Alternatives to Doodle and other collaborative tools
Scheduling meetings and appointments with Doodle or sharing information via Dropbox is an extremely practical way to carry out our day-to-day activities. It's nevertheless worth the effort to look for alternative services that offer similar functionality, because data protection and data security should not be neglected at work.
The use of commercial, but ostensibly free services can be problematic. Critical issues include data protection, forwarding confidential data to services that are not trustworthy or which are financed with ads, and sharing user data.
With this in mind, we'd like to outline several offerings from TUM, LRZ, DFN and the Bavarian government, as well as license-free alternatives and certified services from trustworthy instances.
Voting, communication and collaboration
| Type | Service name | Provider | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | Mail.tum.de | LRZ | TUM Mail |
| Meeting scheduler / simple polling / voting | MyVote | TUM | MyVote |
| DFN-Terminplaner | DFN | Terminplaner | |
| Videoconference | meet.lrz.de | LRZ | meet.lrz |
| DFNVideoConference | DFN | VideoConference | |
| Evaluation | evaSys | TUM | evaSys |
| Instant messaging | Jabber | TUM | Jabber XMPP |
| Jabber | TUM | myTUM Jabber | |
| Rocket.Chat | TUM / LRZ | TUM Chat | |
| Wiki | TUM Wiki | TUM / LRZ | TUM Wiki |
| Document Processing | ShareLaTeX | TUM | ShareLaTeX |
Data sharing
| Type | Service name | Provider | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud storage (synchronization over multiple devices and sharing with other persons) | Sync&Share | LRZ | Sync&Share |
| Data sharing | Gigamove | DFN | Gigamove |
| Public download (web) directory | NAS-Filer | LRZ | Info NAS |
| Online workgroup storage | TeamDrive | TeamDrive | Deutscher Cloudspeicher-Anbieter mit dem Datenschutz-Gütesiegel des Unabhängigen Landeszentrums für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein www.teamdrive.com/de/ |
Services that can be integrated into your website
| Type | Service name | Provider | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forms | For those using a central Typo instance: e-mail forms from Typo3 Please note that these forms are supplied without https. A secure connection - in other words https - is required for collecting personal data however. Please use the below-named server if applicable. | TUM | TYPO3 |
| TUM webforms | TUM | TUM webforms | |
| Feedback/contact form: portal | TUM | Documentation | |
| Short URL | Short URLs for TUM, myTUM and MWN addresses | TUM | Short URLs |
| For those using a central TYPO3 instance: shortened URL in TYPO3 | TUM | typo3@tum.de | |
| Geodata/Maps | BayernAtlas | State Office for Surveying and Geoinformation | BayernAtlas |
| Open Street Map | OpenStreetMap Community | http://www.openstreetmap.org | |
| Video streaming service | Multimedia streaming server | LRZ | Video Server |