Getting started: Accessing mail & calendars of a kopano server from another (client) machine using Python 3

mborus

Hi,

My work place uses kopano as a mail/calendar server.
At the moment I can access my mail trough a web interface & Microsoft Outlook (in house, only).
IMAP access is blocked. I log into the server via a user name & password. I have no server certificates or such. And no way to change the server side (to activate IMAP, for example)

I would like to be able to access and modify my mail & calendar using my own Python 3 code:

to read my inbox
to move inbox mails into folders
to read my calendar entries

This code could run inhouse or preferrably from home via VPN.

I have access to machines running windows 10, windows 7, raspberry pi linux and a current Ubuntu.
From home, I need a windows VPN client to be able to “see” the server. Plugged into the company network I can “see” the server from Linux as well.

I’m unsure how to get started.

I asked a similar question a few months ago here but got no answers that helped me getting a lead to how to proceed. I did not find instructions on what is needed to install a kopano client or get a simple example running.

The python-kopano documentation does not specify what you need to install on your client. It justs says you need to “import kopano”.

Is it possible to remotely connect to kopano at all from clients using Python?

If it is, are there instructions/documentation on what to install (from scratch) so that I can “import kopano” from Python 3 for client use?

(As a fallback, instructions for the legacy Python 2 would also be helpful, because I’m desperately trying to avoid using Microsoft Outlook)?

fbartels

Before continuing please make sure that what you are trying to do does not conflict with any of the data processing rules of your it department. After all your employment in general should be more important that avoiding the client software that you’ve been given to use.

@mborus said in Getting started: Accessing mail & calendars of a kopano server from another (client) machine using Python 3:

I asked a similar question a few months ago here but got no answers that helped me getting a lead to how to proceed. I did not find instructions on what is needed to install a kopano client or get a simple example running.

As already said in the linked post you need to have a few Kopano packages installed to work with python-kopano. If you have our repository configured then a apt install kopano-python-utils will get you all dependencies and our actual python based applications.

mborus

@fbartels thanks for the reply.

The IT department rules allow me to do whatever I like client side, they just will not provide support or do anything to the servers that would help me. Like activating IMAP, which would solve all my mail problems.

I will start this from a Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS which doesn’t have the kopano repository yet.

Can you tell me the command to add the community repository so that I can give this a try? If there is no community way to get this, I will talk to IT if they let me have the ID necessary to access the paid customers repos (since the company pays for it)

fbartels

Hi @mborus,

a ready made repository is only available for customers with a valid subscription. In regards to setup you could follow the official documentation and just do not install all packages, but rather just the one I mentioned above.

Of course having a local repository could make the installation easier. I have posted a simple way to generate such a Repo a few times here in the forum already (should turn up in search) one forum member also made a script for this https://github.com/thctlo/Kopano

If you do not want to deal with all the setup steps could could also just use the docker images from https://github.com/zokradonh/kopano-docker. Running docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/kopano/path zokradonh/kopano_utils will directly present you with a bash session.