Shabbir’s Blog

I don’t know how many people are even aware of the O3Spaces application.  For the purposes of this HOWTO, I’ll assume that not many people know about this excellent application, and will give a brief run-down of what this software does.

Essentially O3Spaces does for OpenOffice what Windows Sharepoint Services did for Microsoft Office, except that O3Spaces also does the same for Microsoft Office!

The blurb on the O3Spaces website says:

O3Spaces B.V. is a young organization built around an experienced and innovative team of software engineers based in the Netherlands. We have a proven track record in developing groupware for a broad range of industries, from Healthcare, Education and Industry.

Inspired by the potential and the power of the open source concept in general and of ODF and OpenOffice.org in particular, we strive to be at the forefront of developments in tools and systems opening up new ways of collaboration.

O3Spaces Workplace has firmly claimed its position as essential Web 2.0 enterprise extension for OpenOffice.org. The ability to support office collaboration across platforms and office suites is unrivaled. O3Spaces Workplace provides its collaboration features for small & medium size enterprises, government and education as well as throughout large companies.

“The idea for O3Spaces was born in the second half of 2005”, says O3Spaces CEO Dr. Rob Mentink.

“At the time the outlines of the current ODF wave and the true potential of OpenOffice.org were beginning to emerge.” The necessity for open standards in general and the open document format in specific are widely acknowledged today. More and more governments are recognizing their responsibilities to their citizens, and companies are painfully aware of the dark cloud called ‘vendor lock-in’. “What was lacking at the time in terms of OpenOffice.org was seamlessly integrated enterprise grade collaboration and document management functionality. The relevance of these functions as part of an office suite is clearly demonstrated by the current market leader in the office productivity arena.”

O3Spaces has taken a well planned course in developing its product. “In the fall of 2005 we approached different international industry professionals and presented our proof-of-concept as a validation of our development roadmap. With our confidence levels up we then presented our first preview release to the public at the 2006 CeBIT tradeshow in Hannover, Germany. The response we got from this was actually quite overwhelming. It forced us to take a step back to really finish what we set out to do.”

The availability of the 2.0 release (Dec. 2006) really placed O3Spaces in the spotlight, which has resulted in an impressive global customer base that has been expanding ever since.

“Now, with the release of version 2.2 of the O3Spaces Workplace, the tight integration with OpenOffice.org has been furthered, usability is again up a notch and with features such as ‘Template Management’ O3Spaces Workplace truly is the essential Web 2.0 enterprise extension for OpenOffice.org."

(See: About O3Spaces and Background)

Now while all this blurb might be lovely, what does it do for you, how can you make use of it, and what makes it different and in the opinion of some better than the well established Windows Sharepoint Services collaboration environment?

Firstly, there’s cost.  While there are premium versions of O3Spaces available, and they are not cheap by any stretch, there is community version, which really is more than enough for most tasks, and indeed has nearly the same feature set as Windows Sharepoint Services.  Also, given that it’s built on an Open Source Environment, it can be deployed on either Linux or Windows (thereby reducing the cost required to get a Windows Server up and running).  In fact, there is a ready downloadable VMWare Image of the entire application on the O3Spaces Community Download Page.

However, this is neither a review of O3Spaces, nor a comparison with Windows Sharepoint Services, it is a simple HOWTO on how to install the O3Spaces application on a Windows 2003 Server (that already has IIS installed and running), so without further ado, let’s get started:

Downloading and Installing a Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

The O3Spaces Community Workplace Server essentially is based on Apache Tomcat, as a result, it requires a Java Runtime Environment or JRE to install.  If you skip installing a JRE, the server will fail to install as a service and indeed it will fail to run.  One of the pre-requisites for the O3Spaces Community Workplace Server is indeed a Java Runtime Environment (for Linux Users, this needs to be the Sun JRE and NOT the GNU JRE), at least version 1.5 or ideally anything newer is required.

Therefore, the first step for any successful install is to install a JRE.  This is quite easy on Windows 2003.  You need to open your web-browser, and browse over to the Java Downloads for Windows page, and to keep things simple, I advise the Offline install which you can download directly by clicking here.  This will get you to download the latest and most current Java Runtime Environment.

