ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

["paul.roeland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <paul.roeland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

here's my two cents, based on Friends of the Earth experience:

- a 'known-good' example setup for LDAP is vital. Not only to have
uniform logins over a number of workstations, but once you have set it
up, it becomes a lot easier to hook all kinds of systems into that
without setting up separate accounts. We hook our website and
intranet/extranet (running on Plone, www.plone.org) into it, and you get
instant accounts for everybody.

- we use OpenERP for accounting now, packaging that could be an option.
It's a very full-featured solution, including bookkeeping, CRM and lots
of other options. It's probably impossible to make an example setup,
because tax regulations are so different in different countries, but the
same goes for GNUcash. Although maybe the anglo-saxon world has some
more uniform bookkeeping, but in continental europe every country has
it's own quirks and rules...

- we use Davical http://www.davical.org/ as a calendaring solution. It
works quite well with the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird, and can
synchronize with LDAP. It also means you can stick to your favourite
mail setup (we prefer Postfix and Dovecot-IMAP). Most of the other
'groupware' solutions are more of a black-box setup, and that can be a
problem if you for instance run multiple domain-names, mailinglists
etcetera. Davical does just calendaring, but does it fine.
Davical has it's own Debian repository, should be a snap to include in
ubuntu-server.

- Funambol is an open-source server that can synchronize calendars,
todo's etcetera with mobile phones. It works with LDAP, can synchronize
with (for instance) Davical, but is a major hassle to set up. This would
probably be a fine candidate to set up as a Virtual Appliance, because
it needs just about every Java framework under the sun, and claims an
insane number of ports. But, once it's working, it's a great solution to
keep everyone in your organisation always up-to-date. It can do
pushmail, and works with any modern smartphone.
It depends on your needs, but our employees are working quite often in
the field, away from the office, and then a speedy way of synchronzing
calendars and mail can be a very effective tool.
But, as said before, it took me quite some time to set up. A Virtualbox
or KVM image might be a better idea.

- more on a workflow level: we could point out simple alternatives that
make life easier for volunteers and save on training costs. Let's face
it, Gimp is great but very complex. And about 95% of the people don't
need it just to shrink a picture for web use. Gthumb or even better
Phatch (http://photobatch.stani.be/) can be set up so that casual
workers and volunteers can become productive immediately

Paul Roeland
Friends of the Earth Netherlands