Kopano mailbox export

Gerald

Indeed… I have quite some users with very large mailboxes (>30-40GB) and they insist on using Outlook…

Will be extremely likely to cause problems. Kopano themselves recommend against this and the KOE Outlook Addin wants to limit your sync timeframe to 1 year or so in order to reduce the likelyhood of problems. But then you just won’t see any mail that is older than 1 year! With Exchange if you limit to 1 year, you can still click at the bottom of each email list in the folder a link to fetch the entire email list from the service. With Z-Push/ActiveSync if you limit to 1 year, you have no chance to look at those >1 year old mails (except webapp/deskapp).

So… this info if rather “discouraging”… I’m using Kopano for a few smaller environments with smaller mailboxes and everything
seems quite nice/working without issues.

With Outlook? Some examples of problems you will encounter over the months/years: Outlook suddenly stops syncing with no error and no observable cause. Not all fields for the contacts are synced and changing them can cause data loss for those non-synced fields if they had data in them from Outlook 2010 or WebApp/DeskApp. Weird Calendar behavior when moving entries, especially if they have a reminder. Inability to move E-Mails from other Mail Accounts into the ActiveSync Kopano Account (Outlook does not allow “uploading” E-Mails into ActiveSync Accounts). Outlook E-Mail Distribution lists are not supported (synced) with ActiveSync and can only be used manually in offline folders. Inconsistent update times, sometimes the calendar just doesn’t update (maybe calendar only updates if a new email arrives?).

Maybe I will convince them to use DeskApp instead of Outlook… but I doubt I’ll be very successful with that…

I’ve never had success convincing people to use it if they were used to Outlook before. And there were some very significant features missing from WebApp. Things have improved though, now with WebApp version 5.0/6.0 at least most basic functionality is there 4 1/2 years after Outlook support was discontinued and WebApp promised to us as the great replacement (but last I heard WebApp is now abandoned and there will be a complete rewrite again because WebApp is not responsive for small screen sizes and doesn’t work with touch devices).

What is the last version of Outlook/Office where the old Zarafa MAPI client still works? Any experience?

IMHO Outlook 2010 and 2013 will work. There are some minor bugs and error messages because the addon never was updated for the latest updates, but it still works pretty fine. Support could get broken by both Microsoft or Kopano at any time though.

I did not try it because it’s being “obsoleted” and officially supported any more…

It’s a good thing to export/import stuff, but I would not really use it to work with. Outlook 2010 does not get security updates, you probably could use it with Outlook 2013 (I have one user left using this combination, have no complaints).

If I understood your messages… it’s still possible to use the Zarafa connector by upgrading the Outlook2010 installation? Is that right? It still works with Outlook2013 or 2016?

Not with 2016. I think you can get it to work a little by upgrading 2013 to 2016, but there are reasons why 2016 was never supported by the classic Zarafa connector.

Any “longer term” experience with that? I know I’ll get no support from Kopano for that… but maybe it could be a “workaround/soft transition” to DeskApp… (I’d really like to ditch Outlook but users won’t let it go…)

If your goal is to get rid of Outlook and you see a chance users could be willing to let go of Outlook, Kopano is a still a good choice.
But be aware that WebApp/Deskapp is a Kopano User interface, it’s not an E-Mail client. For example you can’t just add another IMAP/POP3 account like you were able to with Outlook or Thunderbird. Also WebApp has zero offline functionality, it’s a web interface which needs 24/7 internet.

ActiveSync (Z-Push) with iPhones works reasonably well (much better than ActiveSync with Outlook). AFAIK Android ActiveSync support is good as well, Z-Push does a good job with phones/tablets.

mculibk

@gerald Thanks for this “in-depth” real life feedback! Huh…
Not very encouraging…

As said, I’m using WebApp/DeskApp & Outlook (via ActiveSync) but for smaller mailboxes (up to 5GB) and have not encountered any of mentioned issues (yet).

With Outlook? Some examples of problems you will encounter over the months/years: Outlook suddenly stops syncing with no error and no observable cause. Not all fields for the contacts are synced and changing them can cause data loss for those non-synced fields if they had data in them from Outlook 2010 or WebApp/DeskApp. Weird Calendar behavior when moving entries, especially if they have a reminder. Inability to move E-Mails from other Mail Accounts into the ActiveSync Kopano Account (Outlook does not allow “uploading” E-Mails into ActiveSync Accounts). Outlook E-Mail Distribution lists are not supported (synced) with ActiveSync and can only be used manually in offline folders. Inconsistent update times, sometimes the calendar just doesn’t update (maybe calendar only updates if a new email arrives?).

This list of issues is rather “threatening”… especially because I’m moving away from the mentioned CommunigatePro & its MAPI connector (or active-sync) support… because of a s***load of issues… and now it seems I’ll just “changing the poison”…

I’ve never had success convincing people to use it if they were used to Outlook before. And there were some very significant features missing from WebApp. Things have improved though, now with WebApp version 5.0/6.0 at least most basic functionality is there 4 1/2 years after Outlook support was discontinued and WebApp promised to us as the great replacement (but last I heard WebApp is now abandoned and there will be a complete rewrite again because WebApp is not responsive for small screen sizes and doesn’t work with touch devices).

Yeah… I know… I heard about the (all new, great) PWA future versions… but still nothing to be (actually) seen.

It’s a good thing to export/import stuff, but I would not really use it to work with. Outlook 2010 does not get security updates, you probably could use it with Outlook 2013 (I have one user left using this combination, have no complaints).

Good to know!

If I understood your messages… it’s still possible to use the Zarafa connector by upgrading the Outlook2010 installation? Is that right? It still works with Outlook2013 or 2016?

If your goal is to get rid of Outlook and you see a chance users could be willing to let go of Outlook, Kopano is a still a good choice.
But be aware that WebApp/Deskapp is a Kopano User interface, it’s not an E-Mail client. For example you can’t just add another IMAP/POP3 account like you were able to with Outlook or Thunderbird. Also WebApp has zero offline functionality, it’s a web interface which needs 24/7 internet.

Yes… I’m aware of the (biggest) drawback - no off-line support. And the “kopano only” client.

ActiveSync (Z-Push) with iPhones works reasonably well (much better than ActiveSync with Outlook). AFAIK Android ActiveSync support is good as well, Z-Push does a good job with phones/tablets.

Yes! I have great experience with mobile devices! (especially compared with CGP) so I “hoped” the get the same on Outlook + active-sync…

Maybe… using something like BlueMail as an alternative mail client… but I still have to test it with big mailboxes to check if there is any “noticeable” difference compared to Outlook+active-sync… but this is just “switching” to another box of chocolate - “you never know what you gonna get”.

Bloody Outlook and user “addiction”…

THANKS!

Gerald

Other problems I’ve just stumbled upon:

Kopano-WebApp/DeskApp doesn’t offer calibri font, so if half your company uses Outlook and half uses Kopano DeskApp, you can’t have those DeskApp users write in the same html font (which was set as corporate standard by the outlook users).
Kopano-WebApp/DeskApp doesn’t allow embedding images, for which there is a workaround (previously setdefaultsignature.py, but this does not seem to exist anymore, now there is kopano-webapop_admin.py which should be used along with a manually created signature in a text editor with the image embedded as base64 code). This does actually work, and making it work and having the image properly embedded for two users only took me two hours.