[phpGroupWare-users] Various issues

[James Mohr]

Greetings!

I working on an article which will be a review of various web-based groupware 
tools. I am on a short deadline (MODF), so I would really appreaciate it if I 
don't get RTFM or "google it" answers. "It should work" answers are OK, but I 
would appreaciate a kick in the backside of where to look, preferably with 
filenames, menu option, etc. If it's busted, say so. I am not going to ding the 
product for bugs, as every product has them and I think Dave and all the other 
developer have done a bang up job. 

I am running 0.9.16.011.

To save time I am going to be terse here, so please try to read between the 
lines. There is no specified order/priority to the questions.

I have another post "Must login again to show default application", which has 
not yet be answered.

Is there a portal start page like Horde? 
http://www.horde.org/groupware/screenshots/portal.png 

Is there anyway to synchronize PHPGW with a handheld? The phpgwinfo site says 
"The SyncML Server module will allow synchronization". That is future tense. 
All the other references I have googled said things about the future. Is there 
somethung currently available? 

There is an option to setup email authentication, but other than the setup 
page, I cannot find any reference to it in the PHPGW doc. 

When using the interface template "desktop", there is no text in the 
applications menu, just the icons.

The online manual says "Note: Some of this information is out of date". This 
has been in there as long as I have known about phpGroupware. What is out of 
date? Is it still valid?

If you choose a large number of applications, you can access all of them with 
certain templates.

When selecting InfoLog, I get: "Path to user and group files HAS TO BE OUTSIDE 
of the webservers document-root". I Googled and searched the forums, but found 
nothing useful. If this is the very first error message the app spits out, it 
should be documented, especially since it is fatal.  In the setup, there is a a 
block "Path information". this is set to something "OUTSIDE of the webservers 
document-root" and has perms 777. I changed the Infolog code to display the 
path it finds for files_dir and it shows /var/www/phpgwfiles where it is 
supposed to be and it is defintely "OUTSIDE of the webservers document-root". 

When selecting FudForum, either as a normal application or under prefences I 
get: "The 'files/' (/outside/webserver/docroot) directory exists, however 
webserver has no write permissions to that directory."  Going through the 
admin, I get "The requested URL /phpgroupware/fudforum/adm/admglobal.php was 
not found on this server." In the setup it is listed as "installed", but it 
seems that it really isn't.

Please don't tell me that I have to configure some things through the GUI and 
others by editing files or that I sometimes have to look in the online manual 
to know how to configure things and in other cases, I have to search for a 
README or similar. Things like this give the product a very unprofessional 
feel. 

Not all apps listed in the setup are available. The setup has an app 
"phpbrain", but this is not listed as an application I can assign to a user. Is 
this the same thing as the "Knowledge Base" app which is not listed in the set 
up, but I can assign it to users. Where is this relationship documented?

Admin->Notes->Preferences gives me a blank page.

My two cents: get the documentation up-to-date and complete, then deal with new 
features. If you are going to describe it with anything like "enterprise" drop 
the applications like "comic" and DJ from the core set. If these are the apps 
that the developers consider "important", you will have a hard time convincing 
most managers that the product is enterpris anything.

I think it would be extremely useful if someone defined a set of standards 
before an app is allowed to be part of the core set. It would also be useful if 
someone proofread the documentation, particularly in cases where the README is 
the only information

I have the "linux-at-work" template. I select the manual app and have a list of 
icons, half of which it is not clear at all what they mean. It would be 
extremely useful to have the text next to the icons. What is the point of 
including a link to a "manual" for an app when the *only* you get when you 
click it is something like "Version: 0.9.14".  This (among many other things) 
give an "unfinished" appearance to the product.

I would like to hear from someone "official" about the phpgroupware/egroupware 
split. Offline is OK, but I would like a little something I can print. 

Thanks for the help. 

Regards,

jimmo
--
I'm European. Guns scare me, boobs do not. Sent from the phpGroupWare forums @ 
http://forums.phpGroupWare.org