Rethinking groupware

In August of 2010, we introduced our groupware solution for D-PHYS. In the last 11 years the system has served the Department well, but we believe now would be a good time to think about the future of groupware at D-PHYS. Here's an incomplete list of things we noticed over the years:

  • the groupware system seems to get used almost exclusively as a calendar
  • for distributed calendars, the world and people's expectations have changed
  • file and sync formats have come and gone
  • 17 people will have 634 completely orthogonal and incompatible use cases for calendars
  • the product that won our evaluation round in 2010 is not necessarily the best system for 2021

We have sampled the market and test-installed several candidates, but since our humble ISG-internal calendar only covers one very specific use case, we strongly encourage you to give us your feedback so that the next D-PHYS calendar solution will suit you well. In particular, we're interested in learning

  • are you using any other egroupware module(s) aside from the calendar? If you don't tell us about it now, a potential replacement may not have this functionality!
  • what's your current calendar use case? Just a personal calendar? A group calendar? In which configuration?
  • what's your desired calendar use case? This might be the most interesting thing to learn...
  • which sync protocols/devices are you using?
  • what other software/products/services have you been/are you using?

If you would like to help make sure the next evolution in distributed D-PHYS calendars is a success, please join our Matrix room and participate! Thanks a lot.

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