Looking for some neat Server Build Projects
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@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
But I really don't have any ideas for alternative, I've not been happy with anything.
I want it to be:- An app, usable from any device, browser, desktop app, etc
- secure, encrypted if stored in the cloud, perhaps password protected to get in.
- beautifully organized in categorical structures (client->job->sprint->notes) etc.
- ease of searching and filtering by clients or jobs or globally, by tags, categories, or other meta data
- ability to create data structures, like templates or sets of key=value pairs, modules, forms, whatever
- nice exporting and printing abilities.
- very limited sections able to be shared to or collaborated on with client.
- archiving/backups, keep non-proprietary archives for safe keeping, for example an XML dump
- internally archive just to be able to hide things within the app and keep it clean
I think that most wikis are better for all of that. OneNote does all that, but poorly IMHO. It's slow and heavy and unnecessarily complicated. It's not horrible when used well, especially for one person, but at best it is on par. The bigger the team, the less I see it working well.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
I debated back and forth about this style. Originally Onenote puts all notes in a single folder. It's only when that grew to 50+ note files that I thought I should just store the note file in the client's own folder I have in OneDrive. This hasn't seemed to cause any issues so far.
Oh on OneDrive, not SP, I see. We have it in SP folders and it is a disaster. To the point that it pushed it over the edge to "failure" rather than "good enough."
I don't understand the role of SP in my O365 subscription. I did not buy the plan with SP, but like if I share a file from OneDrive, it has a SP URL, so I don't know. I can log in a Sharepoint dashboard of some sort, but it doesn't do much, or I can't use it, it's just there, because I have O365. it's weird.
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@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
I debated back and forth about this style. Originally Onenote puts all notes in a single folder. It's only when that grew to 50+ note files that I thought I should just store the note file in the client's own folder I have in OneDrive. This hasn't seemed to cause any issues so far.
Oh on OneDrive, not SP, I see. We have it in SP folders and it is a disaster. To the point that it pushed it over the edge to "failure" rather than "good enough."
I don't understand the role of SP in my O365 subscription. I did not buy the plan with SP, but like if I share a file from OneDrive, it has a SP URL, so I don't know. I can log in a Sharepoint dashboard of some sort, but it doesn't do much, or I can't use it, it's just there, because I have O365. it's weird.
OneDrive is a "view" of SP. But a very limited one.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@fuznutz04 said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@fuznutz04 said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@fuznutz04 said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
Now this looks like a WIKI that I would actually use. I've been searching for one that has a good way to display code snippets. (like the way code is displayed here on ML) This looks like it does the trick.
I've not used it yet, but I've been looking for something just like this for a while. Hoping to deploy it soon.
Fingers crossed. I really want a better internal documentation tool. OneNote and SharePoint are getting too cluttered.
OMG I can't stand OneNote.
I used to like it. But as documentation grows, it quickly becomes cluttered.
Exactly. It's good for a tiny, tiny bit of stuff when everyone is looking at it. But once you get to any size, it is impossible.
Not to derail conversation but how so?
I got an Office365 for my business and figured I'd start using it for client data. I had left Evernote and didn't have many other choices.
I store each client's OneNote file in their directory on OneDrive. In the note I have a tab for general client info, and another tab for jobs, with each job in a page.
I may use other tabs for archiving jobs, todo, etc.Then I have one note for the business, and some others as personal note files.
In your view, what is lacking in their feature set? And given that I have Office365 and the whole suite of tools, what would be a good alternative?
It sounds like you are mistaking it for a CRM tool.
I like using it for a more longer term clipboard... but not much else... Or a place to gather thoughts to get them down quickly without formatting issues.
Not necessarily a CRM, just internal notes about jobs/tasks, and record of my time.
I don't find a problem with its performance. Though it might bit a bit over-featured. I don't use anything in the entire ribbon. At most I make some text bold or increase font size. I've used the checkboxes a few times.
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
That makes OneNote that much worse. Folders are not how Sharepoint is meant to be used.
Sharepoint doesn't have folder?