Save the downloaded file to a useful place in your file system.

Installing the Java Runtime Environment, couldn’t be simpler.  Simply find the file that you have downloaded and double click it.  You will get the following on your screen:

Be sure to check the Show Advanced Options Panel checkbox (as indicated in the image above), and then click the Accept > button to accept the EULA and move onto the next dialogue box:

The defaults are generally fine, but if you have a good enough reason then you can change them (personally I’d advise against changing the defaults).

Click the Next > button to start the JRE installation process.

Once the installer has worked it’s magic, it will tell you it has finished:

Simply click the Finish button and we can move onto installing O3Spaces Community Workplace Server.

Downloading and Installing the O3Spaces Community Workplace Server

You need to point your browser to the O3Spaces Community Download Area.  You then need to download the Windows Installer (at the time of writing it was the 2.2 Beta, and the direct download link is here).

Save the file somewhere sensible, and once it’s downloaded, minimize your browser window, and locate the file, and double click to start the installation process as shown below:

Once you’ve read and decided to accept the EULA (End User License Agreement) for the O3Spaces Workplace application, click the Accept button to move on:

Over here, you are asked where you’d like to install the O3Spaces Workplace Server.  The default directory selected is C:\Program Files\O3Spaces and I’d say unless you have a very good reason for changing the default, let it remain as it is.  Click the Install button and let the installer work it’s magic:

Once the installer has finished copying it’s files, it will open a Command Prompt window (black DOS box), and you’ll see some commands appear on that, don’t worry it’s just the installer setting up the Tomcat Server.  Finally, the O3Spaces installer will ask you a question (in the black DOS box):

The question is: Do you want to start the Workplace Server now?  You can answer by typing in the letter "y" and pressing Enter (that is off course if you want to start the Workplace server, if you want to start it later, you can press "n" and continue, but that is beyond the scope of this HOWTO). 

Once you have replied with a "y" and pressing Enter, the system will start up the Workplace Server as a Window Service.

Over here it’s generally a good idea to reboot your server if at all possible.  Once you’ve completed a reboot - and I strongly recommend that you reboot your server - you need do the following:

Click on Start go to All Programs then find the new folder that’s in place after installing the O3Spaces Workplace Server called "O3Spaces Workplace", and inside that folder, find the icon that says "Start Workplace Server".  Click it.

You will see a black DOS box appear, and it will go through some steps, after which you will be told that the Workplace Server has started:

Once the DOS Box closes of it’s own accord, open a web-browser and browse on over to :8095/Spaces">:8095/Spaces">:8095/Spaces">:8095/Spaces">:8095/Spaces">http://<server_name_or_ip>:8095/Spaces.  In my case, the server’s IP address is 192.168.2.200 so my URL would be http://192.168.2.200:8095/Spaces.  This can be done from another machine and doesn’t need to be done from the server.

Don’t worry if the page takes a little while to come up for the first time.  That’s just tomcat getting itself organized.  Once it completes, you will have a browser window open in front of you with the "Logon to Workplace" page in it:

O3Spaces, comes configured with a default user to get you started, and that user has the following credentials:

Username: supervisor
Password: supervisor

So go ahead and type those into the two text boxes (Username is the same as Loginname), and click the Login button on the page to move on:

 

You can now activate your account for O3Spaces.  Firstly, select your desired language from the drop down list box - I chose English, but you have a choice of Dutch, German, Polish, Norwegian, French as well as English.  So choose the language of your choice, and click the Next button:

You now need to accept the Usage Agreement (EULA) to continue, so check the checkbox which says "I agree with the terms of usage", and click the Next button to continue.  If you choose to not accept the terms of usage, then you’ll have to cancel out and really uninstall the O3Spaces Workplace Server.  In which case I’d ask - why are you even going through the pain of the HOWTO at all!!  Anyway, moving on.

