Receiving Mail from Pop3 accounts

[florian]

Well, I hope I have made myself clear!

You create a new user on scalix with the email address info@superproduct.de. You open this account using outlook once and then assign delegate access rights for this mailox to boss. You then set the "sender" flag on the info account using ommodu. You then open this as an additional mailbox in outlook from boss and see the inbox as a separate folder. when you now reply from this confriguration, email will appear to be coming from boss.

If you want to different sender identitys you need two mailboxes!

Florian.

[TCWardrobe]

This one gets weired!

I see we both made ourselves very clear but each one does not get the point of the other one.

.oO( for sure I think I made myself clear and you just don't get it! but I try to stay diploamtic on this )

Only englisch speaking folks, please skip this box

Entschuldigung für Deutsch, aber ich muß es mal so versuchen:
Florian, es ist absolut klar das man für den Delegationskram zwei Mailboxen respektive zwei Premiumbenutzer braucht. Es ist auch klar das man eben jemanden zum Stellvertreter "erheben" muß damit dieser dann im Namen des anderen mails schreiben kann. Klar, noch klarer geht kaum!
Meine Frage bezog sich aber auf eine ganz andere Ebene. Folgendes, der Delegantionskram ist korrekt eingerichtet, Cheffe hat nun mehrere Posteingänge (wenn gewünscht inkl. Kalender bla und foo des anderen users) in seinem Auskuck, links über die Ordnerliste erreichbar. So, jetzt sind wir mal kreativ und spielen ein wenig rum!

Annahme:
Chef mag gerne trotzdem alle mails in einer Mailbox vorfinden.

Die angedachte Lösung:
Ich bin kreativ, also hol ich die mails einfach per fetchmail ab und auch wenn die für z.B. info@superproduct.de ist, stelle ich die in Cheffes Postfach zu. WIll heißen, in der Mailbox von Cheffe sind nun auch mails für info@superproduct.de wie auch request@weißgarnichtmehr.de und natürlich cheffe@fettemediaagentur.de.

Die angedachte Lösung (alternative):
Die mails laufen auf genau der Mailbox auf für die sie bestimmt sind, ich sortier die mails dann mit irgendwelchen Filtern in die eigentliche Chef-Mailbox lokal an seinem Auskuck.

Die Frage:
Basierend auf obiger Annahme und angedachter Lösung, wie reagiert scalix darauf? Wie "kreativ" ist scalix? Wenn Cheffe nun eine mail beantwortet die eigentlich namentlich an info@ oder request@ geschickt wurde, wie oben in angedachter Lösung aber beschrieben eben in seiner Mailbox gelandet ist, was macht scalix dann?

Everyone who is curious, this box above just stated everything said before in another obscure and unimportant language.

I must admit, this issue got somehow a theoretical one, because I hold a scalix presentation on friday and the decision maker (boss, cheffe, el massa) said as he saw the different mailboxes "Oh cool... much better as it is right now, every mail address has its own mailbox / folder! Nice!"
You may understand what I may have thought at this point .oO( )
But for the reference... we should bring this one to an end nevertheless. Florian, you may answer in english

[kadybee]

Although I understand the lack of this feature and would welcome some functionality apart from using fetchmail, one of my users doesn't follow advice nor read the manuals!

They set up an additional POP3 external account,which duly went out and collected their mail. That mail obviously didn't show up in their Inbox and would appear lost.

Anyone have any ideas where I might start to look for these messages?


Thanks

Klaus

ps -German explanations work fine for this Aussie :-)

[cornernote]

Hello,

Before I tried Scalix I played with Zimbra. Although I did not try the connector, the webmail client has the option for a mailbox user to have multiple identities. I can only assume that the outlook connector carried this functionality to outlook.

The methods provided in this thread will work (eg: add delegation user), but I still have a problem if I write a new email. Say I am involved in 2 unrelated businesses. I want to write a new email from my non-primary account. There is no easy way. The only way I have found is to make a new post (file>new>post) in the secondary-mail folder, and then forward that. Only then will I get the FROM selector box.

I understand there is limitations here, but it seems that its possible to do some things like mentioned above with "hacky" work-arounds.

Don't get me wrong. Scalix is the best exchange-type products I have seen other than exchange, I think it just needs a few tweaks here.

Without the functionality of multiple identities I will have to pass on using it in production, but I will keep a close eye on the project because I would love to start using it.


Best regards,
Brett

[cornernote]

Perhaps the following solution is possible:

1. Always show the FROM line in the emails.

2. Allow delivery of users mail into another users inbox folder (maybe this is already possible).

If these 2 options were available then the problem would be solved for me.


