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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the group-where? dept.

Here's the situation: you've got a small office of 8-20 employees who work in a consulting business and whose main products/deliverables are reports, spreadsheets, occasional CAD drawings, Gantt charts, project plans, and the like. Not only do they produce those things, they receive reports for which they produce comments/observations. Much of what they produce is collaborative or iterative (ie, not necessarily 'live editing' of spreadsheets, but several people must all contribute to a doc over the space of a week or so). To do so, they need efficient means of communication, discussion, versioning, etc.

Needs: document repository, shared editing of many types of documents, a messaging system for internal office communication, "sharing" system that permits clients to upload or download large files, a managed-content "front page" web site, an internal intranet, shared calendars, contacts lists, some sort of system to produce and maintain office policies and procedures, and otherwise manage internal communications and office admin. Some considerations for discussion, so I'm intentionally not specifying: (1) ideally, systems are usable by different OSes. Obviously there are going to be problems ensuring total OS independence. (2) ideally, the system doesn't require full-time online presence. Should a consultant wind up in a basement office with no internet, he won't be totally lost (again, not perfect). Note: no obligation for Free/Open Source software, although they are preferred. The goal here is an office that communicates and collaborates efficiently.

Ten years ago, you'd be sitting in a cube farm, using Microsoft Office and a shared drive and emailing documents back and forth. Later they'd have added Sharepoint. These days, there's been a ton of innovation in these areas, and there's consensus that collaboration-by-email is not fun. And there are lots of new approaches to these age-old problems.

So, how would you do it?

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  • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:05AM

    by cafebabe (894) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:05AM (#117131) Journal

    Do use IRC. Don't use a wiki. Don't use Dropbox.

    --
    1702845791×2
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:37PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:37PM (#117224) Journal

      Use SILC [wikipedia.org] then..

      (IRC is cleartext - a dead end these days..)

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:34PM

        by Marand (1081) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:34PM (#117286) Journal

        (IRC is cleartext - a dead end these days..)

        Only if you configure it to be. The IRCd I'm familiar with, Inspircd, can be configured in a way that disallows any non-TLS client connections. The same is true for server linking, which means it's possible (and fairly easy) to run not just one server, but an entire IRC network with end-to-end encryption for all parties.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday November 22 2014, @10:07PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Saturday November 22 2014, @10:07PM (#118934) Journal

          Any checks against 2nd ring of IRC server operators being careless with accepting TLS-less connections?

          It only takes one mistake to compromise the whole network.

    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:02PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:02PM (#117274) Homepage

      Curious what your complaint is about wikis. Most places I have worked in seem like they could benefit almost immediately by creating a wiki of internal policies and such and organizing them into a booklike form and making them available over a wiki. Instead they have a series of policies they send you one by one as they're updated and you're always scrambling to see if you've got the latest edition of them, etc. Annoying.

      I'm actually a fan of curated wikis and not a fan of "anyone can edit" wikis - but I think they're a good tool for management to use to present a body of information that's continually updated.

      What am I missing?

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
      • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:58PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:58PM (#117325) Journal

        I've suggested the use of a wiki for the purpose of collaboratively editing one document [soylentnews.org]. Even the most wrongheaded idiots [soylentnews.org] can produce 500 pages between 10 people with a wiki [10print.org]. However, in most other cases, a wiki becomes one of many instances in departmental turf wars, or it becomes time capsule of when it was created, or it gets used sporadically and is therefore an unreliable source of information.

        From personal experience:-

        Case 1: Wiki on intranet with custom code used by 500 employee software company. Freelance developers were expected to submit timesheets inline in the wiki.

        Case 2: 500 employee company with three wikis on intranet. One wiki used by developers. One wiki with custom code used by system administrators. One wiki ignored by personnel.

        Case 3: Hackerspace with public wiki listing events which haven't been held for two years.

        Wikipedia is a pleasant exception but this only occurs because editors are fanatical about maintaining structure and content - and this only occurs because it has sufficient audience.

