Bynari's Kolab Connector in release candidate

[Doug Finch]

Hello Albrecht,
My responses are inserted below yours with a <Bynari> tag.

Regards,

Doug Finch
Director of Technical Support
Bynari, Inc.
222 W Las Colinas Blvd, Suite 1320N
Irving, Tx  75039
http://www.bynari.net
dfinch at bynari.net
(800)241-1086
(214)350-5772
(214)352-3530 [fax] 
Skype ID: dfsixstring
"Sharing Made Easy..."
(sent with 4.0 Connector)

-----Original Message-----
From: kolab-users-bounces at kolab.org [mailto:kolab-users-bounces at kolab.org] On Behalf Of Albrecht Dreß
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 10:16 AM
To: kolab-users at kolab.org; icbeta at bynari.net
Subject: Re: Bynari's Kolab Connector in release candidate

Am Montag 09 November 2009 15:19:00 schrieb Hyun Kim:
> Kolab users, 
> 
> Many of you have inquired about the Connector status for the Kolab Server. The release candidate version is now available.   Please read the release notes below for all the details.
> 
> We would appreciate any feedback and suggestions.  You can contact us with any issues and questions:  icbeta at bynari.net.

We are currently using the Toltec connector and are quite unhappy with it.  Thus I gave your product a try, following this message on the Kolab user's list.  Here are some observations/questions, testing on a virtual machine (Sun Virtualbox) running Windows XP and Outlook 2007:

- The installation requires admin privileges, and asks for creating a profile.  This is an untypical situation; usually the admin user will have no mail account, but the (unprivileged) users do.  IMHO it would be better to remove the profile stuff from the wizard and explain in the docs how to perfrom it for a user account.
<Bynari>
You are correct.  As it is right now, the Insight Connector requires that the Windows profile be an administrator account.  We may look at ways to accommodate your requests in future builds, but for now, you must have admin rights to install the Insight Connector.

- The configuration options are somewhat confusing and well not documented.  I want a setup where everything is held on the Kolab server, but with a full copy, including all accessible shared folders, of everything for offline work on the box running outlook (in a pst file?).  When the user re-connects, new messages should be synchronised from the server, and everything erased locally in offline mode should also be erased on the server (see [1] for a Toltec bug regarding the synchronisation).  Please provide a configuration guide for this and other standard scenarios.
<Bynari>
If I understand your statement correctly, you have several issues in this paragraph:
1) You want instructions for configuration:
http://www.bynari.net/images/documentation/connector/insightconnector_4.0.pdf
2) You want to be able to download all messages in all folders (not just the headers).  This can be done and is outlined in the insightconnector_4.0.pdf guide (see link above).  Chapter 3 of the insightconnector_4.0.pdf guide explains all of the different configuration options available with the Insight Connector.  It will help you obtain the configuration you desire.
2a) Regarding "offline support", there are a few bugs that we are still working through.  Those bugs will be corrected in a future build.

- Shared calendars are not recognised and still shown under "Mail" (cyradm reports that it has type "folder-type: event.default").  Same problem with shared contacts.
<Bynari>
I am not sure that I completely understand what you are saying regarding "Shared calendars" not being recognized.  Would it be possible to get a screenshot of what you are seeing?  

- Folder permissions for shared folders are not shown.
<Bynari>
I will have my QA team investigate this issue.  You should be able to select the shared folder and then click on the "Folder" button on the Insight Connector toolbar to see that folder's properties.  The properties would also include the ACLs on that folder.

- Renaming the folder from "...Insight..." to "Kolab" is shown only after restarting Outlook.
<Bynari>
A restart of Outlook (to display root folder name change) is how this feature was designed.  We have added a feature request (enhancement) to enable users to select "Refresh Folders" to initiate the change.

- Some kind of feedback would be nice, indicating the progress of sync operations for huge folders (progress bar, whatever).  Maybe I was to dumb to find the config option for that, though...
<Bynari>
This is another feature that we are currently working on.  We want to be sure that we add in a status indicator that does not negatively affect performance for the end-user.  


Best regards,
Albrecht.

[1] <https://www.intevation.de/roundup/kolab/issue3346>




-- 
Dr. Albrecht Dreß
LIOS Technology GmbH
R & D - Software Design
Schanzenstraße 39 / Building D9-D13
D-51063 Köln / Germany
Phone +49 221 99887 401
Fax   +49 221 99887 150
Managing Director: Thomas Oldemeyer
Registration Court Amtsgericht Cologne, Reg.-No. HRB 33482

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