Kolab Now vs Kolab groupware

[Geoff Nordli]

Hi Mihai.

comments inline.


On 2020-01-05 1:47 a.m., MIhai Badici wrote:
>
> Hi Aleksander.
>>
>> I have been using Kolab as an e-mail server only.  Probably about 15 
>> years now with various installations for small businesses.  I keep 
>> circling back every few years hoping I can replace Exchange Server.
>>
>> I think it would help if there was a clients page like we used to 
>> have on the 2.x wiki.
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20070516081516/http://www.kolab.org/about-kolab-clients.html 
>>
>>
>> If it could list the different clients people are using and what the 
>> expectations are.
>>
>> If people are having success with Outlook we should be shouting from 
>> the rooftops.
>>
>> I will even volunteer to write it up.  If people can send me what 
>> they have working, then I will put it in a document and we can post 
>> it somewhere.
>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> Geoff
>
> Hello Geoff
>
> I will wrote few words about "replacing Exchange Server" from my 
> experience. I joined this project with similar ideas ( in fact I first 
> started to build my own ldap-centric project because i wasn't aware of 
> kolab )
>
> Replacing Exchange with ... exchange is neither an easy task :) I 
> recently migrated from 2007 to 2013 ( because there is no path to 
> migrate directly to 2016) and I had enough troubles to postpone the 
> migration to the current version few months in order to allow the 
> situation to stabilize( for example i discovered they used a public 
> folder and this feature was removed in next versions). There are a lot 
> of changes in exchange and outlook and the compatibility between 
> versions is poor.
>
> Now, about mail client:
>
> IMHO in a corporate environment is nearly impossible to remove 
> outlook. Even if you will find a better client, you will find someday 
> a stupid feature who is missing. But the real problem is to deploy the 
> client. Thunderbird work pretty well and it has plugins for each 
> feature you want. But can we deploy the plugins via group policy? 
> Never tried but it will be tough. And you will deploy Outlook anyway, 
> because you cannot avoid MsOffice. A corporation  without powerpoint 
> is not a corporation, without powerpoint people will be forced to 
> work  :)

Yes, for most corporations they need Outlook.  I work for small business 
clients (<25 desktops).   Sometimes it is possible to get away from 
Outlook and use Thunderbird.  They just want e-mail to work.  Their Line 
of business apps don't require the use of Outlook.

>
> So there is only Outlook you can consider. I made some tests with 
> Outlook2010 in the past and seems to work well with ActiveSync. But I 
> didn't use it daily. Also there are plugins for caldav if you want to 
> use it with IMAP (here there is the same problem , you will need to 
> configure them one by one because the autoconfiguration is only about 
> the e-mail account). The newest versions of outlook are dificult to be 
> configured manually, I don't know, for example, how to force it to use 
> ActiveSync instead of IMAP via autoconf. The big pain here is the IMAP 
> implementation on Outlook is not always work flawless but it looks it 
> was improved in newest version.

I wonder how motivated MS is to make IMAP work well.  It seems it would 
be to their disadvantage for it to be flawless.

I find the manual configuration of a client to not be a show stopper.  
If it takes me 5 extra minutes to configure a client, that is not a big 
deal.

>
> Now, about the features:
>
>  I had a HTC corporate smartphone around 2008 running windows CE and 
> outlook. This years having ActiveSync with contacts and calendar was 
> "THE BIG THING". Everybody want it and I installed a lot of Windows 
> SBS with exchange precisely for this feature.
>
> Nowadays people with android smartphones are more or less forced to 
> use a google account and will syncronize the contacts with this one. 
> The big advantage is when you leave the company you will go with the 
> contacts, which is an unwrited  law among corporate people :)  .  I 
> have enough installs of kolab servers with ActiveSync working well but 
> I know maybe two people who really use the address book.

The one client I have just uses IMAP with their phones to connect.  That 
seems to be working well enough for them.  I assume the caldav/cardav 
sync should be more than enough.

