This is very "quick and dirty" using the CentOS gui tools as much as possible

-install server & open firewall to samba
-create office and supervisor groups and a /home/common folder
-create all users on server and make them part of office, (+supervisor)
-add all users to Samba with Windows names and passwords
-share all home drives and set user access on shares as appropriate
-set permissions in the directory at the root of each share, appropriate to users
-chmod g+w -R * #at the top level of each shared directory so groups can read and write


sudo apt-get install curlftpfs
mkdir mntdir #make mountpoint
FTPPW=12345678
FTPUSER=username%40site.org # if contains @ then use %40
sudo curlftpfs -o allow_other,uid=1000 ftp://$FTPUSER:$FTPPW@ftp.site.org mntdir

The uid is needed if you want write access for a non-root user. Find it by typing id at the console.
You will have to edit /etc/fuse.conf to allow_other and also make sure the current user is a member of the fuse group:

adduser andrewf fuse

Add to /init/fstab using:

Networking with Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows Part 1: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6495/1/
Networking with Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows Part 2: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6497/1/
Some notes on fixing Samba problems in Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149
If you run: mount -t smbfs '\\server\share' /mountdir and get the error: Cannot allocate memory, it is a Windows problem. See: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;177078

Here is a useful link to sharing files with Samba: http://biguncledave.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/sharing-files-in-ubuntu-usi...