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LABS GALLERY: Web-Based OpenGoo Office Productivity Suite Is Worth Watching
by Jason Brooks
Installing OpenGoo
OpenGoo installation involves dropping the project's code into the Web folder of your LAMP server, visiting a configuration page and walking through basic setup steps.
Getting Started
OpenGoo presented me with a dashboard that laid out further steps for configuring my application instance.
Dashboard
Once I'd been using OpenGoo for a while, I could return to the dashboard for an overview of the documents, events, messages and other items in my workspaces.
Document Editing
I found it fairly easy to create new documents in OpenGoo.
Font Issues
I did, however, experience some issues keeping my document fonts consistent—OpenGoo had a way of reverting to Arial in some cases.
Document Management
OpenGoo wouldn't let me edit .doc or .odt documents—HTML is the suite's format of choice. Regardless of the document format, however, I could upload, download, check out and manage versioning on my word processor files.
E-mail
The OpenGoo e-mail component is decent—nothing I would leave Gmail or Outlook for, but potentially useful for specific project-related mail accounts.
Administration
OpenGoo organizes its management functions under an easily navigable administration tab.
Backup
I installed an optional module to create backups of the files and databases that made up my installation.
Calendar
The OpenGoo calendar works well enough online, but it's rather light on mobile device and calendar server syncing options. A simple iCal import is as far as this component goes.
Contacts
OpenGoo offers a solid contact management feature.
Contact Import
I imported a bunch of contacts into OpenGoo from a CSV file and used the system's field matching interface to get my data lined up correctly.
Notes
OpenGoo sports a notes feature, which I used here to jot down the various open-source components that make up the suite.
Reports
The system's reporting module makes it easy to pull up views of the data stored within OpenGoo.
Tasks
I didn't get too fancy with OpenGoo's tasks feature, but this component can be used to manage projects across teams of workers.
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OpenGoo is a Web-based office productivity suite that attempts to deliver the online benefits of better-known rivals, such as Google Apps and Zoho Office, without the "our way or the highway" hosting limitations of those services. OpenGoo is released under an open-source license, and it will run on any LAMP server. For organizations that prefer a hosted option, OpenGoo is available as a subscription service under the name Feng Office. eWEEK Labs found that while OpenGoo falls short of its cloud-based competition in overall functionality, the suite's deployment flexibility and knack for knitting together promising open-source Web office components make OpenGoo worth keeping an eye on.