        --
        1702845791×2
  • (Score: 2) by MozeeToby on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:18AM

    by MozeeToby (1118) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:18AM (#117136)

    Google apps covers most of what you need it seems like and is exceedingly cost effective.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:40PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:40PM (#117226) Journal

      Yes it will be exceedingly efficient to provide the NSA with all they want in realtime..

    • (Score: 2) by aclarke on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:01PM

      by aclarke (2049) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:01PM (#117231) Homepage

      Agreed. There are a bunch of companies trying to do this, along with all the "free" open source varieties that almost work if your time has no value. However, for a team that wants to get stuff done, you can either spend a bunch of time setting up and managing your cobbled together mess of free options, or you can just buy Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365 and get started doing what your company's actually supposed to be doing.

      I suggest looking at those two products, trying both out, and deciding which one you want to stick with. Both will pretty much do everything you mentioned, although they go about it in different ways.

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:29AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:29AM (#117138) Journal

    Obviously there are going to be problems ensuring total OS independence.

    Gee, why is that, do you think? Karma, it's real.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:51AM (#117142)

      Interoperability means bitch slapping your cow-orkers with your massive rigid cock when they overwrite your fucking changes.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:47PM (#117349)

        I like orking cows too.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:14AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:14AM (#117147) Journal

      Obviously there are going to be problems ensuring total OS independence.

      Gee, why is that, do you think? Karma, it's real.

      Easy buddy, your comment impacts on the SN's feng-shui (you know it's real).

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:45AM (#117141)

    Because you know everything else will be ignored no matter how much you try.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:53AM (#117143)

    So, a content management system, distributed revision control system, and some sort of instant-messaging service, preferably open-source?
    I wouldn't be surprised if one of the many web-oriented, open-source content management frameworks out there could be extended to support some of those other features.

    For example, Drupal with Git interface and IRC modules.
    Not that I think that is an ideal solution by any means, just an idea.

    Hell, if your office consists entirely of bearded UNIX gurus, just use Emacs. There are enough Lisp modules to do all of that.
    Only if health insurance benefits are provided, so the employees don't have to pay out of pocket to relieve their carpal tunnel.

    • (Score: 1) by dltaylor on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:04AM

      by dltaylor (4693) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:04AM (#117152)

      The wrist braces take care of the carpal tunnel issues. Coupla years in them retrains your wrist position.

      Nothing fixes the frustration/annoyance of IDEs with an "emacs mode", rather than just USING emacs and some extensions to hook the rest of the IDE features.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Dunbal on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:01AM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:01AM (#117182)

        Or you could just get a vertical mouse [evoluent.com]. This shit works. Seriously.

  • (Score: 1) by robpow on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:16AM

    by robpow (1575) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:16AM (#117154)

    There are a slew of options from roll-your-own with libreoffice, jabber etc to zoho.com all the way up to google apps and office 365.

    The choice should be dependent on how much they are willing and able to put into it. More money/less time takes you towards the google/office end of the spectrum while more time/less money towards the free (bird not beer) end.

    Now, if there only was a simple way to universally categorise the options and associated costs and apply for every type of customer you'd be on to a winner!

    Matt

  • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:44AM

    by mtrycz (60) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:44AM (#117173)

    I haven't worked with it lately, but I've build a couple of portals with Liferay. It's pretty a preatty feature-rich java portal, you could probably implement your use case without ever writing java. Since it's very configurable, it's also very complex.

    When I left the old job (and didn't work with this portal anymore), they were developing folder sync (dropbox-like) and webdav access (with locks) on the Document Library functionality. I'm not aware if it's done or functional at this time. Anyway I wouldn't ever trust a third party system to correctly manage edits on a shared repository. Obvioulsy there is versioning, and fine grained permissions.

    It also has a "Social Office" flavour, which is pre-configured for a scenario similar to yours.

    It obviously has it's own drawbacks and bugs. It's not the easiest thing to install and manage (there are worse, tho) and it's quite complex to grasp in the beggining (Social Office comes handy).

