Dealing with documents and information can be one of the most challenging aspects of business. You may want to have a document system to eliminate wasted time searching for paper and replacing lost documents. It also helps you access information the moment you need it, wherever you need it-and manage it all from the convenience. In addition, the system must secure your data and it can track all user activities etc. Many enterprises choose their way to keep all documents in shared drive disk, that provides the simple sharing capacities and security. If you are not happy with your current document system or you are using network sharing files, you can choose engroup as an alternative system.
After two months of hard works, the new engroup delivery is ready to community. This version includes new features, bug fixes and
technical improvements (code optimization, re-design component architect). You can download the latest engroup at http://esofthead.com/node/25.
Here are the new user features of engroup 1.5.1, the detail changes can be read at http://esofthead.com/node/51.
1. Project Management module:
- Helps enterprise manage their works easily with hierarchy tasks, deadlines.
- Collaborates project members, store project information with messages and their comments, attachments.
- Manages project resources and statuses such as project members, risks and problems.
- Provides automotive scheduling base on various variables start date, end date, predecessor tasks.
- Integrations with Microsoft Project: import/export data to/from MS Project format.
Do you want to save your development, training, man power etc costs? Do you want to deliver to our customer a good quality product? Do you want to deliver your product to market as soon as possible? If your answer is yes to any or all of the above questions, you might be interested in outsourcing.
What will you do if your project member say to you "Manager, my code written from 3 months ago is shit, I need two days for refractoring"?
1. Do you feel angry because you think he did bad job without care quality or he is a junior developer who do not have experience to do the right thing at the first time?
2. You are agree with your developer but you are afraid that customer think your team produce a bad result and take time for correction that make project cost is increased?
eSoftHead is very pleased to announce that Engroup 1.5 milestone 3 is released. You can checkout its some screenshots at http://esofthead.com/node/27 before decide whether download it at http://esofthead.com/node/25. If you do not know what engroup software is, here is a description:
'Engroup is a information, knowledge center and communication tool for groups and companies. Engroup promotes both informal and formal communication by combining various communication methods like private message (one-to-one, simple protocol), chat or email. In addition, Engroup provides many enterprise features like Human Resource Management, Customer Relationship, Document Management and Project Management modules. By utilizing the strength of Java language at server side and Flex on Flash runtime at client side, Engroup provides the fast and stability platform with user friendly interface'.
Engroup is the right tool for you if you want a software for one or many following needs:
- Manage your tasks.
- Read new channels.
- Communicate with others: private message, chat, mail, forum.
- Manage your company knowledge and information: wiki, document management.
- Manage company employee information.
- Manage customer information.
- Manage project: problems, risks, resources and documents.
Engroup milestone 3 is the scrum iteration release (1 month after the second milestone), it includes bug fixes, major improvements in Customer Relationship Management module and a new Project Management module is added. For the detail, you should check out our RELEASE NOTES at http://esofthead.com/node/49
In the post http://blog.esofthead.com/implementing-enterprise-integration-solutions-with-spring-integration/,
I have outlined several challenges that could be solved by using Spring Integration framework. Engroup, the product of eSoftHead (http://esofthead.com/node/25), uses Spring Integration extensively to make loose coupling among its modules. Messages are used to exchange information among modules and each module has own appropriate channels to send messages that other modules could be interested. Here are several examples:
- If any engroup modules need to tag some resource, which resource can be a document or a CRM Lead etc, it does not call tag service (if it do so, tag service must be available and it depends on tag service) but send a message with necessary information to a specific channel name 'add.tag'. If a tag service is available, it will receive message from that channel and save tag as requested.
- When a new user register to engroup system, engroup must do: 1. Create new user document workspace 2. Synchronize user information with its forum and wiki and several tasks later we will add, for example create a account with the same name in chat server, email server. Instead of adding code in register user part and modifying code when there is new added action when register user, we simply send a message to 'add.user' channel, any interested parties would listen this channel and do their tasks.
Engroup runs in Spring Osgi platform that we can control the dependencies among engroup modules and engroup external libraries. With the goal to make engroup modules are loose coupling, Engroup uses publish-subscribe pattern to make two modules have no dependencies in code can talk together with the help from ActiveMQ (messaging server) and Spring Integration framework.
eSoftHead is very pleased to announce that Engroup 1.5.07082009 is released. You can checkout its some screenshots at http://www.flickr.com/photos/37821412@N04/sets/72157621082360806/ before decide whether download it at http://esofthead.com/node/25.
Engroup 1.5.07082009 has the following new features and improvements according with the previous one:
- eSoftHead replaces Engroup AIR client application by Flex client browser. In the past, several clients complained the security warning while they install Engroup client and additional steps they must do to install client application. With engroup web client, such obstacles are disappeared. eSoftHead will only distribute Engroup AIR client application in its commercial delivery since Engroup 1.6. It will interact with native application, processes and file system that a web application cannot do.
- Document Management Module:
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- Bookmark content: user can bookmark their favorite content and manage bookmarks and its folders easily.
- Access control: it is the key feature of this release. Now, Engroup Document Management manage contents like Operating System manages its file systems.
- Improve performance of listing/reading contents.
- Improving caching model and create web session-like variable to manage user sessions.
- Various bug fixes of other modules
All your suggestions/comments will be highly appreciated. Please do not hesitate to drop some lines to us at info@esofthead.com.
A big concern we had to solve before developing Engroup is that it should be a web or desktop application. As you are aware, web and desktop applications serve for different purposes. For the applications that are mainly used in LAN, desktop is preferred; otherwise, web is preferred. But if my product is used in both LAN and WAN environments, do I need a desktop application running in LAN, and another web application for remote use?
