Office Work

This is based on my experience of the good - and bad - parts of working with (and basic involvement in managing and supporting) both Outlook/Exchange and Groupwise systems.

What I'd like to see in this area, to make it a killer application is:

Group communications:
* Sharing calendars, mailboxes, contacts lists (permission allowing) with varying permissions - read, read/write, send as etc on a per user and group basis.
* The ability to "send" an appointment to another person's calendar and them to accept/decline it as they wish.
* Customisable Out of office messages and other rules.

* These together mean there has to be a server side component to handle the requests and let the client access it, perhaps through IMAP - this would allow a lot of existing clients to connect). It can also be used to handle security based on a common shared model. Plugins for authentication against common directory services - eDirectory/NDS, AD, OpenLDAP, iPlanet etc for maximum flexibility.

* Easy backup/restore facility for the system as a whole, per mailbox and ideally, per message.

* Web based client for access out of the main application when "on the road."

* Ability to share the server side workload for a single instance of the installation across multiple servers, especially when you get into the thousands of accounts level.

* Ability for administrators to control global system setup and client configuration, especially things like force plain text view in email, disable writing HTML and rich text emails (security etc).

User Account specific:
* Archiving of old messages/appointments to keep the main mailbox size low but still available.

* Ability to download current email and/or calendar to portable devices (PDA/Blackberry type) for remote access, again security permitting.
Administrator controlled forced encryption of offsite data using open source widely understood protocol with good key strength.

* Ability to download specific users mailbox/archive to external media (eg CD) - again encrypted if required - for "in point" release or allowing them to have an offline copy, eg if they leave current workplace or their replacement needs a copy of their communications without the ability to send email under their current name or keeping their mailbox live.

Client Integration:
Application and OS independent means of sending current open document/spreadsheet/calendar as an email attachment via whatever the current default email client is to a nominated recipient.

Talk to the OpenOffice people at Sun about including any email/calendaring/task management client with a future version of OpenOffice - its the big thing missing from it at the moment.
Perhaps write it in such a way that it looks and behaves like an OpenOffice application.

I am not a heavy user because I am running my business through serviced offices and I trust they always are upgraded with latest features. So far I had no problems and I don' t intend to change this as I am spared of a lot of trouble.

Integration is the main cause that we are still using the mozilla suite in our office.

I think a standalone browser like ffx makes sense, but all the personal information stuff, like email, adresses and calendar should be tightly intregrated.

Sunbird/calendar is looking very promising but it is still a long way from a professional calendar application. It's ok for private or even SOHO use, but it is lacking better groupware features.

Jan