    Also, try to clearly state to your boss that "policies and procedures" is a problem apart, and it would need a professional working for some months to make it happen and then some continous support. I see a big criticity here, and it's not exactly technical/IT related. (Liferay has/had a framework for that, don't know how it's working now; the Enterprise Edition comes with a visual editor for workflows which could simplify some of the work for you; I have no idea how much the Enterprise Edition would cost you)

    Obviously, I feel like suggesting it, because that's what I know, I know that it's capable for doing something very similar, that's how I would do it, and it's not necessarily the best way for you to do it; also I'm not associated with Liferay.

    Good luck.

    --
    In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
  • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:04AM

    by tonyPick (1237) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:04AM (#117176) Homepage Journal

    but... my initial thoughts are that Plone CMS for document management & collaboration (see the Plone site [plone.org]) might hit quite a few of those points for low effort. I've been using it on a VM for some small scale stuff and it's easy to set up & try out. I suspect you would have to look into how well it scales up though.

    Calendars and contacts is a harder problem - one I haven't seen a good solution to outside the heavyweight suites (i.e. Exchange or Google)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by E_NOENT on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:37AM

    by E_NOENT (630) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:37AM (#117178) Journal
    This used to be a pitched as a direct Google spinoff ("opengoo" I believe it was called before someone probably said "ewww" too many times).


    http://fengoffice.org/ [fengoffice.org]


    I've used it a fair bit; it seems to strike a good balance between power and ease of use.

    Not sure about IM capabilities, maybe for that you could use one of the many other messengers out there.
    --
    I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:44PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:44PM (#117265) Homepage

      This is to date the most useful post in the thread - mod this person up, please! FengOffice looks interesting.

      The truth is the modern office - and there's now a whole generation of programmers and office drones who know nothing else - is not that efficient. How many offices of people whose mid-level admin staff come in, sit down with a coffee, and read their email *all frikking morning?* So inefficient, so not helpful. There need to be more creative solutions. It's a rare breed of person who knows the problems but has the technical wherewithal to identify and build solutions, too.

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:45PM

      by Marand (1081) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:45PM (#117293) Journal

      The URL you provided is a GoDaddy domain squat. I think you wanted http://www.fengoffice.com [fengoffice.com] instead.

      Looks interesting except for the PHP+MySQL dependency, though I guess for something internal, the PHP swiss-cheese security nightmare is less of a problem.

      • (Score: 2) by E_NOENT on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:44PM

        by E_NOENT (630) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:44PM (#117405) Journal

        The URL you provided is a GoDaddy domain squat. I think you wanted http://www.fengoffice.com [fengoffice.com] instead.

        Wow, sorry about that--how embarrassing. Thanks for correcting.

        --
        I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
    • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:57PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:57PM (#117354)

      add opencloud and liberoffice tools to that and you have most of the components.

      For your own sanity, pick a feature set and look for the FOSS project that does most of it. Seriously, see how much can be done in a browser. That technology is only getting better. Modern Linux is now getting COW (copy on write) which is an effective way of running a multiuser environment.

      Liberoffice supports versioning and can be plugged into postgres and other CMS systems.

      You and your employess will thank you for it years from now, but it would really help if you could enumerate the show stoppers.

  • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM

    by mtrycz (60) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM (#117184)

    I don't even know where the FUD ends and when truth starts.

    Maybe I'll just leave the internets to the young. Sigh.

    --
    In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
    • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM

      by mtrycz (60) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM (#117186)

      Obviously this comment was about the Tor article. Disregard it.

      --
      In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
      • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:56PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:56PM (#117353) Journal

        Your comment applies equally to Tor, systemd, #gamergate, Windows, SaaS, ecommerce, junk science, wearable computing and fracking.

        --
        1702845791×2
  • (Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM

    by Pav (114) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:07AM (#117185)

    I looked at Alfresco years ago. It has plenty of nice features, but what I liked most is that you could create a network drive containing all of your stored documents, so migrating away would be relatively simple though of course you'd lose much of your metadata. OpenKM also looked interesting, and I know someone who uses Owl (but that's much too simple for your use case).

  • (Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:26PM

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:26PM (#117196)

    First things first, install a local server, Debian is my personal choice.

    Then install owncloud for your document management.
    Next, if your users can stomach LaTeX, install ShareLatex. It has real time collaboration and once you have templates, LaTeX is a great language for reports and general protocols/docs.

