Group Calendar without Exchange

S

ScYcS

2[H]4U
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Dec 11, 2004
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Ok, I'm getting desperate here, that's why i post this as a last resort kind of:

We have a network with around 150-200 clients, based on Ubuntu Servers with LDAP, Samba and Mail (among other services that are not that relevant for this topic). We have multiple satellite offices all over the world that connect to our server for various tasks.

Well, the crux is: Our boss wants a group calendar (understandable). Finding a group calendar is the problem though. The first thing to know if that we use Outlook and will continue to use Outlook. We can't change that for various reasons.

The group calendar ideally works in Linux, uses LDAP and is accessible from Outlook. A simple task i thought at first, however, it isn't.

Most functioning group calendars are based on MS Exchange. I worked with exchange before and it's really powerful and nice. However, we have Ubuntu and will keep Ubuntu.

What are my options? I tried many shareware solutions but none were really functioning properly nor as sophisticated as Exchange Group calendars. We're looking not to find something for free but a professional tool that does the job and then some.
 
There are multiple Linux-based packages that some close to duplicating MS Exchange functionality. Have you looked into any of those?
 
With many clients and/or users how will you manage authentication? I'd imagine that you'd have to use Google's LDAP sync.
 
Office365. Google is a PITA with Outlook...it starts off great and then the damn sync tool becomes a real nightmare to maintain with outlook.

Exchange is the best shared calendar for a larger pool of users as it works the way most people know (many have experience with exchange calendars...)
 
Grentz said:
Office365. Google is a PITA with Outlook...it starts off great and then the damn sync tool becomes a real nightmare to maintain with outlook.

Exchange is the best shared calendar for a larger pool of users as it works the way most people know (many have experience with exchange calendars...)
Click to expand...

Oh I agree... Outlook and Google calendar don't work well together. But... why use Outlook? How hard is it to have your group calendar in another "program"? In this case... a web browser?

We have been using Google Calendar here at work for over two years... it works exceptionally well.
 
Are they against in house coding (I know a lot of places unfortunately are). Would be fairly easy to build that in PHP and could be made 100% to your needs.

You could also make it mimic exchange to give it some familiarity, or make it even better. I find Outlook is finicky when it comes to some things like room/equipment rentals, it's kinda dirty that you need to create dummy AD accounts for each of those calendars and log in as each user in a VM to make changes.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Oh I agree... Outlook and Google calendar don't work well together. But... why use Outlook? How hard is it to have your group calendar in another "program"? In this case... a web browser?

We have been using Google Calendar here at work for over two years... it works exceptionally well.
Click to expand...

You lose a lot of quick steps and nice integration when you have mail and calendar in separate programs.

Then again, depends on what kind of user you are. I deal with 100-200 emails a day and am dealing with around 15-25 meeting invites/changes/etc. per day.
 
As the "event organizer" here at work, Google Calendar is soooo much nicer to use when MAKING or MODIFYING events. I absolutely detest Outlook in that regards.

We are multi-platform here, and the Mac guys REFUSE to use Outlook(they all want to use the default iCal app), so Google Calendar makes sense for us. It works well across different platforms.

But to each his own! :)
 
QwertyJuan said:
... and the Mac guys REFUSE to use Outlook(they all want to use the default iCal app), so Google Calendar makes sense for us. It works well across different platforms.

But to each his own! :)
Click to expand...

There's yer problem... You have Macs on your network. :D
 
Metraon said:
Have you checked Zimbra ? Also check this page, any flavor of CalDav can do what you want. Here some CalDav flavors
Click to expand...

Zimbra works quite well as a MS Exchange replacement. I've been testing it in our network for about 6 months now without many problems. The open source version is free but doesn't have the Outlook connector available. The standard edition is priced quite well for what you get. It handles LDAP integration and would likely be a fairly transparent change for your users. Plus you can also get the legal archiving tool (which is why I'm transitioning) to handle any email compliance needs.
 
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