If you are looking for a powerful yet easy to use collaboration solution, you might want to take a closer look at http://www.mindquarry.com. Groupware tools are a dime a dozen these days, but there are a few features that make Mindquarry stand out from the crowd.

• Instead of reinventing the wheel, Mindquarry relies on proven and mature technologies such as Subversion, wiki, and more.
• Seamless integration between the user’s desktop and web interface. The Mindquarry Desktop Client provides an extremely easy way to keep documents in sync, hiding all the intricacies of Subversion. The client supports multiple profiles, which allow the user to work with several Mindquarry servers.
• Tight integration between different Mindquarry modules. For example, the user can link wiki pages to documents, tasks, and users.
• Thanks to the intuitive interface and well thought-out feature set, Mindquarry has a very gentle learning curve. This makes it easier for users to get to grips with Minquarry as well as significantly reduce training costs for companies.
• The Activity Timeline is a killer feature from the end-user perspective. Keeping track of document versions is a serious challenge even for experienced users. The Activity Timeline uses the timeline metaphor to tackle this challenge and makes the process of finding and retrieving any previous version rather straightforward.

Mindquarry consists of two components: a server and a client. The former provides all the functionality while the latter acts as a bridge between the user’s desktop and the server. The client’s main purpose is to keep documents in sync. Minquarry includes four modules: Teams, Wikis, Files, and Tasks.

Using the Teams module

The Teams module is designed to manage users and teams. As an example, let’s create a team called Writers, then create the Author, Editor, and Proofreader users, and add them to the team. There are three things you need to do as soon as you log in to the Mindquarry server. You have to change the default administrator password and account info, add users, and create at least one team. To change the administrator account details and password, click on the Edit your user profile button in the upper-right corner of the window. This opens the Change User Profile windows, where you can change the default data.

Populating Mindquarry with users is equally easy. Click on the Team tab, and press the New User button. Fill out the required fields, and press the Create User button. Next step is to create a team, which is also an easy thing to do. Basically, teams allow you to group users, and it’s up to you what criteria to use when grouping users into teams. For example, you can group users either by project or by function. To create a team, press the New Team button, enter the required information, and press the New Team button. Once the team has been created, you have to add users to it. Press the Members button, add the users you want to the group, and press Save.

Installing and using the Mindquarry Desktop Client

The Mindquarry Client is a utility that acts as a bridge between your desktop and the Mindquarry server. The client does two important things: it keeps documents on your computer in sync with the Mindquarry server, and it allows you to keep tabs on tasks.

There are two ways to install the Mindquarry Desktop Client on your computer. When you log in to the Mindquarry server, there is the Desktop Client link. Click on it, and the latest version of the client will be automatically downloaded, installed, and launched on your machine. Alternatively, you can download the latest release of the Mindquarry Desktop Client from Mindquarry’s website, and run it manually. To do this, unpack the downloaded .tar.gz file in your home directory, rename the resulting folder to mindquarry-desktop-client, and launch it from the terminal using the following command:

java -jar mindquarry-desktop-client/mindquarry-desktop-client.jar

Once the Mindquarry Desktop Client is up and running, you have to configure a server profile containing information about your Mindquarry server that the client needs in order to connect to it. To do this, right-click on the client’s icon in the Panel, choose Options, and navigate to Common Settings→Server Profiles. Press the Add Profile button, give the new profile a name, and press OK. Use the credentials of an existing Mindquarry user to fill out the Your Login ID and Password fields, and enter the server URL in the URL of the Mindquarry Server field. Finally, you have to specify a path to a folder that will contain your workspaces. A workspace is the equivalent of a team in the Mindquarry server. For example, if you have the Writers team on the server, the specified folder on your computer will have a directory with the same name containing all the team’s documents. Every time you add or modify a document in the Writers workspace, the client automatically syncs the changes with the respective team on the server. Press OK to save the setting and close the dialog window. Now perform a sync operation: Right-click on the client icon in the Panel and choose Synchronize. If everything works properly, the folder you’ve specified in the server profile will be populated with the workspaces.