Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?

[ivamp]

Hello,

I migrated +200 zarafa accounts to kopano. And the result is Outlook is not compatible.

I have listed this bug:
-KOE miss randomly on Outlook
-The mail is duplicated when I move my email to a folder
-Sync does not work or stuck in the refresh
-Ativesync Integration with software like “Sage” does not work
-Outlook Freezing

the problem appear on all Outlook 2013/2016, I have try latest office update etc

At this point, my customer need a new mailing software…
I have try Bluemind and Kerio and this software work great with Outlook

Best regards

[onex.de]

@ivamp tyvm.
I can copy the same problems, unfortunatelly.

Wbrgds, Christian.

[thehunterst]

@onex-de, I’ve the same problem like @ivamp.
Sellers who have seen themselves selling dreams but when we ask a question to the technical support, there is nobody more. I think more and more that’s bullshit.
@ivamp thank you for your solutions, Bluemind it’s better.

[fbartels]

@ivamp @onex-de @thehunterst does it change for you, if you limit the amount of days synced to outlook? how many folders do you synchronise?

To better understand your problems could you send the support case numbers to feedback at kopano dot io ?

[ivamp]

Hi
I have open this ticket to your support
KS-39749
KS-40430
KS-39607

I think the best way are developping Imap Connector for Calendar and Contacts or Mapi plugin like Zarafa.
In other mailing software they work like this

Best regards

[onex.de]

@fbartels
I cannot limit the amount of days, because our customer wants to have all mails available in his outlook, not an option.
Mayboxes have about 10-20 subfolders, are between 7-12 GB in size and have about 30k-60k mails in them.

Support case is KS-40480. (will sent via email, too)

Christian.

[fbartels]

@onex-de said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

I cannot limit the amount of days, because our customer wants to have all mails available in his outlook, not an option.

Then you’re out of luck. If Outlook is not able to handle all items, then reducing the amount of items it the only feasible solution (apart from using WebApp/DeskApp of course).

[thehunterst]

@fbartels, and a DeskApp offline it is possible yet ?

[fbartels]

@thehunterst said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

DeskApp offline it is possible yet ?

no, and likely never will. At least not with the current WebApp as its backend.

[onex.de]

@fbartels said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

Then you’re out of luck. If Outlook is not able to handle all items, then reducing the amount of items it the only feasible solution (apart from using WebApp/DeskApp of course).

I think, ActiveSync/Z-Push addresses this issue.
Outlook 2016 works fine with this mass of items connected to an MS Exchange Server.
But if one wants to migrate from MS Exchange to Kopano without loosing a lot of comfort and usability, this combination of Outlook 2013+ and Kopano doesn’t work as good as Outlook 2010 with zarafa-connector worked, unfortunatelly.

Sadly but true, I need to remigrate to Exchange again :-(

@ivamp & @thehunterst : Outlook and IMAP is no option at all.
Shared and public folders don’t work and calendar / contacts needs additional plugins as well.
As of mails is the only issue with Kopano and Outlook via z-push, I don’t see your other mentioned products as an alternative.

Christian.

[ivamp]

@onex-de yes imap it’s not a perfect protocol, but if you can try Bluemind (for example) you have to configure account with Imap and install 1 additional plugins for shared calendar/contacts and public folder.

And Sincerely it’s work better ActiveSync

[onex.de]

@ivamp said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

and install 1 additional plugins for shared calendar/contacts and public folder.

What about shared mailboxes, aka email folders?

[ivamp]

It’s simply IMAP subscription

[Manfred]

Hi Christian,

@onex-de said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

I think, ActiveSync/Z-Push addresses this issue.
Outlook 2016 works fine with this mass of items connected to an MS Exchange Server.
But if one wants to migrate from MS Exchange to Kopano without loosing a lot of comfort and usability, this combination of Outlook 2013+ and Kopano doesn’t work as good as Outlook 2010 with zarafa-connector worked, unfortunatelly.

Outlook with ActiveSync (or actually ActiveSync itself) was never meant to handle GBs of data. It’s rather an exception to have GBs of data for an ActiveSync account on a mobile and even if one does, it’ll slow the mobile considerably.

You have to be aware that Outlook connected to an Exchange server or Exchange-like service via a connector behaves completely differently than Outlook over ActiveSync. Every groupware vendor runs in same issues when using Outlook over ActiveSync. Kopano with KOE solves some of the issues but don’t expect it to work it the same way as Outlook and MS Exchange or zarafa-connector.

Manfred

[mcostan]

So that brings the question of why Kopano can’t write (well, again) a native connector to Outlook? (by the way I am very happy with the present solution in my case).

[fbartels]

@mcostan said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

why Kopano can’t write (well, again) a native connector to Outlook

It’s not that we can’t. But (and that was widely communicated when the old mapi client was discontinued) we don’t see a future in the Outlook desktop application, and therefore want to spent our available resources in areas we can innovate.

The Kopano Ol Extension provided a good way in the middle. Take whats already in Outlook and with manageable resources add some bits that we saw as essential.

[onex.de]

@manfred thank you for the clearification.
Sad, that this circumstance was never published this way, officially.

In other words: Outlook 2013+ with a huge users mailbox doesn’t work.
If a user wants to have access to his mailbox, he doesn’t want to use different clients, one to work with and a partial mailbox, because he needs additional plugins and one to have access to all items.

