Why is a spreadsheet needed?

[allenlook]

Sorry for this question many of you may feel is stupid.

I read a lot of posts that say Feng Office is incomplete because it does not have a spreadsheet or other function.

I'm only a user for a few weeks, so I'm not as "seasoned" as many of you.

Because I can toss in a web-link to a Google Doc Spreadsheet or Document, and because those have a rich set of features, I don't understand why a spreadsheet (or general Office functionality like documents or presentations) is necessary in Feng Office.

Actually, I don't understand why e-mail is necessary either, when there are so many excellent e-mail clients available.

I honestly don't mean this as a criticism of Feng Office, or of other posters, I'm just wondering what am I missing?

Feng Office seems to me to be a good project/task/subtask environment, and a way to collaborate/communicate among team members.  I looked at over a dozen products that were stand-alone, or add-ons to Outlook/Exchange, or add-ons to SharePoint (like Bamboo, etc.), but none of them was fast and furious about projects/tasks/subtasks.

Project management features like gantt charts and reports seem to be more unique and differentiating for Feng Office than "also ran" features like oft-found document and office-related features?

I accept that I may just not "get it".  I welcome your responses.

[Pet]

I also once suggested that email wasn't necessary, as everyone already has a favourite email client which is hard to give up. I agree with you on this, but the one advantage is that it is much quicker to open a native Feng document than wait for Word or GDocs to load up. Speed is the only advantage I can see. I would much prefer it focus on its strengths and leave the object editor choice to the end user.

[WiZaxx]

I fully agree, a Gantt viewer is WAY more important than spreadsheets, and even text editor, IMHO.

I can see the need of the e-mail client, though.
Specially when you engage third party companies such as provider/partners to share the workspace(s).

Just my 2cents

BTW, I really believe fengoffice is THE best collaboration app PERIOD

[conrado]

In fact, the Feng Office core team fully agrees with all of you.

I guess it comes from our initial positioning as a "Web Office", and that people expected a Web Office to be an alternative to the 'traditional' (read: MS) desktop office suite. We've been often compared to Google Docs, which is not the best comparison. It is certainly our fault though.

We believe Feng Office strengths lie on the team collaboration, customer, and project management capabilities. We plan on improving the whole suite of apps, but focus is certainly put on these areas.

BTW, thanks for the compliments! 

[allenlook]

Now that my global team is logging into FO and entering their goals and tasks - I'm amazed at how much we have going on!

It will be a challenge to be more "connected" and not feel overwhelmed

I believe we will be a paying customer soon - we need to find out how.

[amejat]

First a historical point of view:

Feng Office (opengoo) was born from a mix between ExtJS and ActiveCollab (which at the time was free and open source).

And if you ask why Feng Office should NOT only focus on task/project management, the answer is quite simple: THERE ARE WAY BETTER SOFTWARES TO DO THAT. One of them being... Active Collab (from opengoo comes from).

So to my opinion, Feng Office strenghts was too also integrate a office suite (word, excel and powerpoint equivalents).

Without that, I am sorry to say that Feng Office is just one more task management (like remeber the milk, activecollab, etc...) and will not be able to make a difference...

[amejat]

And concerning the spreadsheet:

There is a HUGE quantity of information to be shared between users implicated in a project which are more easily stored in a table that a text document.

So if you want to be able to share data between people working in the same project, you need to be able to share information and so you NEED a spreadsheet.

That simple...

[allenlook]

While history may be important, I'm a new user to Feng Office, so my point of view is limited to what it does right now, and not what it might have done or been in the past.  I don't have that "long-term" perspective I guess.

Feng Office works quite nicely for us as a collaborative tool so far, perhaps we are lucky.  I could not find a better one for free and some of the for-pay trials were also very painful to use.  Bamboo for SharePoint was $6,000 and painfully slow in comparison.

I agree with you that a spreadsheet is necessary for a team to share information, but I don't understand why it has to be part of Feng Office?  Our team is making great use of the everybody-edit-at-once feature of Google Docs, and we weblink from our Feng Office project right to the Google Doc, so it seems easy enough, but maybe I am missing something still?