That's exactly not what I said. I said it did have folders but only had them to support managers who didn't understand how to use SP and would cripple it with them. You aren't supposed to use them, but they are retained for legacy support reasons - almost entirely around corporate politics rather than technical needs. A key point of the original design of SP was that folders were no longer useful and actively get in the way.
We have SP. it seems like the most unorganized thing I have seen. It could be the people that set it up, but from what you are describing I’m guessing not. I can never find anything I want.
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@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
That looks really nice. But I still think I'd rather stick to WordPress... I just can't stand writing and maintaining markdown articles and wikis. That's the biggest reason we moved from Mediawiki.
Now, if they had plugins that did WYSIWYG editing, screenshot from clipboard pasting, etc... then I'd be all in.
I'd rather use Markdown. I'm much faster at that than I am with clicking toolbar buttons and I find it less prone to weird formatting issues like you get with some WYSIWYG editors.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
That looks really nice. But I still think I'd rather stick to WordPress... I just can't stand writing and maintaining markdown articles and wikis. That's the biggest reason we moved from Mediawiki.
Now, if they had plugins that did WYSIWYG editing, screenshot from clipboard pasting, etc... then I'd be all in.
I'd rather use Markdown. I'm much faster at that than I am with clicking toolbar buttons and I find it less prone to weird formatting issues like you get with some WYSIWYG editors.
I agree, I like markdown a lot as well.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
That looks really nice. But I still think I'd rather stick to WordPress... I just can't stand writing and maintaining markdown articles and wikis. That's the biggest reason we moved from Mediawiki.
Now, if they had plugins that did WYSIWYG editing, screenshot from clipboard pasting, etc... then I'd be all in.
I'd rather use Markdown. I'm much faster at that than I am with clicking toolbar buttons and I find it less prone to weird formatting issues like you get with some WYSIWYG editors.
Yup, go with whatever most efficient and works best for you.
In my case, it's WordPress. It takes me a HELL of a lot longer to do everything with Markdown....tables!
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OneDrive is such a terrible product. It's really flaky for me. Every other cloud storage I've used is leaps and bounds better. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is.
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@irj said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
OneDrive is such a terrible product. It's really flaky for me. Every other cloud storage I've used is leaps and bounds better. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is.
I think it's fine but it does have quirks. Folder/file level issues, file names, symbols, etc.
We use Box at work and have had endless issues with it. Some issues as bad as literally seeing files on one computer that never sync to another, and yet the files are seen in the cloud, but they refused to sync down to a device. We are constantly having to delete files from the cloud just so we can try to reupload them to sync. Just lots of issues. Background app suddenly dies and does nothing, even though icon is still in system tray.
OneDrive at least is more keen on stayling alive and reporting sync issues. Box just sort of silently dies and we discover problems later.
For me, since we have Office365 (mainly just to get Office suite), it really sucks that Sharepoint is bad, OneDrive is bad, OneNote is bad, etc etc. I really wish O365 just worked great and I didn't have to also go buy alternate services, ignoring MS ones I'm already buying.
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@irj said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
OneDrive is such a terrible product. It's really flaky for me. Every other cloud storage I've used is leaps and bounds better. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is.
OneDrive for Business, I agree. Absolutely flaky and unreliable. I've tried it in business for a few test users, a couple years ago, and it just caused nothing but issues. I won't use it again.
However, OneDrive for personal use or just "OneDrive" is great. I've been using it for a few years now for all family photos, videos, documents, and some other storage... sitting under 500 GB, but hundreds of thousands of files. At home I have a tiny external USB 1 TB drive to keep it all syncd to. Never had a single issue with it.
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@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@irj said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
OneDrive is such a terrible product. It's really flaky for me. Every other cloud storage I've used is leaps and bounds better. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is.
OneDrive for Business, I agree. Absolutely flaky and unreliable. I've tried it in business for a few test users, a couple years ago, and it just caused nothing but issues. I won't use it again.
