I love open source software so much that nearly our entire enterprise is running on it. Our internally developed software is all either written for LAMP, or some recently in Mono.

I fully understand that open source projects will sometimes become inactive, in fact I have a few I've developed myself that have fallen by the wayside yet at one time had great potential.

What I don't understand is when a commercially backed open-source solution like Openfire from Ignite Realtime has a known issue for years that goes unresolved and requires a simple workaround. Then again, who here hasn't heard of Internet Explorer?

Integrating the Openfire instant messaging system with an Asterisk phone server is relatively easy, but when you first attempt to connect it to the Asterisk server, it just does nothing. It turns out the setup script for the Asterisk-IM plugin is wrong... and has been since 2007.

Here's the solution.

I will say though, I still love Openfire with it's LDAP directory integration and my (now working) Asterisk phone system integration. The ability to know the phone status of any user by glancing at my contact list is such a small thing, but it really does make a difference.

Network users demand connectivity apps these days. One of today's "must-haves" is instant messaging. Personally I find I use IM very seldom, but the newest generation of employees have grown up with SMS and IM and grown to expect it. It makes me realize I'm getting old when I see these "kids" and their SMS and IM.

IM clients produce their own security issues, such as viruses, social engineering, exploits and eavesdropping. Opening your network to just any IM client can be a scary proposition, not to mention a huge productivity hole. Attempting to block IM clients can be a technical nightmare with your users staying just one step ahead of you in the "block" and "bypass" game.

I've taken another approach to solve this problem by providing an IM client to each workstation. Rather than just allowing everyone access to Yahoo! or MSN Messenger we've installed our own OpenFire server. In addition to providing instant messaging between employees in all of our offices, including remote offices, we've integrated it with our Asterisk phone system so that it can report the on phone / idle status of any contact. Adding the extra phone system integration seems to have been key to helping our users find a value-add with the system. It also reports incoming caller-id on a user's desktop as a little pop-up window making it invaluable.