How to get oriented ?

Hallo everybody,

 I'm a newbie both in this mailing list and in open source.

I take care of IT in a small company and my developmente
skills are a bit
out of date (RPG, AS400, etc.)

I do believe that my company would greatly benefit from the
implementation
of some functions (listed below) and it seems to me that
many ingredients
can be  found in the universe of the opensource :
unfortunatetly it is very
hard to me to get oriented among packages, platforms,
languages, etc. : if
anyone could help me in getting some general orientation I'd
be very
greatful !!

The very best for me would be - of course - a solution built
assembling
existing softwares without any code writing (WHICH LANGUAGE
??? HOW LONG ARE
THE LEARNING TIMES ???)

Here follows the list of the functions that I'd like to
implement (today we
just have a Windows domain with some shared folder) :

1.	publishing inside the company (like in an Intranet)
folders and files
among small groups of users grouped by argument, by
department etc.
2.	publishing links to some Excel macro that extract data
from our AS400 ERP
3.	creating electronic forms in order to manage several
processes
(purchasing, vacation requests, etc.)
4.	managing the many steps of approval of the documents
described above
(workflow style)
5.	possibly (not compulsory) use the same Users, Groups,
etc. of the Active
Directory domain

Any contribution or suggestion will be really precious !

Thank you in advance

Andrea Zucconi

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htt
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Zucconi Andrea wrote:

>Hallo everybody,
>
> I'm a newbie both in this mailing list and in open
source.
>
>I take care of IT in a small company and my developmente
skills are a bit
>out of date (RPG, AS400, etc.)
>
>I do believe that my company would greatly benefit from
the implementation
>of some functions (listed below) and it seems to me that
many ingredients
>can be  found in the universe of the opensource :
unfortunatetly it is very
>hard to me to get oriented among packages, platforms,
languages, etc. : if
>anyone could help me in getting some general orientation
I'd be very
>greatful !!
>
>The very best for me would be - of course - a solution
built assembling
>existing softwares without any code writing (WHICH
LANGUAGE ??? HOW LONG ARE
>THE LEARNING TIMES ???)
>
>Here follows the list of the functions that I'd like to
implement (today we
>just have a Windows domain with some shared folder) :
>
>1.	publishing inside the company (like in an Intranet)
folders and files
>among small groups of users grouped by argument, by
department etc.
>  
>

you mean something like a document management system grouped
by your 
various departments?

>2.	publishing links to some Excel macro that extract
data from our AS400 ERP
>  
>
you mean links to the excel which are being available from
an intranet 
website or the links to the extracted data?

>3.	creating electronic forms in order to manage several
processes
>(purchasing, vacation requests, etc.)
>  
>

sounds like customization depending on the logic behind
these processes

>4.	managing the many steps of approval of the documents
described above
>(workflow style)
>  
>

do you already have some workflow? And if so, can you
describe it?

>5.	possibly (not compulsory) use the same Users, Groups,
etc. of the Active
>Directory domain
>  
>

I guess many OpenSource CMS offer some LDAP access.

It seems to me that you're right that all your requirements 
are somehow 
covered within OpenSource space, but
you probably need to hire somebody to help you get started
at least, 
whereas this might also depend on your current environment,
for instance 
what kind of knowledge do you have inhouse, for instance re
languages, 
PHP, Java, Python, ...?

Cheers

Michael

>Any contribution or suggestion will be really precious
!
>
>Thank you in advance
>
>Andrea Zucconi
>
>_______________________________________________
>General mailing list
>Generaloscom.org
>htt
p://oscom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
>  
>


-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona      -   Open Source Content Management - Yanel,
Yulup
http://www.wyona.com
michael.wechnerwyona.com, michiapache.org
+41 44 272 91 61

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General mailing list
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