Re: Evaluation

On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 22:12 -0400, Dirk H Bartley wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 10:39 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> I guess I should state my objective.  What I want is to get groupware to
> manage calendars and contacts and Companies.  So that when an inside
> salesperson enters a contact, that contact is then available in real
> time to be utilized in a CRM manager that I would write.
> > You don't want ZideLook, you want ZideOne <http://www.zideone.com/>  You
> > can download the beta for free [I believe].  Currently at Beta3, with
> > Beta 4 next week [so I hear].  B3 works pretty well except for LARGE
> > databases (>10,000 contacts).  B4 should improve that.
> > ZideLook is old and uses a special version of ZideStore to operate over
> > some kind of property intensive DAVish interface.  ZideOne uses GroupDAV
> > and a CalDAV/CardDAV subset if the server supports it.
> OK, downloaded and installed and tested.  Zideone however is still
> advertised as beta.
> Which leads me back to my earier question.  I'm looking for any ideas of
> tasks to prioritize to assist me in a sales pitch to sell OpenGroupware
> usage to the company.  I do want to make this work, but I'm feeling like
> my sales pitch is heading in a downward spiral after today.
> I've spent company money now to evaluate zidelook, and judging from the
> answer you've given zidelook is out, my money is gone .. .. and zideone
> is the future.

Do they still process via ShareIt (or some such)?  Given that you
haven't been able to really complete the transaction I'd contact them
for a refund.

> My testing with zideone beta yielded 2 results which make proposing
> using zideone impractical as it stands.
> 1. Connecting to enterprises where I had more than 3K enterprises, the
> server's zidestore process went to 99 percent processor usage just from
> connecting to zideone, steady until outlook was stopped.  Even after
> zideone had all of the enterprises in view.  That was with just one
> outlook connection and I want about a hundred.

While that seems a bit high it isn't abnormal for the *VERY* first sync.
[although I thought B3 had a pacing algorythm to avoid pummeling
servers] The ZideStore server has to basically render the entire DB
contents as vCard (VCF) for the GroupDAV clients (TB/ZideOne/Evolution,
etc...)  BUT this only happens the very first time;  after that the
content is served from the cache and throughput should be pretty good.
If you look in /var/lib/opengroupware.org/documents you'll see all the
VCF files once you've sync'd.  You can increase this efficiency even
more by hashing the cache via the LSVCFCachePath/LSHashVCFCache defaults
(should be in the ZideStore chapter of WMOGAG).

> 2. Adding a Meeting to a calendar with zideone, outlook would complain
> if I tried to turn notification on.

I'll give that a try;  do you mean a meeting reminder?

> So I'm just looking for advice.  Where can I spend my energy and time
> attempting an implementation of a user interface that is something my
> users would be happy with.
> I feel like there would be a great deal of difficulty convincing
> management that users here to utilize any browser application as a
> primary mail/groupware interface.  I am just thinking this after a very
> difficult experience people here had being asked to use the browser
> based interface with zimbra.  I'd have to rate zimbra's browser a
> relatively user "pretty" interface.  That adventure, not proposed by me,
> resulted many thousands of dollars spent to upgrade office.
> Is the state of opengroupware that there is the browser interface and
> individuals companies own programmed interfaces?

There is the WebUI, which isn't very pretty (although very functional).
Besides that there are GroupDAV clients (ZideOne/Evo/TB/Funambol) and
custom interfaces.  Most deployments I'm aware of develop some kind of
web interface in conjunction to other clients.

> Is Zidelook completely out of the question and the money we spent is
> gone?

It should work with OGo 1.2 (current trunk till yesterday) and previous.

> Is zideone going to have the issues resolved and out of beta to a usable
> state??  Should I concentrate on trying to resolve the issues I'm hvaing
> with zideone because it is the future of opengroupware with outlook??

Yes, I think ZideOne is clearly the future for Outlook/OGo.  It is being
very actively worked on. (BTW, you can track development on twitter:
"zideone").

> do have until December until my Zimbra licenses are up for renewal.


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