AD Plug-in vs. LDAP?

[dpuryear]

Hi. I noticed that the SBE includes an AD plug-in. What is the benefit of the plug-in over using the already-provided LDAP capability in the CE? Just auto-provisioning of email accounts (i.e., we can provision an account from the AD MMC vs. having to log into Scalix SAC and manually create an account)? Are there any screenshots of the AD MMC plug-in?

That said, I'll be pushing my client to purchase SBE just to support Scalix. I really like this product!

[ScalixSupport]

Yes, the plug-in allows you to create scalix mailboxes via AD. No screenshot at present but there will be a Scalix tab in AD when creating a user.

Regards,
Don

[dpuryear]

But what does that "tab" do? That is, what does it allow me to control? Can we at least get a better feature list for this feature?

[ScalixSupport]

Please see chapter 8 of the admin guide entitled "Integrating Scalix with
Microsoft Active Directory."

Here's a screenshot of the scalix tab in active directory.



Regards,
Don

[florian]

HI,

actually Don has a screenshot here from a beta version...

It is possible to manage AD users without the Schema Extension/plugin - however, the plugin offers tangible benefits:

- ability to set more than one email address through ad
- ability to set quota information/sanctions through ad (max. size of mailbox, sanctions = stop send, stop receive, notification)
- ability to set scalix user language through ad
- ability to set scalix user type (premium/standard) through ad
- in multi-server/EE environment, the ability to set which server the user is to be created on.

i believe these are quite tangible. We're going to extend on that - active directory extensions in scalix 11 is going to allow you to create contac-ttype records as well, as well as the ability to specify the creation of a scalix mailbox during user creation - i.e. wizard-style inclusion, just like exchange.....

hope this helps; we do believe SBE is really a great entry-level ackage for small to medium businesses and enhanced ad integration is a very important component of this.

if you've any more questions to that, please feel free to contact me directly, hope this helps,
Florian.

[dpuryear]

Hi. Certainly, I am pushing SBE. If nothing else, the PIM capability is important for some managers at this particular client. (We are testing in-house only--no client deployments yet.)

Ideas:

In Exchange/AD, you can manage group lists via AD. This is a good feature.

I would like to be able to manage delegatation as an Admin and not have to log in as a user in Outlook. This would be a nice SBE+ feature.

Prepackaged AV (ClamAV) and anti-spam (SA) would be a nice SBE+ feature. Yes, even Exchange doesn't offer this. I know. :-)

Great product. Keep it up!

[florian]

Hi,

:-) good news is that you _can_ actually manage groups/distribution lists for Scalix with AD with our AD Extensions package; this is available in SBE today.

being able to set permissions for a user as an admin is an enhancement request we've heard several times; it hasn't been assigned yet, but generally we'd like this to be addressed at some point.

The same is true for a better and easier-to-use packaging for AntiVirus and AntiSpam..... :-)

Thanks for you feedback,
Florian.