Novell's NetMail product)

http://www.opengroupware.org

http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/default.html $$

http://www.scalix.com/ $$

Hula looks really very cool, and very well documented.

The folks on Linux-PowerEdge tend towards enterprise solutions, so these
all might be overkill for what you're trying to do. But I thought I'd pass
them along anyway.


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[Greg Stark]

With regard to the iCalendar stuff, a while back MeetingMaker joined the
The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (calconnect) which is a group
trying to standardize the whole calendaring thing (sadly, the only big
player in this that hasn't joined is Microsoft)
(http://www.calconnect.org/).

Anyhow, if you read some of the initiatives on the site especially with
regard to sandardization, you'll find that all the pieces of
standardization are in place (mostly revolving around the iCalendar
standard)... The last piece that isn't a finalized RFC yet is the
CalDav standard which is a webdav'ish server component that could yield
Outlook like calendar functionality. I'm told its its a standalone
server protocol component thats based upon webdav and XML or something?!?!

Apparently some folks have very early version, semi-working clients out
there but i dont know if they are publically availible or what, read a
bit more here
(http://staff.washington.edu/oren/weblog2/archives/2005/02/calendaring_int.html)

Not sure if this info means anythingn to anyone, but I think you'll be
hearing the word caldav in the future... hopefully from MM as well.

Greg

Mike Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 4 May 2005, Rich Battin wrote:
>
>> On 5/4/05, Matthew Keller wrote:
>>
>>> Sunbird is maturing very nicely. It's the FireFox of Calendaring. :)
>>> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
>>
>>
>> And there's WebCalendar:
>>
>> http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php
>
>
>
> I sent a similar message on another list and I received the following
> list of recommendations:
>
>
> I believe that eGroupware will do this.
>
> ---
>
> Sunbird is actually not too bad, but lacks some polish at the moment.
> It does speak the iCal protocol, so if you set up a WebDAV server
> (easy as pie with Apache 2), you can be sharing calendars fairly
> quickly. It's not quite true collaborative calendaring like
> Outlook/Exchange Server, but works ok. For what it's worth, I tried
> it and used it for a while...hopefully it will equal iCal eventually
> but it's not there yet.
>
> There's also Evolution, which last I checked has a pay-to-play plug-in
> available for Exchange. Combine that with the open-source exchange
> server project out there and you have a 95% free/open source option
> that is probably better in the long run. Downside, Evolution not
> available for win32 that I know of.
>
> ---
>
> There was a thread on the Dell Linux-PowerEdge list on this same topic
> just last week. Here are the suggestions mentioned:
>
> http://www.hulaproject.org/Hula_Servern (based on Novell's NetMail
> product)
>
> http://www.opengroupware.org
>
> http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/default.html $$
>
> http://www.scalix.com/ $$
>
> Hula looks really very cool, and very well documented.
>
> The folks on Linux-PowerEdge tend towards enterprise solutions, so
> these all might be overkill for what you're trying to do. But I
> thought I'd pass them along anyway.
>
>
> * MMXP-TALK Web Page:
> http://WWW.LISTSERV.Emory.Edu/Archives/MMXP-TALK.HTML



--
Greg Stark
Web Computing Specialist
University of Washington
Northwest Center for Public Health Practice
206.543.3696
***@u.washington.edu



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[Benoit Schmid]

Rich Battin a écrit :
> On 5/4/05 at 8:52 AM -0400, Matthew Keller wrote the following message
> about "Re: Survey on Meeting Maker:"
>
>
>> On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 09:14 -0500, Mike Miller wrote:
>>
>>> The most important consideration is probably this: What is the
>>> competition? I like MM because I don't know of anything better. Is
>>> there
>>> a Free Software / Open Source product that does calendaring for groups?
>>> I don't know of one, but that doesn't mean much.
>>
>>
>> Sunbird is maturing very nicely. It's the FireFox of Calendaring. :)
>> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
>
>
> And there's WebCalendar:
>
> http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php
>
>
> * MMXP-TALK Web Page:
> http://WWW.LISTSERV.Emory.Edu/Archives/MMXP-TALK.HTML
Hello,

There is also kronolith.
If it is as good as imp, it may be worth using.
But it lacks a sync tool.

But I asked these questions because I would like
to know if there sites with more than 10k users
that uses MM.

What worries me in MM, is their 2K users per server
and the fact that they recommend to run regular
database check.

I have faced problem (database corruption) with Sun Calendar
only when I had massive modifications (particularly
destructions) on their calendar server.
I would like to avoid facing these problems with another
calendar server.

See you,
--
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Benoit Schmid Tel: (++41-22) 379-7209
UNIGE Postmaster

University of Geneva - Information Technology Division

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/


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[Joseph Hargitai]

We love it.
About 4000 users.
Large db.
Solaris.
No major issues.
Good Palm support.
BB support is ok.
Outlook support good - we only use it once to migrate people off Outlook.
Since installation - this server did not have an unscheduled downtime.

--
Joseph Hargitai
ITS eServices


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[Jahed Sukhun]

One of the things that I would like to see is better administrative
functions.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Benoit Schmid" <***@ADM.UNIGE.CH>
To: <MMXP-***@listserv.cc.EMORY.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 4:53 AM
Subject: Survey on Meeting Maker


> Hello,
>
> I have read the archives for year 2004 and 2005.
> I have bot found a thread on the pros and cons of
> MM.
> Therefore I send this email.
>
> We are interesting in Meeting Maker and I would like
> to get your feedback on this product as you have been
> using it for years.
>
> 1. For you, what are the good points and the bad points
> of Meeting Maker?
>
> 2. How many users/servers do you run on your site?
>
> 3. What are the sizes (in events and in GBs) of
> your MM databases?
>
> 4. Which problems have you faced with MM?
>
> 5. Do you know why we can not run more than 2000 users
> on a single server?
>
> 6. Which 'echos' from your users do you have?
>
> 7. Have you experienced any stability problems
> with this product?
> If yes, which ones?
>
> 8. Is the fact that the MM server does not generate
> email alarms a problem?
>
> 9. On which OS, do you run you MM servers?
>
> I am looking forward, with a high interest, for your answers
> and I would like to thank in advance the ones that would reply.
> --
> _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
>
> Benoit Schmid Tel: (++41-22) 379-7209
> UNIGE Postmaster
>
> University of Geneva - Information Technology Division
>
> _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
>
>
> * MMXP-TALK Web Page:
> http://WWW.LISTSERV.Emory.Edu/Archives/MMXP-TALK.HTML
>
>


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