    Install a jabber server for IM (prosody is good). Also look into web based VOIP.

    For project management, Odoo seems worth a look, but I haven't extensively tested that myself yet.
    Roll it all together with a good backup system and an HTML front end to unify the services.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:34PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:34PM (#117223)

    Skip versioning, from extensive corporate experience the very concept of it goes beyond the clue threshold of non-programmers.

    All you'll end up with is a git repo full of hundred of files named:

    spreadsheet.xls

    spreadsheet.xlsx

    spreadsheet-ops-do-not-touch.xls

    backup-spreadsheet.xlsx

    spreadsheet-2014-11-18.xls

    jon's-copy-spreadsheet.xls

    spreadsheet-next-quarter.xls

    Funny as the above looks, I guarantee reality is going to be even worse.

    Something similar always happens with office procedures intranets, someone with tech skills sets it up, maybe leaves, then the manager with authority to change stuff refuses to use it and goes all physical paper or email.

    Aside from this, its pretty much the use case for google drive and its editing apps. I don't see any way around it. You've basically specified what google drive does without using its name. When google inevitably discontinues drive like it eventually discontinues everything else, a lot of people will be screwed, so keep an eye on competitors, you'll be using them sooner or later.

    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:50PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:50PM (#117269) Homepage

      You're absolutely right, I've experienced that too. In fact, it's one of the problems with straight-up Google Docs too - unless users have an extraordinary level of sophistication and organization (and they never do) you wind up with an industrial-strength landfill of document orphans with no clue how to find things.

      I think Alfresco and openkm both encourage better organization and provide document search capabilities, which are pretty important but don't remove the need for an almost full-time document manager/librarian.

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
  • (Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:09PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:09PM (#117233)

    The problem is, few people have the formal training or discipline of librarians --- they're not willing to puzzle out the appropriate place in hiearchy XYZ for file ABC.

    The one thing which pretty much every user has in common is the use of e-mail --- why not make that the control point? Work up an A.I. which parses every incoming and outgoing e-mail and uses it to update a matching page structure in a wiki. Incoming files are added to the wiki as well, time-date stamped w/ only the most recent version showing (and dupes are discarded).

    There's a decent opensource A.I. for parsing addresses (Simson Garfinkel's Sbook: http://simson.net/ref/sbook5/ [simson.net] ) --- could that be extended sufficiently to make something like this workable? If not, what could?

  • (Score: 2) by goodie on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:10PM

    by goodie (1877) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @02:10PM (#117234) Journal

    First question: Do you have anything right now? How's it working and what's the setup? In other words, is the question about "upgrading" something or starting from scratch?

    My old company (small soft dev shop of about 20 people, all in the same small office space) used to run stuff in-house: SVN for code repo, Office for documents, in-house Exchange, DFS, Active Directory etc. Over the past few years, they've switched to Google Docs and GMail for small business (hosted). Honestly, they all love it. The happiest people in there are the tech guys who can focus on other things than fixing Exchange, installing office etc. for people. It's all integrated with their IP phones etc. I hear Lync is pretty good for that too.

    Now, you have requirements that seem a bit different so I'm not sure this applies. But they lost some control but gained in cost and focus on core stuff rather than support activities. So for them it's a win. If you need to version CAD drawings etc. however it's a different story. Maybe a share with File Versions would work better than Git or SVN if they are binaries? Or maybe there is a VCS for such formats? Or maybe you simply don't need VCS to begin with...

    One big thing you may want to look at as a big driver is the formats sent by clients etc. because you have no control over those. You need to have compatibility between your stuff and theirs (i.e., when you receive stuff from them and when they send it to you). If you have to convert/tweak anything in order to read or send stuff outside, it's not working IMHO.

    I think it all depends on what you are looking for here as well. If your Internet is flaky at times (and yes, it can happen in some places), online apps are a no go.

