[marvmiller]

Hey,

We're starting up a company with 8 employees and we expect to expand within the next few months. We're aiming to be all Mac-shop. We're a real estate development company with divisions on construction, architecture, town planning and property management.

I wondered how does Apple do their "groupware" - Calendaring, to do, etc... do they use iCal enterprise-wide? If so, how do they do that? Just use Mac OS X Server and set up a webDAV server?

And, I wonder what are the new features coming for iCal 2.0? Any rumors?

I would love to be able to move to do item under a specific date and not have it show until I arrive that day. (Like Franklin planner). More options for sorting and prioritizing to do's.

Marvin

[cpac]

Apple (iirc) uses some version of PeopleSoft.

iCal is not really fit for (even small) groups yet, though with 2.0 it may be better.

You might want to look into Daylite - it's more sales-oriented, but it's very powerful and has extremely responsive developers.

[marvmiller]

PeopleSoft?! Apple uses them? Are they even Mac-friendly?

Daylite looks powerful, but... I like iCal's simplicity. Any other suggestions on groupware functionality for ALL Mac shop?

Marvin

[cpac]

I'd do a search on version tracker - there are a variety of things that let address books be shared and might be able to sync calendars well (plus who knows what we'll get with iCal 2.0...)

[hmurchison2001]

Face it. Using the Apple throughout a company just flat out stinks. You basically have to roll your own in so many ways. Is there any wonder that the only people really buying Xserves are running them in clusters sans OSX Server software.

My mother has just created a Law firm and despite my "sincere" intentions to get her running a Mac I find that Apple just doesn't have their "ish" together with the proper tools.

An 8 employee company shouldn't be searching Versiontracker of all places looking for shareware to run their company. Perhaps Steve needs to spend less time in his Lear Jet and more time figuring out how to help the SMB markets.

[cpac]

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
Face it. Using the Apple throughout a company just flat out stinks.

Whoa there. There are huge advantages to it, including:
(1) not really needing a tech department
(2) not being suseptible to all the M$ viruses and whatnot out there
(3) easy networking and the like

You basically have to roll your own in so many ways. Is there any wonder that the only people really buying Xserves are running them in clusters sans OSX Server software

Um, the big clusters are institutions creating super-computers. They aren't the only ones buying X-Serves. Everybody else who buys one is running OS X server....

My mother has just created a Law firm and despite my "sincere" intentions to get her running a Mac I find that Apple just doesn't have their "ish" together with the proper tools.

There are a huge number of tools for a law firm to be able to run Macs only (and a large percentage of small firms do just that).

You've got MS Office, a variety of browsers, the ability to make anything into a .pdf with the click of a button - you don't need much else. (I'm dreaming of the day I put out my own shingle and run a mac-only office)

Care to specify just what is was your mother couldn't do that she needed to do in a law office environment?

An 8 employee company shouldn't be searching Versiontracker of all places looking for shareware to run their company. Perhaps Steve needs to spend less time in his Lear Jet and more time figuring out how to help the SMB markets.

I agree that Apple needs to improve the way Address Book and iCal work (though there's always Entourage, Now up to date, Daylite, and the other 3d party solutions I alluded to above).
---------

In short, yes, there's a lot of room for Apple to improve Address Book and iCal as small business tools. (And many of these improvements may be coming with the release of Tiger in the next 4 months or so).

That said, this single deficiency does not make Macs unsuitable for small business use - and using Apple throughout a company would rock, not stink in terms of overall benefit.

[cpac]

Here's what Apple Insider posted re: iCal 1.6 in some Tiger beta back in September:

iCal 1.6

The latest developmental version of Apple's calendar application�iCal version 1.6�will reportedly allow users to search for events and To Do items through a new pop-up menu, view meeting proposals and responses in a single window, and easily update and cancel events from calendars shared over the internet. Likewise, iCal will gain support for grouping of calendars and To Do lists and drag-and-drop reorganization of To Do list items.

