Samba compatible time-management software (was: Re: MS Exchange)

[Andy Bakun]

Just thought I'd take a moment to tell people about my experience with OnTime, a
time-management package from OpenText.

Before I assumed control, my company's network was NT based with Exchange (on a demo
lincense which was about to expire) for email and scheduling.  I setup an SMTP and
POP server, and we acquired OnTime from Opentext (http://www.opentext.com/ontime/) to
handle scheduling.  I was concerned that OnTime was not going to integrate well into
our new Samba network, and that users would have to remember YAP (yet another
password), but you can configure it to obtain a list of usernames and do authication
via a PDC.  That was a year ago.  Unfortunately, they didn't have a Linux version
when I ordered (Linux? What's that?), so I've needed to dedicate an NT machine to
it.  It doesn't seem to do anything fancy with hidden API calls, and it's worked with
all the Samb 2.0.x versions (including the later alphas).  I'm using it right now
with a Samba PDC running 2.0.4b.

It also has support for email notification of scheduling changes via SMTP.  OnTime is
one of the few software software packages that my users have actually taken it upon
themselves to learn how to use, and the ones who used Exchange heavily for scheduling
like it better.  It's also easy to admin (I just add and remove users from it).  It
does have per user licensing, though, and it's not exactly cheap (compared to getting
Exchange in a BackOffice bundle, I guess), but I was more concerned about
interoperability. I'm not sure how scalable it is, my network only has 30 users on
it.  It might not be worth it to try and setup a new scheduling system to replace
what you already have, but if you are going to deploy a new one, definately take a
look at OnTime.

Jan Kratochvil wrote:

> > Well, you could switch to sendmail and POP3/IMAP clients, then Exchange is
> > no longer a problem :)
>
>   Tech support would welcome it but people are using the time manager, work
> lists etc., I'm not forced to use it myself but simply due to all these
> features the remove of Exchange is unfortunately not a solution now.