However, OneDrive for personal use or just "OneDrive" is great. I've been using it for a few years now for all family photos, videos, documents, and some other storage... sitting under 500 GB, but hundreds of thousands of files. At home I have a tiny external USB 1 TB drive to keep it all syncd to. Never had a single issue with it.
I’ve had MS themselves lose data on both. They share components behind the scenes and problems with ODfB can cascade to OD.
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Well I guess I'll just have to buy O365 to get Word and Excel. Then buy Google Apps to get Drive. Then buy some other suite just to get a decent intranet. Then another suite to get some notes. Then another suite just to get the wiki. ffs
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@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
Well I guess I'll just have to buy O365 to get Word and Excel. Then buy Google Apps to get Drive. Then buy some other suite just to get a decent intranet. Then another suite to get some notes. Then another suite just to get the wiki. ffs
Why do you need Word and Excel? I mean lots of people need them but why do you?
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@irj said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
OneDrive is such a terrible product. It's really flaky for me. Every other cloud storage I've used is leaps and bounds better. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is.
OneDrive for Business, I agree. Absolutely flaky and unreliable. I've tried it in business for a few test users, a couple years ago, and it just caused nothing but issues. I won't use it again.
However, OneDrive for personal use or just "OneDrive" is great. I've been using it for a few years now for all family photos, videos, documents, and some other storage... sitting under 500 GB, but hundreds of thousands of files. At home I have a tiny external USB 1 TB drive to keep it all syncd to. Never had a single issue with it.
I’ve had MS themselves lose data on both. They share components behind the scenes and problems with ODfB can cascade to OD.
Not until recently they did not. ODfB was only recently retooled away from Groove to the OD model.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
Well I guess I'll just have to buy O365 to get Word and Excel. Then buy Google Apps to get Drive. Then buy some other suite just to get a decent intranet. Then another suite to get some notes. Then another suite just to get the wiki. ffs
Why do you need Word and Excel? I mean lots of people need them but why do you?
Because all the non-techy people are used to Office. I only recently finally got them to stop using old copies of Office 2007. At least now they can use 2016 on O365. They will not use anything else, and threw a hissy fit when MS started pushing Office as a subscription model. They were THIS close to forcing us to keep using 2007 just because we happened to have those licenses and the software still runs fine.
MS's licensing model is such a pain. All I want is updated software, and all the boss wants is to not spend thousands of dollars upgrading when the old stuff "still works". And nothing compares to Word/Excel right now. Don't even bother telling me to try doing spreadsheets in the cloud in a web browser on Google. No chance of ever getting anybody around here to do that.
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@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
Well I guess I'll just have to buy O365 to get Word and Excel. Then buy Google Apps to get Drive. Then buy some other suite just to get a decent intranet. Then another suite to get some notes. Then another suite just to get the wiki. ffs
Why do you need Word and Excel? I mean lots of people need them but why do you?
Because all the non-techy people are used to Office. I only recently finally got them to stop using old copies of Office 2007. At least now they can use 2016 on O365. They will not use anything else, and threw a hissy fit when MS started pushing Office as a subscription model. They were THIS close to forcing us to keep using 2007 just because we happened to have those licenses and the software still runs fine.
MS's licensing model is such a pain. All I want is updated software, and all the boss wants is to not spend thousands of dollars upgrading when the old stuff "still works". And nothing compares to Word/Excel right now. Don't even bother telling me to try doing spreadsheets in the cloud in a web browser on Google. No chance of ever getting anybody around here to do that.
I use LibreOffice on Windows and it runs perfectly. Most users do not know the difference. Power user of course would.
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@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
Well I guess I'll just have to buy O365 to get Word and Excel. Then buy Google Apps to get Drive. Then buy some other suite just to get a decent intranet. Then another suite to get some notes. Then another suite just to get the wiki. ffs
Why do you need Word and Excel? I mean lots of people need them but why do you?
Because all the non-techy people are used to Office. I only recently finally got them to stop using old copies of Office 2007. At least now they can use 2016 on O365. They will not use anything else, and threw a hissy fit when MS started pushing Office as a subscription model. They were THIS close to forcing us to keep using 2007 just because we happened to have those licenses and the software still runs fine.
