Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Please share your experiences about using open office at enterprise level for end users, mostly branch users. This will replace existing MS Office 2016 along with Outlook. Would be grateful if you fellas can share and suggest the do's and don'ts.

Personally I would not recommend Open Office for this project.
LibreOffice is a better suggestion due to it being more actively developed.
Your users will notice many differences between MS Office & LibreOffice.
Please note that neither OpenOffice nor LibreOffice have a mail component, which is what Outlook is used for.

In my opinion as a long time user of AOO who recently migrated to LO, Apache OpenOffice is walking dead through lack of development and would be a poor choice.

LibreOffice is virtually identical to AOO (it forked from AOO v3) except it is under active development and is a much more sensible choice. Critical bugs which cause complete data loss in AOO have been fixed in LO. LO has better support for the modern .docx, .xlsx etc formats than AOO (AOO can partially read but not write them). LO has a vibrant set of organisations which can provide professional support to companies using LO.

Be sure to read [Tutorial] Differences between Microsoft and AOO/LO files for a description of differences and an idea of some of the problems you will face. Users are always recommended to save their work in any application's native file format (.odt for word processing) rather than in another vendor's file format (eg Microsoft's .doc or .docx for word processing) which could cause difficulties if you send documents to other organisations.

Run a trial in a small department of a few tens of users and see what issues arise.

Neither AOO nor LO has an Outlook (email) equivalent.

Not personal experience, but still an appropriate observation, I believe:

For bank and finance, I understand that there are multiple third party solutions in common use which integrate with Microsoft Office. Some of them may integrate via API (not mere file transfer), and in that situation the integration will not work properly if Word/Excel/Access are not present. Some solutions using file export/import will also yield inferior results when piped through non-MS applications.

I have seen a number of requests for integration to OpenOffice/LibreOffice which seemed to remain unresolved. This suggests to me that transfer is not trivial.

Make sure to review all your in-house system integration requirements! See the cost of workarounds in connection with what you save on licenses. There is of course a gain from using a truly open storage format of ODF instead of the hybrid open/proprietary OOXML "standard", but this gain is difficult to set a price tag on, so depending on your organization/culture it may be better to avoid that as a "selling point".

For a professional use, in as important an organisation as a bank, I would not suggest using opensource software.

RoryOF wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:00 am For a professional use, in as important an organisation as a bank, I would not suggest using opensource software.

Well, many administrations around the world have done so already.
However, it means that you must know very well how your users use their current software and if the new software features meet those uses (especially if there are macros involved.
Switching to AOO/LO just for the cost of the license would be a poor choice leading to possible frustration, loss of productivity, loss of data...
You'll have to document compatibility with the external actors of your business and the training of your user base.

For commercial environments it may be important to use an enterprise supported open source solution, which are both build on LibreOffice, like "Collabora Office" or "LibreOffice powered by CIB". They bring a lot of expirience for such a migration process and can address pain points as you hit them.
A lot of info on migration and how/why's can be found at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/li ... -business/ and may be a good starting point.

So,

For a professional use, in as important an organisation as a bank, I would not suggest using opensource software.

Is nonsense as open source is used all over the place in IT, tough one would like to find support and pay for that convience just like one does/can do using closed source software.

I was thinking in terms of managing the money. Besides, a bank can afford to purchase a commercial and supported solution.

I was thinking in terms of managing the money. Besides, a bank can afford to purchase a commercial and supported solution.

That's why a fully supported LibreOffice Enterprise ready build is the better solution for such environment. Commercial here may be not the right word as you do not pay for the software as that is still open source. It's for the testing and support on the specific builds that you pay and that those come with long term support. The thing is not those companies do not have money to spend and cannot afford like Goole or MS Office, I suppose they look for the freedom (no lockin, flexibility, integration possibilities) of open source they want a long term investment in so a partner that can guide in implementation, integration, training and support is most helpfull to make such and project a success. Having no plan for sure such project is doomed to fail.