I Need Groupware

I need groupware for both stuff I do at home and stuff I do at work.

I've been looking around lazily for something free/open-source for a couple of days now. I really like the feel of Copper.

Continues here →

I've looked at eGroupware, phpGroupware, more.groupware, and PHProjekt, and of all of those more.groupware is the least confusing in the admin. Why is it that all of these projects need to code the kitchen sink into the app?

Here are the things I need:

An external (no login) site with CMS and wiki functionality.
Issue/ticket tracking with external submission.
Project scheduling with dependency-capable tasks and shared notes with published/private settings.

File system access and sharing with text and binary versioning would be nice, but not entirely necessary.

I do not need a calendar, except as it pertains to setting due dates for tasks. I do not need webmail or personal messaging (although the webmail clients in some of these are among the nicest I've seen written in PHP). I do not need forums or timecards.

Anybody know what this software is called?

Joey

Dec 31, 1969 07:00pm

geez...that eGroupware has comics built in! lol...It's kind of hard to take it seriously.

Have you checked out phpCollab? It's very clean.

I just happen to be doing the very same thing you're doing today. I ran across phpCollab about a year ago, and it's still the cleanest and simplest I've seen, although it lacks in some areas which I would like to see stronger.

I'm going to check out the ones you're talking about, plus search sourceforge for "groupware". I've just been calling them "project management software" until you threw that word out there. Thanks. :)

Oh, I also forgot to mention...the phpCollab team uses Wordpress for its homepage. Can't go wrong there. ;) I also think that the code is simple enough that you might could tweak it to your liking fairly easily.

Owen

I checked out phpCollab earlier, too. It looks like a hodgepodge of software, which would be fine, except I've had quite enough experience with Mantis (via WordPress' own bug tracking system) and really would rather have something prettier and simpler.

Basecamp looks cool, but I'd rather avoid a hosted solution if I could.

Thanks for the heads up on that one. I found it about a year ago, but I'm just delving into it with any kind of depth.

I tried all the ones you mentioned and, like you, wasn't impressed with any of them except Copper. And I don't have $300 for something like that, as cool as it looks.

Keep us updated on your findings. :)

As soon as I get stupid and rewrite Copper as an open-source program called "Bronze" I'll let you know. The UI is too pretty not to gank.

If I find something good, I'll make noise, don't worry.

Ryan Christensen

Interestingly enough, our company is needing something very similar what you speak of. After a few days of extensive searching & comparing existing solutions (including the ones noted above) we've decided that we're going to roll our own solution (likely based on Ruby/Rails.)

After completion & some heavy testing (and using it ourselves for a while).. we'd also talked about the possibility of releasing it both as a hosted product & standalone install.

perlworld

i've been having the same problem trying to find some decent groupware, i'm temporarily using dotproject until i can find a better alternative.

trac seems quite nice and does come complete with wiki and a subversion interface which is a nice touch, be nice if it was php and had a mysql backend though (apparently the latter is the pipeline).

May try out some of those listed in the comments.

Must say, some great plugins too :)

lol...your page comes up number 1 on google when you search for "copper groupware". :P

Moleboy

I've been on the search for the Holy Grail of Groupware/Project Management tools for a couple of years - must have tried about a dozen.

Like you, we're looking for something that we (as developers) can use internally with the ability for customers to interface for their own projects.

I think there's so much variety in what's available because every development team does things differently and want something that happily coexists with the development and communication tools they already use.

Right now we use a combination of DokuWiki and Flyspray which works quite well.

Would love to see your wishlist of features - I think it would be pretty close to ours :)

Ben

Hi guys,

We'd be interested in underwriting your development of bronzeproject.com, not :)

Seriously though, we've spent 3 years and too-much-money getting Copper to where it is. What we actually need is guys like you to buy it and in turn we'll promise to add the things you most want ;)

I understand $299 or $749 (for corproate) is a bit much for most, so drop me a line sometime and tell me what price point and functionality you'd be happy with (and if you'd be interested in a hosted version at a cheaper rate).

Cheers,
Ben.

Thanks for stopping by, Ben. There are actually many things that Copper doesn't do that I would need it to before I could consider paying any price. I do like the look of it, though - most groupware looks like it was slapped together without a thought to UI.

I've just written a complete post on the state of groupware for web developers, which is why I personally need groupware. I detail prices and my opinion of hosted services. I hope that it's of some use to you.