[CS-FSLUG] Help Me Keep Outlook Out (of My Church's Office)

[Stephen J. McCracken]

On Mon, 2004-08-16 at 23:14, Timothy R.Butler wrote:
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Hi Stephen,
> We just did a business case study on several options (ranging from 
> roll our own to Novell OpenExchange to Exchange to ...)   The problem 
> is that there isn't much out there, yet to rival the calendaring 
> aspects of Exchange.  For [...]
> We need not get into "religious" arguments over Windows/Linux.  We 
> need to see what will fit the situation best at the moment and not 
> distract us, but let us move quickly on to God's purpose for us.

The main thing I would like to avoid is using the Outlook client. I 
tend to think that is asking for trouble. One person on another list 
suggested Novell Groupwise to me, since it has its own client. I guess 
Lotus Notes might be an option too. Did you examine either of those?
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Actually, only briefly.  As we have an Exchange 5.5 server, several
wanted to keep the functionality similar.  Lotus Notes was passed by as
it is proprietary (costly?) and we have no expertise.  Similarly,
Groupwise.  

The person who did the study saw staying with Outlook for now as an
advantage for us with regard to training users.

Bynari Insight has all the functionality of Exchange built mostly on
open source.  Since it is built on Cyrus IMAP (Postfix?, ClamAV/AmiVis,
SpamAssassin, Squirrelmail...) the mail server was actually an already
packaged version of what we were looking at building in-house. 
Therefore, we could use any IMAP client (Mozilla, Thunderbird, Outlook,
Outlook Express, etc.)  Outlook can use the connector to have the
integrated calendaring similar to Exchange (as could Evolution). 
Otherwise there is a Web interface to the calendaring function for those
without Outlook, or even those on the road.

sjm

P.S. Disclaimer still applies.

P.P.S. When your mail comes as an attachment (still), it makes it harder
to "reply".  I had to cut & paste your section above to keep continuity.