MS's licensing model is such a pain. All I want is updated software, and all the boss wants is to not spend thousands of dollars upgrading when the old stuff "still works". And nothing compares to Word/Excel right now. Don't even bother telling me to try doing spreadsheets in the cloud in a web browser on Google. No chance of ever getting anybody around here to do that.
Non-techy people really can't tell. LibreOffice is nicer, IMHO, and easier to use. Tell management you have a free option that has been around for decades and is used everywhere and see if "free" and "fully up to date all of the time" don't matter to them. Maybe they don't, but give it a shot.
I've been on non-MS office options since 2003 and can't be happier. And I've never met the elusive non-tech person that only can use Word. Everyone says this, but the less technical people are, the more likely they are to only know Google Sheets from what I've seen. These days, MS Office isn't some kind of universal need like it used to be. So many companies don't have it any more, the "it's the only thing that people know" argument doesn't really apply.
And as Jared said, most users can't even tell when you switch. It's just a "new version" to them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
I've been on non-MS office options since 2003 and can't be happier. And I've never met the elusive non-tech person that only can use Word. Everyone says this, but the less technical people are, the more likely they are to only know Google Sheets from what I've seen. These days, MS Office isn't some kind of universal need like it used to be. So many companies don't have it any more, the "it's the only thing that people know" argument doesn't really apply.
This is true in most cases. But in quite a few no-so-often cases, there are many MS-only office features that are used.
So, as always, you will need to fully evaluate which one you would use. If you can get away with LibreOffice, then great. You're like most people. But my point is that you should shoudl fully evaluate it first in as many production use scenarios as possible. Grab a user in each department and ask them to use it for a while and to let you know if there is something they can't do with it. Then see if they are just doing it wrong, or if it's a functionality that is missing that is only available in MS Office.
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@tim_g said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:
I've been on non-MS office options since 2003 and can't be happier. And I've never met the elusive non-tech person that only can use Word. Everyone says this, but the less technical people are, the more likely they are to only know Google Sheets from what I've seen. These days, MS Office isn't some kind of universal need like it used to be. So many companies don't have it any more, the "it's the only thing that people know" argument doesn't really apply.
This is true in most cases. But in quite a few no-so-often cases, there are many MS-only office features that are used.
So, as always, you will need to fully evaluate which one you would use. If you can get away with LibreOffice, then great. You're like most people. But my point is that you should shoudl fully evaluate it first in as many production use scenarios as possible. Grab a user in each department and ask them to use it for a while and to let you know if there is something they can't do with it. Then see if they are just doing it wrong, or if it's a functionality that is missing that is only available in MS Office.
If they need those features, though, they are tech users. Those are very technical features.
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Libre and OpenOffice are ugly as snot, unless you like using programs from Visual Basic 6 era, I dunno.
I've always had trouble opening MS Office stuff within these apps, formatting goes wonky, images, tables, print layouts. Excel scripts, VBA, I use all the time.
We have hundreds of Office documents, and people send us Office documents. I have Excel files connected to data sources, used for reporting, formatting PDF output files.I tried switching once, and over weeks they could never understand the use of save-as to put things in proper formats. If you have to do anything besides ctrl-s or file-save, brains explode. Literally, entrails on the walls, it's messy. Buttons moving around and aren't in the right toolbar locations, panic ensues.
You are definitely right in that 90% of documents are like a few headings and some bold and italic here and there. And most spreadsheets are just naming the headers and entering basic data. But even if that is 90% of documents, the most important documents are the other 10%, the most critical ones, the hard ones, the advanced ones.
I've given up the battle. I bought O365 thinking we'd finally have everything in one, the newest Office, a terabyte of OneDrive. But even that was a fight. Boss though it was useless to buy everyone a license, so I was only allowed to buy 5 licenses and other people in the building are using the same accounts, since they can be used on up to five devices.
I can't win, and I'm not going to try any more. I have to take even the smallest victories as a good thing.
