Improvements

If you use the script to create a new robot, like:

grails create-wave-robot foo

you can now also enter a custom robot name. The script will generate a robot service with the name FooRobotService.groovy in your services folder. There is no need to map an active robot implementation in your Config.groovy anymore (except you have more than one robot services lying around) as your robot service is auto-mapped by it’s type.

References:

• [GRAILSPLUGINS-1628] – Implement robot implementation lookup by type
• [GRAILSPLUGINS-1630] – Script “CreateWaveRobot” should be able to generate a robot service with name argument

New Features

The Google Wave plugin now provides a static utilitity method to extract the actual wave-id from an given URL:

WaveUtils.extractWaveId(String url)

Futhermore the embed TagLib enables you to pass an URL to a wave instead of a wave-id. This avoids the error-prone process to manually extract the id from the encoded wave URL. The embedding of waves is now even easier than before – just copy and paste the URL from your Wave Client:

<g:waveEmbed waveUrl="https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6YtkJl3kH.14" />

References

• [GRAILSPLUGINS-1627] – Utilitiy method to decode Wave URLs and extract the Wave ID
• [GRAILSPLUGINS-1660] – Allow wave embed tag to process raw WaveUrl (as alternative to wave id)

An embedded wave.

As announced on Grails.org last week, I’ve released the first version (actually 0.3) of the Google Wave plugin for Grails. The plugin enables you to embed waves in your views (Wave Embed API) or to code your own Wave robot using the Robots API by avoiding tedious servlet mappings and configuration files. Support for gadgets and installers will follow soon, as far it makes sense as plugin feature.

If you are new to Grails there is only one option. Okay there is a second one.

If you are new to Wave development here is a list of some resources to start with:

• Watch the Google IO Keynote (and see what’s possible)
• Read the Wave API Docs. Knowing the basic concepts and terms should be enough to work with the plugin. But it’s handy to have the Wave Client JavaDoc bookmarked.
• There is also a Wave API group but discussion is pretty scattered as lots of dev-talk is going on in Wave itself. If you are lucky and have a sandbox account you can use it to find some good developer discussions.
• Find public discussions by searching with:public or with:public@a.gwave.com
• Something worked before and now doesn’t – check the Wave issue-tracker: code.google.com/p/google-wave-resources
  

  A crashed wave: Dr. Wave wants your diagnosis

• Look at the official samples gallery to find code snippets and live demos. Try the grails-wave sample app and talk to the Groovy:Bot
• Embedding Wave: Note that only published waves can be embedded. Make a wave public by clicking the “+” on the left bottom and add

  public@a.gwave.com

  as a contact. You may get an error that this user doesn’t exist – just keep hitting return. Now add it as participant to your wave.

  

  publishing waves can be tricky.

  Embedded Waves are referenced by their wave id. On the sandbox instance there is a debug tool which gives you the id for the current wave. On preview you have to manually extract the id from the URL. The segment after “wave:” is the actual id:

  https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Bh4UDikrUI

  But keep in mind that the URL is double-encoded and that’s why you have to replace the “%252B” by “+” and you have a valid wave id:

  googlewave.com!w+h4UDikrUI

• Robots will currently work only when deployed to AppEngine (Wave preview limitation)
• Read the plugin docs and get started:

  grails install-plugin wave

Groovy wave-ing!

Thanks to @spidie for moving and reviewing the docs and @xymor for the shiny cap’n screen.

• Integrated Email Management
  
• Contact Management
• Forum
• Simple Documentmanagement
• Linklists or uncategorized information

Group Office

+ Forum extension
+ Big community in Austria and Japan
+ Calendar provides iCal support
+ friendly, clear user interface
+ Projectmanagement feature
+ Notes
+ German language support
+ Common folder to share data between users

phpGroupWare

+ Forum
+ Huuuge feature & extension base
+ Extensive projectmanagement
+ Knowledgebase (for e.g. glossary)
- Insufficient file management, no filetypes – No WYSIWYG editor (!)
- Quite confusing UI (e.g. messenger) and partly ineffectual implemented

eGroupWare (Fork of phpGroupWare)

- No forum
- Very project management aligned
- No WYSIWYG editor and existing editor lacks of functionality

PHProjekt

+ Incredible feature set (Even chat via web browser)
- Nerdy UI with endless long forms is definitely not very sexy
- Cross browser issues: Context menu doesn’t work correctly in Firefox
- Filemanagement very cumbersome

dotproject

+ iCal export
+ Files can be attached to tasks
+ Outboard, for managing
+ Quite simple UI (colours could be improved)
- No Email management. Emails have to be send via an external client
- File creation via upload only

phpCollap

- No live demo found
- Not modular (at the moment)
- Early project state

moreGroupWare

+ “Outlook like” Email management
+ Problems on Mac
+ Early release (0.7.4)
- Login problems with some browsers (FF 2/Mac)
- No WYSIWYG Editor, plain text files only

In the end the big code & user base of Group Office and the fact that it met all our requirements from the beginning made a clear winner. Please note: that the listed projects may have been updated in the meantime and features may have changed.

Additional Sources:
List of collaborative software (Wikipedia)

Note: The previous version (v0.1.3) introduced a new feature to configure the thumbnail size of your photos which is not included in the original one.

What does it? Exactly the same as the original one with the advantage it is also working with PHP4. In my opinion this is quite important as many users haven’t upgraded to PHP5 yet.

How to use it:

1. Unzip the archive to your wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2. Activate the plugin via the Plugins menu inside WordPress administration view
3. Now create a post or a page with KPICASA_GALLERY(YourPicasaUsername) as the only content. For example, if your Picasa username is knut123, you would create a post or page with KPICASA_GALLERY(knut123)
4. Enjoy!

QWWS uniSVN
1 GB Storage
Fair Use Transfer
WebDAV Access
SSL Certificate
1 EUR/Month

The only catch: It’s just for students. Or at least for people with an university email address.