Scalix wireless access

[frussell]

I have read a number of articles which enthusiastically report the release of wireless access integrated into the scalix server.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/45075.html
http://www.bbhub.com/2005/07/28/blackbe ... -released/
http://www.informationweek.com/software ... 0CJUMEKJVN

I can't find any practical information on the Scalix site that explains how to setup wireless access without recourse to complex additional server/application setup.

References in these support forums said that wireless support would be integrated with version 11 of Scalix server.

Can anyone help with a definitive answer and ideally a pointer to documentation from Scalix on this issue.

Thanks,

Frances

[frussell]

I have found some more documentation on the Scalix forums that describe a wireless setup using Notify-Link.

If a Linux-based mailserver has to use a Windows 2003 Server + MS SQL Server to get wireless sync, it would be cheaper to use MS Exchange. I'm hoping the Notify-Link solution isn't the only one available.

Would someone please put me straight on this?

Thanks,

Frances

[Valerion]

Unfortunately NotifyLink is currently the only option. I have heard on the forum that Scalix is working on some new strategies here that sounds exciting, but nothing that's available today.

I suggest you contact Notify, they may have a cheaper alternative to the MS SQL Server.

[florian]

We are working on providing direct synchronisation using Microsoft's Active Sync protocol in a future version. I currently expect this to be available in late Q1/2008.

This would cover Windows Mobile devices, as well as SmartPhones from a variety of vendors, including Nokia and Sony Ericsson - basically everything except for the Blackberry, for which you will need to continue to use the Notify product (or RIM's hosted IMAP service for email-only) until possibly something else becomes available in the future. We're also planning to enable Notify to offer their Hosted product at a lower price tag in early 2008.

Florian.

[LHD-Tech]

We are using Xpress Mail which came with out AT&T/Cingular 8525. It works pretty well. I dont know what service you are using and I dont imagine you to swap service just to use this feature but that is what we have working currently. There was a desktop client that needed to be installed and configured and off it went. The only issue we have had with the software is their servers being down. We dont like that their Xpress Calendar is not compatible with our Scalix server. We were able to get a phone working using the Funamble (spelling?). That was able to send calender entries.

-James-

[frankv]

From what I can understand on the Notify web site, their "On demand" product only works through IMAP, meaning only e-mail messages will be synchronized.

Will they offer their service for calandar and contacts in the near future? I only have a few nagging PIM users and I need to find a solution for them.

[ls-al]

From what I can understand on the Notify web site, their "On demand" product only works through IMAP, meaning only e-mail messages will be synchronized.

Will they offer their service for calandar and contacts in the near future? I only have a few nagging PIM users and I need to find a solution for them.

Maybe that their own on-demand service has only IMAP. However the NotifyLink Enterprise Server has PIM-access, currently provided by Outlook-CDO.

cheers,
Dirk

[jaime.pinto]

NotifyLink has two forms of their product: "hosted services" and "enterprise". We used both.

In the "hosted services" you use a *share* of the Windows 2003 server at NotifyLink facilities, and *they* manage it. The "enterprise" is the same thing, but the server is located at your facilities, in your DMZ, and you manage it. You may use it as a dedicated server only to your users.

As with the "enterprise", "hosted services" has 2 sync components to the service: IMAP (email) and MAPI (calendar, contacts and tasks). MAPI is aka PIM in their own language. In theory your authentication credentials (login name/password) should be recognized and *enough* to retrieve IMAP and PIM from the NotiFy server, which in turn passes that info to the scalix server on behalf of the individual user.

But in *practice* only IMAP works well. For the PIM sync, in addition to the individual user credentials, the NotifyLink server also requires the *sxadmin/passwd* in order to get that information from the scalix server, at an admin level. This is because of some bug Scalix and Nofity have been trying to workout for about *1* year, without success (since version 11 is out). From where I stand, to date I still could not find out which party is as fault, even though with other Ent. mail servers besides scalix NotifyLink works flawless (so they claim).

Bottom line, from our perspective as the client, there is no way I'd supply the sxadmin/passwd credentials on our scalix server to NotifyLink. From their perspective, there is no way that as a company they want to assume that kind of responsibility and liability. So there is the impasse. The net result is that if you want the full functionality of NotifyLink/Scalix you need to incur the cost of a full NotifyLink server in-house setup (HW, SW, admin, etc), even if for only 10 users (our case). By far it's not cost effective, but at least since we have full control over both NotifyLink and Scalix servers on our DMZ I have no problems entering the sxadmin info on the NofityLink server.

[frankv]

Thanks a lot for the very detailed and insightful reply Jamie!

Since I don't want to get into all the complexity of a full fledged NotifyLink server at our location (not yet at least), I guess I'll just go with their general IMAP hosted service.

I'll tell my users some story and just hope that a more integrated solution comes along in the near future. ;)