Re: SuperOffice-killer
For those of you that dont read norwegian (and for those who do):
I have posted this also on the Norwegian list, but please send
followups to the international list.
(hmm, maybe we should create a new list - this is kind of off topic)
Markus originally asked if someone knew of a replacement of SuperOffice
(Company website: http://superoffice.com/ ).
This is a CRM solution that I actually used some years ago. SInce then
I think they have added som accounting modules (they only had and
invoice module when I used it back in -94).
Well, been there looked for it and found no good replacement to use for
Linux. Most of them are build to use on windows only - some might have
windows clients, or even are instalable on a linux server, but I have
not been satisfied with any of them. Some have Web interfaces, badly
programmed, some have netive clients. But they arn't really that
flexible. They all need som specific mail client, to get all the mail
into the database, and often this is some builtin mail client, or som
plugin that are added to outlook, that still needs to use POP3 to fetch
the mail from mailserver .. well you get the picture .. :)
Like Petter say, we should not talk about getting specific clients, but
more that the solutions should use standard protocols, so that we might
create our own clients and our own servers...
well after having looked at this for some time I kind of thought out
something like this:
lets plugg together
a catalog server
a file server
a WordProcessor/Spreadsheat/Presentation program
a Database frontend
a Databases server
an email server
an Accounting application
Lets all the Contacts we have into the Catalog server.
then lets create an document to be sent to a Contact
by mail.
The original document (OOo, MSAnything, Abiword, gnumeric, lyx,
whatever) are stored in the filesystem that are shared out using NFS,
Samba or whatever.
The Author checks this into the Database using the Database frontend
(php, python, perl, java, whatever)
when document is done (after 10 minutes, 2 days or a week), the pdf is
created, and sent in an email.
The email server sends a copy of the email to an address
(crm@company.com) that actually fires up a perl script, then uses the
email address, and connects the documents to the contact.
The same applies to inbound emails.
You might even add a fax-server to all this, and a document scanner.
Then we add the accounting application to all this.
Well - My choice woud have been
OpenLDAP
Samba/NFS
OpenOffice
PHP/Perl/Python and a web server
Mysql or Postgresql
Exim or Postfix
sql-ledger
cron (to search for new Documents)
Well we have most of the components. And both server and clients could
be Linux or Mac or Windows or whatever. It's even possible to add
handheld devices, gsm phones and a lot of things here.
I have estimated this to be somewhere from 300-600 work hours to get
working.
--
Finn-Arne Johansen
faj@bzz.no
http://bzz.no/
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