Sources also claim that the new iCal will let users transform event items into To Do items by dragging the event to the To Do list, or vice versa to change a To Do item into an event.

Other iCal enhancements include the automatic creation of birthday calendars from dates present in a user's address book, and a new dialog box that will ease printout creation by formatting calendars and To Do items into weekly, daily, or monthly views.

[Superchicken]

Can't iCal be set up to update calendars with any web DAV server? Even a Mac mini should be able to run as a server for the others to update with. I don't see the problem. As for address book... yah that could certainly be better.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
Can't iCal be set up to update calendars with any web DAV server? Even a Mac mini should be able to run as a server for the others to update with. I don't see the problem. As for address book... yah that could certainly be better.

Yes... but at the same time a very resounding NO. iCal can't do shared calendars. About all you an do is have one person make the calendar, publish it, then you can view it when you subscribe to it. Different people can't modify the same calendar unless they're physically at the machine that created it (or maybe through Remote Desktop.)

Unfortunately, I think the best option is Entourage for shared calendars, or maybe the Netscape one (if they still have it for Mac.)

[gmsmith]

For a small company that needs groupware, I would check out KerioMail. It handles Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc. It has an INCREDIBLE web interface and integrates with Entourage to sync calendar, mail and such.

I am doing an implementation of Kerio mail for a company of about 10...all mac users. It costs between 499 (without antivirus) - $649 (with antivirus) for 20 named mailboxes. Very reasonable for how powerful it is.

http://www.kerio.com

I actually found them through a banner ad they had on MacNN during Macworld.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by marvmiller:
Hey,

We're starting up a company with 8 employees and we expect to expand within the next few months. We're aiming to be all Mac-shop. We're a real estate development company with divisions on construction, architecture, town planning and property management.

I wondered how does Apple do their "groupware" - Calendaring, to do, etc... do they use iCal enterprise-wide? If so, how do they do that? Just use Mac OS X Server and set up a webDAV server?

And, I wonder what are the new features coming for iCal 2.0? Any rumors?

I would love to be able to move to do item under a specific date and not have it show until I arrive that day. (Like Franklin planner). More options for sorting and prioritizing to do's.

Marvin

Apple uses MeetingMaker.

It's overkill for 8 employees. You may wish to consider Kerio -- Kerio Mail Server 6 is an excellent solution for < 500 employees. Beyond that, it doesn't scale well.

[Mattia]

I have a similar problem, I am looking for a tool like iCal where 3 Macs and a Windows Xp must write on. The important thing is that any computer can edit and write new events with txo different color.

[Millennium]

The Postfix e-mail server which comes with OSX is decent, though it only handles outbound mail (you'll need an IMAP server for inbound mail, though these are not hard to find, and one may actually come with OSX Server). So as far as mail goes, you're set. If you want an instant-messaging solution I suggest waiting for Tiger; iChat will support Jabber then, and Tiger Server will come with a Jabber server, so you will be able to do all your instant messaging in-house. Of course, you could simply use one of the many existing Jabber clients and servers now, if you can't wait.

This said, thoug, there are few good enterprise calendaring solutions for the Mac yet. Novell's Hula shows promise, but it's still very new, and for now it only sports a Web-based interface to the calendars. You'll also need to compile it yourself. If this is fine for you, though, then you may want to give it a shot.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by cpac:
Here's what Apple Insider posted re: iCal 1.6 in some Tiger beta back in September:

So iCal in Tiger will have all the features you need, and Tiger will be out in less than a month. I don't think it would be a good idea to buy something else just for this first month.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
So iCal in Tiger will have all the features you need, and Tiger will be out in less than a month. I don't think it would be a good idea to buy something else just for this first month.

If you believe what a rumor site says

[Hi I'm Ben]

What about iCal with PHP iCalendar...

It would be quite a pain in the ass because you'd constantly downloading and uploading parts of the calendar from the server each time you were updating it but at least It would be accessable from anywhere and compatible with iCal.

I dunno this is probably the worst idea I've had all day.