How do I report a bug effectively ?

Of course, users and normal IT technicians are no testing or QA experts. So I recommend to read this tutorial. This helps you a lot to reduce the time for solving your problem.

Then open a new bug ticket on the sf-net pages or search the archive.

To fix a bug it is very helpful to provide:

• complete error messages, screenshots
• relevant entries from /Workspace/System/Events
• environment information: browser, database name/version, webserver, PHP version, Simple Groupware version, etc.
• database dumps (if necessary)
• a detailed description how to reproduce the bug

When tickets take a long time of even stay unsolved, it is mostly because there is not enough information available.

I'm not sure if I've found a bug, how do I create a support request effectively ?

Of course, users and normal IT technicians are no professional supporters. So I recommend to read this tutorial. This helps you a lot to reduce the time for solving your problem.

Then open a new support ticket on the sf-net pages or search the archive.

To solve your problem it is very helpful to provide:

• complete error messages, screenshots
• relevant entries from /Workspace/System/Events
• environment information: browser, database name/version, webserver, PHP version, Simple Groupware version, etc.
• database dumps (if necessary)
• a detailed description of your problem

When tickets take a long time or even stay unsolved, it is mostly because there is not enough information available.

The setup stops with: Please give write access to ...

Simple Groupware needs to write into some directories. Therefore the setup checks if write permissions are properly set.
Write permission means that the user running the Apache webserver has the permission to write. If you uploaded the Simple Groupware files with a FTP program, the owner of the directory may be different from the user running Apache. In that case it might be necessary to give write permissions to anonymous on a Linux/Unix system.

Directories with "write" permissions: <sgs-dir>/bin, <sgs-dir>/simple_cache, <sgs-dir>/simple_store, also <sgs-dir>/bin/index.php

Directories with "read" permissions: <sgs-dir>/src, <sgs-dir>/lang, <sgs-dir>/import

How do I change the language after the Simple Groupware installation ?

Language files are not parsed by Simple Groupware for every page request. Instead they are compiled into the code in order to increase the performance.
If you want to change the language, empty the directory "<sgs-dir>/bin/" and delete the file "<sgs-dir>/simple_store/config.php". Then open your browser with "http://your_server/sgs_dir/src/index.php" to start the setup with the language selection again. If you enter the same parameters for the database connection, all your data will remain.

Note: Making a full backup before changing the system is never wrong.

Can I install Simple Groupware with more than one language ?

No. During setup, all translations are directly compiled into the source code. That way, language files don't need to be parsed for every page request and the system has a much better performance.
When all users use the same user interface, there are fewer misunderstandings and less frustration regarding different labels, different sortings, folder names, etc.
Finally training, documentation and support is much easier if every user has the same unique user interface. All users in one organization should be able to read and write one common language in order to communicate with each other. Therefore, Simple Groupware can be installed only with one language.

After deleting a dataset it appears again in select boxes for the super administrator

All deleted datasets are moved to "/Workspace/System/Trash/". From there you can delete them forever or make a restore. Since the super administrator has access to the trash folder, these datasets will be still available as long as they are not deleted forever.

When sending mail, I get: trigger::sendmail SMTP not configured

Creating users, groups and mail accounts is described here.

How many companies use Simple Groupware ?

Using Simple Groupware is totally anonymous. There is no activation procedure, no registration, etc. So nobody can say how many users or companies have it running in production or testing.
The download statistics from sourceforge.net are available here.

Is there a date planned when Simple Groupware development stops ?

No.

Are there any commercial support services ?

No. The support is also for free.

How can I create a shared calendar that is available for a group of persons ?

New calendars are created with the "new folder" function.
Login as super administrator and navigate to the folder that should contain the new calendar. Then click "Options" below the tree, enter a name for the new folder and select "Calendar" as module. Then confirm with "Ok". Now the new folder is created and you can you set the rights for it. Therefore click "Rights" below the tree, and click "Edit". Then give read and write access for the desired persons and click "Save". In order to get access to a folder, a users also needs to have at least read access to the parent folders.
Instead of the super administrator, you can also use another user who has the right "admin access" on the folder that should contain the new folder. By default, users are not allowed to specify rights on their personal folders.

Is there an online demo version of Simple Groupware ?

No. Running a demo takes a lot of resources.
You need a dedicated server, install security updates every week, control the logfiles, control the hardware, monitor the services, do an update for every release of Simple Groupware, etc. Also you can't give every user administrative rights. With administrative rights, you can do rather everything with the server and the database.

In order to avoid misuse (spammers, defamation), every user would need to register to the demo and I would need to confirm the registration, create and remove accounts/mail addresses every day. That means people would have to wait some hours until I activate their account. Doing an installation on Windows with XAMPP and Simple Groupware normally takes 10 minutes and you can test all features. Also it would be very difficult to simulate a bigger environment with a LDAP / Active directory servers, IMAP servers, SyncML server, etc.

Therefore, running a public demo wouldn't be a good solution for completely testing and evaluating Simple Groupware.

Is there a virtual machine (VM) of Simple Groupware ?

No. Installing Simple Groupware directly on your favorite system is much faster (normally 10 minutes) than downloading a big VM that does not fit into your environment.

How can I integrate Simple Groupware into my LDAP / Active Directory infrastructure ?

This is part of the administration documentation, go here.

Is it possible to turn off the creation of a "home" folder ?

Yes, you can edit "<sgs-dir>/bin/modules/schema_sys/users.xml", remove:
trigger_new="runxml:modules/core/users.xml:home|runfunc:createuser" trigger_delete="runfunc:deleteuser"

The setup stops with: Please modify your php.ini or add an .htaccess file changing the setting "register_globals" to "0"

Older versions of Simple Groupware require to disable "Register globals" in php.ini. Therefore, it is recommended to install the latest version.

How do I customize Simple Groupware ?

The customization tutorial can be found here.