Group-Office 4.0 groupware released

Dutch company Intermesh has announced the availability of version 4.0 of its Group-Office groupware solution. The open source Community edition of the suite of online applications includes address book, email, calendar, task and notes functionality, as well as file sharing, email templates and a newsletters module. Support and other features such as projects, a helpdesk system, and synchronisation with Microsoft Outlook and mobile devices are available in the commercial Professional version.

Group-Office in action Group-Office 4.0 is a major update to the collaborative software that adds a new document workflow module and introduces important under-the-hood changes. The underlying PHP framework has been completely re-written – the developers say that this change should make future development progress faster, while also making it more secure. The file sharing component has an improved uploader and can now lock files to prevent edits. In addition to searching file names, users can also search through the contents of files.

In the Professional version, tasks in Projects can have relations and completion percentages associated with them, and ticket groups have been added for better permission management. Billing module improvements, and support for syncing photos and multiple calendars are among the other highlighted changes. Support for the CardDAV address book protocol, which is used to synchronise contacts between, for example, smartphones and Group-Office, has also been added.

However, the update sees some features removed. Support for encrypting messages using GnuPG has been dropped, though S/MIME is still supported. The developers remind users that, in version 4.0, the CMS module is not supported, and that the WordPress, phpBB and formprocessor modules are no longer available. Additionally, when upgrading, all active vacation auto-replies will be removed as the auto response function is now handled by the sieve module.

Hosted on SourceForge, the Community edition of Group-Office is licensed under the terms of the AGPL. The paid Professional version costs €399, is available for on-premises use, or as a hosted version run by Intermesh, and includes technical support and additional features. Pricing and an online demo of the hosted version are available.

(crve)