  • (Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:04PM

    by arashi no garou (2796) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:04PM (#117241)

    It's not open source, but it seems to cover everything you would need. I've only recently used it for a decidedly non-work environment (maintaining communication with teammates while playing an AR game) but it seems like it would handle pretty much any shared document/messaging situation.

    https://slack.com/integrations [slack.com]

    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:07PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:07PM (#117242) Homepage

      Slack does look pretty cool. Obviously, with ties to github and all, it's best suited for programming teams and such, but it's still pretty cool. Too bad it doesn't handle threaded messaging though, but it's something definitely worth looking more into. Also was thinking of setting up and internal NNTP server for all internal office communications - it's old school but has some real advantages in keeping a record of the conversations, unlike email, which gets lost when the users leave.

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @03:28PM (#117251)

    If you do not want to use Google Apps, kolab.org is nice for a self hosted solution.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @04:11PM (#117277)

    VRML + occulus rift.
    maybe?

  • (Score: 2) by WillR on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:01PM

    by WillR (2012) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:01PM (#117298)
    "Ten years ago, you'd be sitting in a cube farm, using Microsoft Office and a shared drive and emailing documents back and forth. Later they'd have added Sharepoint."

    Yup. And today, I'm sitting in an office with a window, using Microsoft Office and a shared drive, and emailing documents back and forth. Occasionally I look at Sharepoint, but most of the non-IT content there is out of date because there's only one real "Sharepoint person" and he lives in IT.

    No matter what platform(s) you ultimately end up choosing, remember the network effect. The technical decision is only half (probably less) of the solution; the other half is getting enough people to use it. If the old email-and-shared-folders workflows are allowed to persist alongside the new systems, the only difference is going to be that a few people with the inclination to learn new things will do extra work duplicating their changes into the new system, while the rest carry on sending email attachments like "Copy of Copy (2) of 1q2015 pencil sharpener budget - revised __FINAL__.xlsx".
    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:07PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:07PM (#117374) Homepage

      Believe me, I'm in the same situation as you are, which is what prompted me to start thinking this out, and to ask the question. It's 2014, and I'm still getting documents that look like what you just described, and I still work with people who treat email like their file system since they don't know how to use a document repository and my office's current systems don't encourage it.

      One thing I was thinking about was configuring the mail server to be finicky. Examples:
      1. email size limit 10kb for any email sent to an internal address
      2. email to internal employees rejected. Use the collaboration system, please.
      3. email goes in batches, at 9AM, 12PM, 3PM, 6PM, midnight. That changes the workflow of people who are always, relentlessly catching up on emails, and reduces the value for people using it for real-time collaboration. Now you're forced to use other systems (slack, NNTP, jabber, something) to chat with colleagues.

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
      • (Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:14PM

        by iamjacksusername (1479) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:14PM (#117396)

        You sound like an office that could pretty much dump most of their internal infrastructure. I would not recommend doing any of the things you said above... people have workflows and intentionally breaking them will not help. You need to present them a better workflow and things will get better.

        This is what I do professionally so let me know if you want to talk further.

        • (Score: 2) by WillR on Wednesday November 19 2014, @06:13PM

          by WillR (2012) on Wednesday November 19 2014, @06:13PM (#117772)
          Arbitrary limits on email size aren't the way to accomplish anything (other than cultivating your reputation as a BOFH), but I'm not sure how to move people to a new workflow - even one that's objectively better in every possible metric except what workers are familiar with - other than having management issue edicts like "We will not accept emailed MS Office docs for (purpose) after (date)." and then hold everyone to it.
  • (Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:45PM

    by iamjacksusername (1479) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:45PM (#117316)

    IAA IT contractor specializing in the Engineering / Architectural industry and I work with this type of need on a daily basis for clients of this size.

    This is not going to be popular here but I would strongly recommend you look at the Microsoft service offerings. $5 / month / user gets you:

    1. Exchange account with 50GB so Outlook on Windows / Mac and EAS for iOS and Android.
    2. Sharepoint for intranet and internet front page. Also, file sync access from your Windows, Mac, Android or iOS to the Sharepoint portal.
    3. Lync messaging (text, voice, video, desktop sharing, voice conferencing, federation with Skype) on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
    4. Windows, Mac, Android and iOS support for all the bits and pieces.
    5. Zero maintenance. Seriously. You sound like a project management office not an IT company. You want to spend your time on your business, not on trying to make all the pieces work together.

