What is a good product management application/framework

Question

I'm looking for some sort of application or framework to manage my company's products.

Right now we are storing all the design documents, support tickets and documentation, marketing, revisions, etc in a shared folder on the network. This is a horrible way to manage things because it becomes extremely difficult to find something if you're not sure what the filename of the document is.

I've seen LibreSource and Trac, but both seem tooled for source control. I'm looking for something with more of a focus on mechanical goods.

Another consideration is access controls. We want this to integrate with either the Novell LDAP or our Sharepoint server if at all possible.

Someone had the idea of having our users install TortoiseSVN and have everything in a repository, but this seems like a recipe for disaster because no one in our office has used Subversion.

Is there any good application or framework that would allow me to aggregate and index all this product data into one spot so our users can search and update design/marketing documents and issue support requests/tickets for mechanical/physical products?

Answer 1

Oh, yes. Microsoft SharePoint is very powerful solution with right method of approach, howerver it requires big efforts to make product that fits your needs.

Answer 2

Our organization has great success with Cerberus.

http://www.cerberusweb.com/

Not sure about Novell LDAP however... Could probably be customised We however, use the hosted version.

Answer 3

Have you looked at eGroupWare? We tried to use it in 3d animation project. However this project was not successful but the problem was in organization itself, not in the eGroupWare. Also take a look at Wikipedia's list of collaboration software

Answer 4

Dima, if your company has money to burn, Microsoft SharePoint can offer what you need

Answer 5

Have you looked at Novell Teaming? It has a lot of flexibility for storage and workflow solutions, and your Novell licensing should give you the option for 10 free licenses. It has a huge library of free templates for many common use cases.

http://www.novell.com/products/teaming/