We completed Teamwork and ICalendar/Outlook integration, just by using e-mail headers and ICalendar's contents. In this way, Teamwork can serve as an "exchange" server, for groups of people using Outlook as client; you can create meetings interchangeably either in Teamwork or in Outlook, and find them in both cases in both agendas. We are preparing a detailed blog post on how this was done technically.

You could have people involved in Teamwork only through their email/calendar client.

ICalendar integration opens a host of exchange possibilities, given the wide spectrum of ICalendar adoption: from the Wikipedia link above:

"It is implemented/supported by a large number of products, including 30 Boxes, Apple's iCal application, Darwin Calendar Server, Contactizer and iPod, Chandler, Drupal with its event module, Citadel, Facebook, FirstClass, Google Calendar, Jalios JCMS, KOrganizer, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Entourage, Mozilla Calendar (including Mozilla Sunbird), Mulberry, Novell Evolution, Novell GroupWise, Nuvvo, Simple Groupware, Upcoming.org, Windows Calendar, Webical, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and Microsoft Outlook (see below). ..."

Actually, Teamwork now can download e-mails in general; we have already made it possible to create resources in Teamwork simply by sending a VCard by e-mail, and to add documents to a project sending them as attachments by e-mail.


All this will be out in 3.2.0, and will be free for all current customers.

P.S. June 22, 2007: Video documentation is now available: see http://www.twproject.com/Agenda.page


The Aztec calendar picture is from Flickr, as the pink one.

Labels: Java Outlook ICalendar Agenda TeamworkTalk

There are many levels of Teamwork' usage. One may just start using the introductory pages, maybe directly online, hence sparing also setup, and be quite happy. But the application can give considerable satisfaction also to users who want to dig technology; we have "hidden" inside Teamwork's interface and API several enterprise aspects, which may turn useful any time, and which are normally available only in enterprise custom solutions. Several of the features below are not available out of the box: but everything needed to proceed with integration is provided, as it has been done for some customisation; years of corporate integration development have not passed in vain.

We hope that the new wide "friendly administrator settings" screen (a part of it in the picture) will help giving an idea of the power of the application.

Some examples:

- built-in audit engine
- clustering of job engines
- single sign on via http authentication support
- injection of custom reports
- JBPM built-in integration
- EJB3 annotation supported
- authenticated e-mail support
- automated web-based schema evolution
- web based web server administration
- UTF-8 supporting web-editable labels
- complex QBE querying possible from all fields
- computed numerical fields
- injectable schema naming strategy
- injectable settings
- LDAP and Active Directory role read functionality

Labels: J2EE project management

We just launched a considerable Easter promotion: see survey. Why? Well, because sales of Teamwork are often done together with a work reorganization, and hence tend to be done either during summer break, or at year's end or start. But this is quite uncomfortable in terms of cash flow, so a little push in an earlier buy, with the guarantee of getting free updates for several months, can help cash flowing more uniformly. At least, we hope!

P.S. It worked: we acquired interesting customers: several Europeans companies (Germany, Italy and Sweden always in the lead), including public utilities, an African university (finally Africa among the customers!), a group of U.S. "architects"...; a German university is now using it for its PM courses, and a group of developers from Vietnam is building some external additional modules... .