Calendars/diaries - how well to they compare with Outlook/Exchange? (Was: Re: [Zope] zope for intranet?)

[Paul Browning]

--On 09 March 2001 14:50 -0800 Andy McKay <andym@ActiveState.com> wrote:

> Absolutely. Zope is definitely worth looking into since it can do all of
> the above and more. I recommend searching Zope.org for some products
> which will do what you want and more, for example WorldPilot.

And, most recently (thanks Ross L):

----------
      Amphora Light 2.2.26 - a www-based groupware server

Amphora Light (http://www.amphora.ee/freeware/) is a free open-source
www-based groupware server in Python and Zope, offering basic office
functionality: calendars, tasks, contacts, discussion, web email in
the context of a hierarchical organisation and flexible access rights.
Both Netscape and MS IE are supported as clients.
It supports synchronization with MS Outlook calendar, tasks, contacts
through a separate MS Windows client.
----------

I played a bit with the demo of the full version of Amphora a while
and was impressed. My Estonian improved too.

Locally we have a growing clamour for some sort of shared
calendar/diary system. Various web-based solutions have been
looked at (of the ASP kind too - as in Application Service
Provider). But users, bless them, generally react that "it's
not as good as Outlook".

Now I don't know Outlook fully, and I don't think most of our users
have seen the full-on Outlook backed by Exchange server, so
I find to hard to form a view or make a strong case for a more
open, Web-based solution.

I note Amphora (and some other Web groupware products) make
a deliberate play on "synchronization with MS Outlook" - so
clearly it is recognised which player in the marketplace
already has a significant foothold.

My question/plea:
Can anyone share with me a real life example along the
lines of "we were Outlook/Exchange users and happily migrated
to Web groupware solution X" or "we use Web groupware solution Y
in conjunction with a significant number of Outlook users"? If
it's got a "Z" in the solution, even better ;-)

It's the _shared_ (i.e. not just personal) aspect of the
calendar/diary system (and the granularity of the access
control to such a shared system) that seems to be a key
issue for us - and a differentiating feature between the
various solutions (i.e. most are deficient in this area,
including I think, WorldPilot - though I would love to
be told I was wrong about this).

TIA

Paul

--
 The Library, Tyndall Avenue, Univ. of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TJ, UK
     E-mail: paul.browning@bristol.ac.uk  URL: http://www.bris.ac.uk/