On Wednesday 09 August 2006 01:35, Dan Graham wrote: > I just did the same thing with Kolab tonight Shawn. Works like a charm with > Kontact/Kmail. Has anybody on the list had any experience with LookOut and > the Toltec gizmo? I won't have to support it directly (Dan whistles while > walking past the graveyard), but the Winderz support guys will likely need > some hand holding. ;-) >
Yes ... lots <Outlook No Toltec> 1. POP3 will run no problems ... still need SSL services to run properly. 2. IMAP configuration is no more difficult ... Outlook is broken, however, on the advanced connections tab ... when you select SSL for SMTP it does not change the port number from 25 to 465 ... you have to manually select _and_ change it. Just ask Aaron about this ... he blogged at length about it. 3. Plain IMAP support in Outlook is not very good ... I found have better success with with marking the folders as available offline (somewhat of dIMAP ... but not overly great). 4. Dealing with "Sent Items" is a pain. You can not select a sent items folder in Outlook, and therefore have to create a specific rule to move sent items into an IMAP folder you create (if you want you sent items stored on the server), and disable the regular outlook sent items option. Rules can turn themselves off if for some reason the IMAP folder is unreachable ... this can go unnoticed by end users. 5. Deletion of email is horrible as well. There is no configuration options for how to handle deletion of IMAP messages in Outlook. They are simply marked as deleted (turn grey and have a line through them). You must manually "purge" the messages from the server from a menu option ... users tend to not like this. this also means there is no IMAP "deleted items" folder. Users also tend to not like that. </Outlook No Toltec> **** On a side note ... Thunderbird is a much better IMAP client ... the issues I mentioned relating to Outlook are all handled nicely by a feature complete mail client (Kontact, Thunderbird). I have had much better success with plain IMAP accounts and Kolab with Thunderbird than Outlook. On a second side note ... there is work currently being done on a Thunderbird extension to provide access to the Kolab shared calendar resources, and shared contacts. http://www.gargan.org/extensions/synckolab.html It is still in it's infancy ... and I have had limited success with it ... although admittedly I have no patience to work with things on Windows, and much less to attempt to troubleshoot them. **** <Outlook plus Toltec> 1. The installation process used to be extremely long and complicated. This is no longer the case. It comes with a zippy little installer, double click and you are done. 2. You install your license key from within the help dialog, and is also very simple to do. 3. They have excellent documentation on the setup process once the connector is installed. It takes < 15 minutes to get going. Basically the Toltec connector performs message mapping from Outlook folders to IMAP folders without you seeing that. This means it utilizes the regular "Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items" folders that are there under your "Personal Folders". The Toltec connector is setup via a POP3 account on the server. So your mail is popped off, and then placed into a folder which is mapped to an IMAP folder on the server. This happens seamlessly to the end user, but that's what actually happens. I have installed new accounts without problem, and also converted existing kolab accounts with regular IMAP, and the messages were imported no problems. 4. Shared calendars is the big bonus to the Toltec connector. It provides the "groupware" functionality of the Kolab server. Once the folder mapping is configured, the calendars show up, and away you go. 5. Issues people have with the Totlec connector, for the most part, are understanding how a groupware server works. I get questions relating to synchronization (a user creates an event, but does not show up when someone else views their calendar because they have not "synched"). You can set your synch time frame (at startup, when you click on the folder, timed intervals etc.). I highly recommend the Toltec connector if using Outlook, it will make end users lives much more familiar, and easy. Plus the connector is cheap cheap cheap ... like $13 per seat ... one time fee. </Outlook plus Toltec> There is a second connector from Toltec for LDAP address book connections. This will allow you to set up and address book for addresses on the server (so you have an address book for the entire company available to everyone). It is also quite cheap ... like $6 / seat or something. I have also used this as well ... and is the same type of installation, and the configuration is very very simple, (server, base DN , and credentials). The two connectors in combination provide a wealth of functionality to to Outlook. They are built intended for Kolab, but can in fact be used with any IMAP / LDAP server. Which is also a nice bonus. As for user support ... it would be no more difficult than supporting exchange ... I think you would get the same problems (groupware knowledge) with a pure windows deployment as well. No doubt there will be strange use cases which stumbled across issues, but you get that no matter what you use. Highly recommend Toltec connectors. Andy _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