>
> There is still the global agenda which is more or less useful. But the 
> only install I had where the global agenda was maintained properly ( 
> with phone numbers, at least, maybe photos) was one where I used 
> openldap on linux and I made a small "site" where the HR department 
> can  upload/change those data. Here Active Directory is not an example 
> at all. I don't know HR people willing to use the AD MMC and you 
> cannot maintain GAL with IT department. Here we can do more with kolab :)

>
> The only important thing remaining seems to be the calendar. I use 
> dovecot for IMAP where seems to be difficult to use shared contacts or 
> calendars but in fact nobody want to manage multiple calendars. You 
> receive an invite and add it to your calendar. If you have an working 
> calendar ( with iRony on desktop and ActiveSync on mobile) will be 
> great and in fact it works. Having shared calendars for objects ( 
> conference rooms, cars, demo devices) will be also great and I think 
> it works with kolab ( i can't do it with dovecot)

Isn't Cyrus the only option?  When I look at other mail projects they 
are either using Sogo or Nextcloud for calendaring.  I think part of the 
benefit of Kolab is having Contacts/Calendars built right into the mail 
server.   Are you thinking different?


>
> Now, I think the most used new feature in Exchange is "skype for 
> business" . There is no big integration deal ( just having the same 
> account) but group calls are more and more popular.  Here you will 
> need a solution if you want to replace Exchange. I spent lot of time 
> triyng to use ejabberd or openfire for xmpp but it look this is a dead 
> end . Probably using mattermost is the right way to do it. I used for 
> 2-3 years for a 20 users company RocketChat as conference solution. 
> This is a sort of "hipster-driven" server, their ldap implementation 
> is rather hilarious ( it need periodic sincronization, sort of offline 
> sync) and I was loosing the chat history at nearly every upgrade   but 
> peoples where rather happy with this apps, working either from browser 
> or using a client .

OK, I wasn't even thinking about conferencing.  One client that wants 
chat I use Openfire and Jitsi.  I am not thinking conferencing is that 
big of a deal.  Is RocketChat the default conferencing engine for 
Nextcloud?  I see that Nextcloud has a "talk/text/video" feature.  I 
haven't checked it out yet.

>
> There are also some "small things" who can become more important than 
> the "big ones". You can't use "sieve filters" with outlook. When using 
> Exchange ( or any other groupware) you will need to create filtering 
> rules on the server. ATM, you can do that only using roundcube. There 
> is a sieve plugin for thunderbird but it require sieve syntax 
> knowledge so it is unusable anyway. The most stupid missing feature is 
> the ability to set vacation messages ( you can do it from roundcube 
> because it is a sieve filter too but nobody will search for this 
> feature in the "filters" tab). One of my most successful solution was 
> to rename this tab "autoresponder and filters" :)  Anyway , we will 
> need an user friendly sieve outlook (and thunderbird)  plugin .

yes, that is a pain.  If people are doing an OOF, they actually contact 
me and I do it for them.  It is not ideal.



>
> As I said, Microsoft removed the "public folders" feature in Exchange. 
> It was, indeed, a wrong way to use file sharing. That's why I prefer 
> to use the owncloud integration: sharing files is a different thing, 
> there are different product implementing it; but is nice to have the 
> possibility to attach those files. I have webdav owncloud implemented 
> for one customer, it works pretty well now but is not so popular. But 
> maybe for larger companies could be useful.

I am not deploying nextcloud for the few clients that needs file 
sharing.  It seems to be working well.


>
>
> Well, it was pretty long. Maybe I missed things but the fact is the 
> major issues are solved but the devil is in the details..
>
> Mihai


The devil is always in the details that is why we need to have a public 
discussion on what is working and what isn't working. If you set proper 
expectations then people are happy.

I put together a document: 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UtZXATe_qRw1UJWluT9ABq6hkd4OcoBf33bjZ7o6sXc/edit?usp=sharing

I am hoping we can expand on this and offer some configuration options too.

Geoff