Handling of private/confidential groupware objects

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Joon,

Am Mittwoch, 7. Dezember 2005 06:55 schrieb Joon Radley:
> > The "privat" flag is a marker in Kontact and for Outlook it
> > is also some access control switch.
> > (This has been known during the Proko2 contract, so it is not news.)
>
> Policy must be enforced by the server else is just smoke and mirrors.
> Having clients honor the "private" setting will just leave the perception
> of policy enforcement where in reality anybody with access to the folder
> can read the private messages if they wished by using a non-honoring
> client.

I think that we all agree about that an access policy must be
enforced on the server.

Just like Helge, I think that making a difference between "sensitivity"
and "access" is important.

> The one option we looked into was the client only publishing limited
> information about "private" objects, e.g. in appointments only the start
> and end date and times as well as the recurrence. The client will also not
> allow updates from the server or allow that modified private messages to be
> uploaded by shared users.
>
> Two problems where identified, 1) some users would like some of there
> shared users to see the private objects and 2) the backup functionality of
> having the objects on the server will be lost for private objects.

My proposal would be to have this field only indicating sensitivity.

This poses the practical problem that users coming from Outlook/Exchange
will be used to a different behaviour and might be surprised.
Most will need to get some instructions to really use 
Outlook/Connector/Kolab-Server, so this would be a point where this can be 
clarified. It will never be optimal, though.

Bernhard