You can now create your own personal profile.  Choose a loginname and password (and confirm the password by entering it again) for yourself, and enter your first name, middle initial and last name into the appropriate boxes, and then click Next to continue onto the next page:

This page gives you a summary of your details, and interface settings.  To move on, click the Finish button.  After a short pause, you will be presented with the main StartSpace screen and from there you can start working:

The interface is very intuitive, and since this HOWTO isn’t focused on how to use O3Spaces, (perhaps if there is enough of a demand I’ll put together a HOWTO on how to use the O3Spaces later - let me know).

There’s only one more thing left to get your O3Spaces installation complete - and it’s primarily a nice-to-have feature.  That is the Workplace Assistant.  This is a small JavaWebStart application, that lets you communicate - from where ever you might be  (as long as you’re connected to the Internet and your O3Spaces Workplace is available over the Internet (i.e. on a public IP address) you will be alerted and kept in touch with your Workplace.  So how do you install the Workplace Assistant?  It’s actually quite easy, read on and you’ll see.

Installing the Workplace Assistant

In order for the O3Spaces Workplace Assistant to work, you will need a Java Runtime Environment on your machine.  You can follow the instructions above (See Downloading and Installing a Java Runtime Environment (JRE)), only this time follow the instructions on your local machine (your server already has the JRE installed, it’s now on your desktop or laptop client machine that you need Java.

Once you’ve installed Java onto your desktop, on the O3Spaces Workplace page (as shown in the previous image), click the "Workplace Assistant is offline" link, and select the "Sign on the Workplace Assistant" option:

When you select that, you will be prompted to Download a file and open it with Java Web Start Launcher.  (If you are using Internet Explorer, then it will open directly and not prompt you for whether to download).  Select the "Open With Java(TM) Web Start Launcher (default)" and press the OK button:

Once you’ve clicked OK the Java Web Start Launcher will open the Workplace Assistant.  You will then be prompted to Configure the Workplace Assistant, with the following four steps:

Firstly, you’ll see the introduction page:

Click the Next button and you’ll see the following screen:

You now have the option to install the O3Spaces Extension (or Plug-in) for whichever Office Suites you might have installed.  In my case, Office 2007 and OpenOffice 2.3.0.  You can also choose which browser you’d like to use from a list of all the web supported and installed web browsers in your system.  I have chosen to use Mozilla Firefox.  Make your appropriate selections and click the Next button to continue:

You can now select how and where the Workplace Assistant is available from, you can have a shortcut put on your Desktop, in your Startup folder (if you want it to start up automatically with Windows whenever you restart your computer), have a Start Menu folder, and also what the name of that Start Menu folder is to be.

Make your selections, and click the Next button to continue to the last page:

This page gives you a summary of what the Workplace Assistant Configuration tool is going to do, double check (and go back by pressing the Previous button to make any changes), once you are happy, click the Finish button to complete the installation and configuration of the O3Spaces Workplace Assistant:

Above your notification area, you will see a progress meter, that tells you that the Workplace Assistant is configuring OpenOffice 2.3 (or MS Office, etc), as shown in the image to the left.

Once this is complete, you will notice the gray icon at the bottom of your screen (again see the picture to the left), will have turned a nice blue colour.

This indicates that you are connected and logged into the O3Spaces Workplace.

The web site, will also have an indication that you are signed in as show in the image below:

Your O3Spaces workplace is now setup and ready for use.  In order to manage the O3Spaces Workplace, you will need to familiarize yourself with the Admin area, which can be found at :8095/Studio">:8095/Studio">:8095/Studio">:8095/Studio">:8095/Studio">http://<server_name_or_ip>:8095/Studio.  In my case, the server’s IP address is 192.168.2.200 so my URL would be http://192.168.2.200:8095/Studio.

This area will allow you to manage your users, upgrade your license from the Community License to a commercial license (details on the various licensing options can be found here.

That’s all there is to it.  It might seem long-winded, and cumbersome, but to be very honest, having used Windows Sharepoint Services for quite sometime, I’m very seriously considering moving over to O3Spaces.

Let me know how you get on, and as always, if you need help with anything in this HOWTO, just get in touch.

Warm Regards,

Shabbir

 

 

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