Open Source Business: Groupware Tine 2.0

Tine 2.0 is project that derived from Egroupware, an open source groupware package based on PHP and MySQL. While Egroupware looks good and is already used in many projects, the Tine 2.0 development looks very promising.

You can see an early demo of Tine 2.0 on the website. What makes Tine 2.0 especially attraktive is the nice user interface. While it could still be improved in some aspects, it looks better than any other GUI of any other project in this direction I have seen so far.

The guys of the Tine 2.0 team seem to have made their homework as well. Whenever something occures to me that could be implemented, they probably have already thought about it and it is documented somewhere on the website.

Tine not only is a pure groupware application, but it also brings things like CRM and simple ERP into the software. I think it makes a lot of sense to include those things into the application because they share important data like addresses, contacts, communications, dates, etc.

Applications planned for Tine 2.0:

  • Group Address Book (already in the demo)
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (already in the demo)
  • Task Manager (already in the demo)
  • Webmail
  • Calendars
  • Integration of ip telephony (connection with asterisks telephone server)
  • Offline support via something like Google Gears, Adobe Air, etc.
  • PDF export

Especially the offline support can be the “killer feature” over other web based groupware/crm tools. Because while your on the road it can be nesessary to access addresses, the record of a client/lead, etc. This is where desktop applications are better than a web based approach. But with offline features like the one’s already available for Google Docs or Reader this problem of a web based approach can be overcome.

I am really looking forward to the first beta which should be available in September.

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