Am I right, that searching and accessing mails older than one month isn’t possible when ActiveSync is set to sync one month or is there any way to access them within Outlook, except setting the sync to all?

Christian.

[fbartels]

@onex-de said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

Am I right, that searching and accessing mails older than one month isn’t possible when ActiveSync is set to sync one month or is there any way to access them within Outlook, except setting the sync to all?

Outlook will always only do a local search and does not query the backend (although this is generally possible in activesync)

[onex.de]

@fbartels said in Outlook suiteable as a kopano fat client?:

Outlook will always only do a local search and does not query the backend (although this is generally possible in activesync)

I know, my mobile is using this option, too bad Outlook doesn’t do it. :(

In this case, moving older mails to an “locale” pst-file as an archive and reducing the amount of items via z-push seems to be the only option beside switching back to Mickeysofts Exchange, isn’t it?

[mkromer]

- DISCLAIMER: This post reflects my personal opinion, not necessarily Kopano’s. I just though a little bit insight could help you understand some of my/our thinking here. -

Just as a side note: KOE works considerably well for me.

I’m not saying this as a Kopano employee but I (for the sake of my role) also push myself to use outlook as well next to webapp/deskapp. In short: I have like 3 mailboxes configured in there with a total of 30GB of data synced.

True, I have a fast client. That is a clear recommendation, since also mobile phones don’t work on rotating spindles… ;) But seriously: I personally have no issues and please also note that the ActiveSync implementation of Outlook was never perfect, but at least I can say it does a good job in general (and I also want to add that we also have actually very positive feedback from many customers as well).

@onex-de: There is another option: Running Kopano-Archiver, which you can use to offload primary mail to archive mailboxes. You could make them available via webapp/deskapp and just in outlook have the primary mailbox. there are many ways to do it.

Generally speaking: It’s true, ActiveSync in Outlook is not ideal, but KOE does a (reported) quite successful job in providing some of the enterprise features for customers using Outlook 2013+.

To the question: Why no MAPI client? https://www.zarafa.com/how-zarafa-wants-to-solve-user-challenges-with-a-new-client-strategy/ To add to this, what we’ve been communicating at that time now comes as announced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2019 - Pure C2R Installations. Missing functionality for non-MS-backends as this was limited by MS. https://blogs.office.com/2017/04/20/office-365-proplus-updates/ and also check out https://www.groovypost.com/news/microsoft-end-support-standalone-office-by-2020/ .

Don’t get me wrong. Office 365 is generally a nice product, the major downside to it though that on the long run you might be stuck (vendor lock-in).

We as Kopano take care of communication in general (beyond what outlook provides, e.g. chatops, web meetings, file sharing, etc.), all under your control. You being you personally on a NUC at home or a hoster hosting millions of mailboxes for their customers.

Zarafa = Drop-in replacement for exchange/outlook. Kopano = Alternative to exchange/outlook with broader communication capabilities.

While I understand you see this is sad on one side (Outlook), the world is changing. And also the original connector was not perfect, since 2010 MS has made life harder as they’ve “ifdef’ed” certain (standard) calls to work only with MSEMS transport (Exchange).

Aside from that: Just check out your favorite search engine for market share of Outlook and its declining over years now. I agree that for some Outlook is unquestionable which is why there is KOE. It has been implemented in the MOST NATIVE POSSIBLE way, allowing all API-calls, etc. just to work. The only other alternative (protocol-oriented way) would be to implement MAPI/HTTP and EWS (both). MAPI/HTTP: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee177988(v=exchg.80).aspx For a general overview of all involved proto docs, just go ahead and check this out: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc463895(v=exchg.80).aspx

So much for “it can’t be that hard”. Sure, if we would dedicate ourselves entirely we would be able to pull this off, it would take quite some years, and probably we’ll end up in a situation where when we’ve finally reached that point MS pulls this plug for whatever reason. I bring this up so you might understand the major WHY Kopano is not in the “Outlook business”. BTW: There is a project called openchange where someone dedicated worked on an implementation like this for 9(!) years, unfortunately without scalability and performance as there have been some shortcuts (based on samba4 RPC/IDN) and now the project is dead. :(

Sorry to say, but we really don’t have the same resources as MS. So implementing MAPI/HTTP & EWS is simply out of scope, at least for the moment. I’ll say so if this changes… BTW: tell me one other solution who did implement MAPI/HTTP & EWS (server, not client(!)) ;)

We are very proud to back the first native open source EAS implementation with Z-Push and the progress with it (including also KOE) has been quite nice compared to other solutions we know of. Also, this feedback is also what we’ve got in return from (not all) partners and customers. This is a protocol that we’ve been able to handle since many years now, it is a very vital project with us as Kopano also into it and a vibrant community.

If you want Exchange: Go for it. Sorry to hear, but we’ll probably not be able to stop you … ;) The only thing we want to advertise: If you want to work productively, with best mobile & tablet support, the seamless ability to hold web meetings, seamless ability of sharing your data and an awesome API in the works (no spoilers here, just wait for conference): Kopano might be something you should consider. Outlook? Well, it lacks many of the above functionality, so you need to think of maybe using an alternative? There are many out there which we also support. And, heck, yes, even with IMAP/POP if you like and now with upcoming CalDAV/CardDAV implementation you might be a happy puppy as well …

We’re looking forward to deliver the best overall, truly 100% open source communication solution, and being included downstream in distributions such as openSUSE, Debian and Ubuntu show: The community seems to think the same.