    I would say the Google Apps stack is not quite there yet in terms of reliability making all the pieces fit together. They have the pieces - it is just you are going to spend way more time than you think trying to "make do" with it. The Google Apps stack definitely has issues with it being "unfinished"...

    E.g. one of my clients on Google Apps ran into an issue with folders. Most users have extensive folder structures with multiple layers of subfolders in their email. The issue is that the label / folder column in the gmail web interface is not re-sizable. Seriously. Many of my users could not get to their subfolders via the webmail because the folder names would not fit on screen. The "workaround" is to inject JS into the webmail via a Firefox bookmarklet that makes it resizable. That is not a real solution. The problem with Google Apps is there are dozens of issues like that.

    • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:10PM

      by zafiro17 (234) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:10PM (#117375) Homepage

      Glad to have a 'pro' answer here - there must be tons of work for people like you, because I don't see obvious solutions on the market for what I consider really serious and not-totally-addressed problems. I confess Microsoft has a pretty good offer here, but (and this should be the topic of another Ask Soylent News) my office's Sharepoint site is a piece of crap. That makes me really dislike Sharepoint, but in the back of my head I keep wondering if maybe the problem isn't Sharepoint, it's the way my company set it up for us.

      --
      Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
      • (Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:50PM

        by iamjacksusername (1479) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:50PM (#117390)

        Yeah Sharepoint is a beast. For most companies, trying to host your own SharePoint without a department to actively develop it is a waste of resources. It is a fantastic framework if you a) want to build your own platform or, b) want to buy a platform somebody else has developed. SharePoint by default is pretty much a waste though. Most installs I have seen are basically dumping grounds for random files, 1/15th finished "portals" and the random Project Server templates for the pilot project that got the SharePoint instance installed lol.

        This is where Microsoft is killing it on a services front though. They give you some SharePoint resources and you can pay a consulting firm to develop a front page and not have to worry about it.

        Most of my SMB clients use the hosted SharePoint for three purposes - it is a syncing point for getting files to/from their tablets or phone, Lync Meetings and dumping random documents someplace where they can get indexed. It it not the "real" purpose but it seems to serve a need. E.g., the OneNote Metro App will sync to your SharePoint Online account.

  • (Score: 1) by archshade on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:24PM

    by archshade (3664) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:24PM (#117359)
    Document Sharing: For working with “current and volatile” documents
    • Git: - Only need access to server for push/pull good for people on the road with no net
    • SVN: - Really need access to the server all the time.

    The only problem I can really see with going down this method is that when merging you can’t resolve. There are ways to solve this (oodiff). You did not say what file formats you use if you can use flat ods or latex, git just works.

    Document Repository: For storing static or published (internally) documents.

    My knowledge is limited but I would look at

    • A wiki with only admins having write access. (could use wget to grab the whole thing before going offsite). Nice side effect you can have
    • Searching for “{free,low cost} document management system”.
    • Roll your own DMSs can be quite simple (although maintenance will be a bitch)

    Internal Instant Messaging:

    • Jitsi

      • Very easy P2P set-up on internal network.
      • Secure {Voice,Video}OIP
      • Multi protocol inc. XMMP
      • Java based:
        • Runs anywhere JRE.
        • JRE can be a slow memory hog.
        • Can look Ugly.
    • Private internal XMPP

      • Loads of native clients
      • OTR support in many
      • Harder Set-up

    EMAIL

    Not fun, nor cool. it been around forever for a reason. - Thunderbird still pretty much everything a SMB needs on the client side. Server side - outsource my (admittedly short lived hobbyist) attempt quickly came up as more trouble than its worth.

    Calendar Again Thunderbird for the client. Any iCAL server should be fine.

    For the servers a single Debian box with modest power should suffice for ~20 people. and installation is just an apt-get away.

    Actually any *NIX will do. May as well go *BSD then you can avoid having an opinion on systemd.

  • (Score: 1) by rdfield on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:36AM

    by rdfield (3185) on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:36AM (#117556)

    I wrote this http://www.mvine.com/ [mvine.com] to do exactly what you described.