Another way of dealing with that particular issue is autoconfiguration.
Unfortunately there's no accepted standard for that yet, but we (Cologne
University) support Microsoft's and Thunderbird's mechanisms. If you
enter a @uni-koeln.de address in the new account wizard, all settings
are filled in automatically.
I'm using autoconfiguration for both M$ and Thubderbird, for some
Exchange and IMAP servers.
It's quite good, but in my opinion it has 3 major problems:
a) As you wrote, it's not a standard :(
b) Autoconfiguration is checked only at client configuration. I would
like to have the client reconfigured at every startup. This will let me
do major changes at the server sides (ie: enable SSL ? Change server
names ?), and client will be able to reconfigure themselves at next startup.
c) Autoconfiguration for thunderbird does not solve the "multiple
channel" problem. Thunderbird is still using one channel (TCP port) for
IMAP and one for SMTP (and optionally one for LDAP). A roaming user,
when changing network, can find some TCP ports open and some closed. So
he/she will be able to only send or receive e-mail. He/she will be
confused and he will open an helpdesk ticket. This is not a good user
experience.
I hope that newer IMAP will address all those problems.
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