I don’t know why this rankled me so much. Maybe I should just write it off as somebody’s PR firm getting a little too aggressive. But check out this claim made in an announcement yesterday by open source collaboration software company Kablink (formerly ICEcore):
“The only open source collaboration solution to offer
workflow” (Source)
I know. I had to read it twice.
Maybe Kablink defines “open source” or “collaboration” or “workflow” differently than I do. But solutions like Plone, Drupal, and Alfresco have had workflow of some kind for quite a while. It isn’t like there’s just one other open source collaboration offering out there with workflow, there are several. I’m not sure how Kablink thought they’d get this one past anyone. Maybe they’ll comment here to attempt to justify their claim.
I am the Community Manager for Kablink and would like to describe what it is we feel we do uniquely. First off, try the software so that you understand the differences between Kablink and the other products you mentioned. I think we are unique in our offering. We have team software that integrates lots of social networking features AND allows users to create workflows for the business objects in the system via a user friendly UI. Administrators don’t have to define workflows, users get to. Of course other products integrate workflow, but I haven’t seen any that have the built in team and collaboration feature set Kablink does that also offers an integrated user friendly UI. Again, I suggest giving it a try.
Hope this helps.
Hi Brent,
You are missing the point. The point is “Open Source”
The workflow does not exist in Open Source version
Ajay
and… it’s not even stated clearly anywhere in the Documentation! I seriously think this is just (yet another) attempt of driving users into frustration so they purchase the Enterprise version. The other features aren’t really documented that well either. And… can somebody show me a changelog of that project… clearly not.
Well it looked promising,
thanks but no thanks.
jonas
Hi Ajay, Jonas
Kablink is open source and does contain workflow abilities. These were added for the kablink release.
Previously the product was known as icecore – this older release has no workflow functionality.
To get workflow at present I believe you still have to download the kablink source and build the install using “ant” (Java build tool). Full installs only exist at present for Icecore.
Looking good.
Hi Steven,
thanks for your response. I’ll try that once our Server is back up(HDD failure). Is that the same workflow function the Enterprise version has got or some kind of half-finished experimental thing?
Regards,
Jonas