Brett

[ABunnage]

Hi,

I have just installed Scalix with the aim of still using our current offsite (3rd party) mail provider for POP3 and SMTP, and using the Scalix Server for shared calendaring using Outlook 2003. There are long term plans to eventually use a mail server in house, but this is currently not practical.

Anyway, I have installed a test server running Scalix, have loaded up the Outlook connecter on my PC, set up my POP3 account and set this to the default, pointed my mail delivery to a personal .pst file, made sure that I only use the contacts in the .pst file and not off the Scalix server. (Note - the Scalix server is set up for internal LAN access and cannot send mail to the outside world - similar to yakwakdo's message on May 23, 2006).

This all appears to work well so far with only two minor glitches.

The first is that every time I start Outlook and log onto the Scalix profile it supplies the following message from 'ScalixSP':

"The location for delivery of new mail is incorrect and should be reset to your Scalix Mailbox immediately!" followed by an 'OK' button.

The second is that the shared calendar will not show up if you start Outlook in the mail view (left hand section of screen). It will show if you either click on the 'Public Folders' or click on 'Folder Lists' view before clicking on the 'Calendar' view. No big deal.


As a result of the first issue I did some hunting around to find that according to this query I should not be able to do what I am doing.

Well so far it is working, although I have further testing to carry out (e.g. using multiple POP3 accounts to send mail from different addresses). To me this tells me that Scalix is nearly there for supporting POP3 mail with the Outlook connector. If you could support the use of delivering mail to a .pst file instead of the Mailbox (as can be done with Outlook and Exchange) then it would be possible to get around this issue.

My question/request to Scalix:

Is it possible to turn of the startup message when Outlook starts?

My details:

Scalix Server:
SUSE Open Source 10.1 (64bit)
scalix-11.0.0-GA-core-suse101-intel

My PC:
Windows XP SP2
Outlook 2003 SP2
scalix-11.0.0-GA-outlook-connector (11.0.0.653)

Sorry this post is a bit long winded.

TIA,

Andrew

[florian]

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to make outlook work without problems with a Scalix Connect and POP service in the same profile.

Our MAPI team belives that this is not trivially possible due to some internal limitations of the Outlook API - alsways remember that unfortunately we don't have full control over Microsoft's product.

As workarounds, you can run Outlook in all-IMAP mode (accessing Scalix through IMAP, no calendaring), use fetchmail or a different eMail client.

Cheers,
Florian.

[mleklund]

florian,

Any thoughts about allowing users to setup fetchmail from within swa. As an administrator I do not want to worry about setting up fetchmail for each user that wants it, and they may not want to give me passwords.

This limitation will probably force us to look elseware for a groupware suite. I had the boss ready to plunk down the money until I ran into this snag. Our organization has to be able to send/check mail from outside mail sources.

Thanks,

mike

[florian]

no plans and you would probably need to create a webfrontend for fetchmail yourself (but then, maybe one is available). I don't really see us doing anythng there as Scalix is mostly used in corporate environments where what you're describing is a rather unwanted situation - people importing external, personal email into their corporate email accounts, bypassing the normal anti-spam, anti-virus infrastructure that email coming in through the corporate email domain would provide...

Sure, there are other usecases and there is a lot of grey, but i assume you know what I'm pointing at......

Anyway, if you want this (user-configurable fetchmail) to be tracked, please open an enhancement request at bugzilla.scalix.com.

cheers,
Florian.

[ABunnage]

Hi Florian,

Do you know if it is possible to turn off the warning to reset the delivery location for new mail?

I understand that what I am doing is not supported and I do so at my own risk - but so far it is working so I will keep testing.

I know I could just use the calendar with swa and keep all the POP3 mail separate, but I would prefer to use it in Outlook.

Cheers,

Andrew

[florian]

No, it isn't. We specically put the warning in couple of releases back, the reason was that customers were doing this and ended up losing data - which is at some point what happens.

At the very mimimum, you will not see incoming new mail until you restart Outlook.

Cheers,
Florian.

[les]

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to make outlook work without problems with a Scalix Connect and POP service in the same profile.

Our MAPI team belives that this is not trivially possible due to some internal limitations of the Outlook API - alsways remember that unfortunately we don't have full control over Microsoft's product.

As workarounds, you can run Outlook in all-IMAP mode (accessing Scalix through IMAP, no calendaring), use fetchmail or a different eMail client.

Cheers,
Florian.

That's disappointing....I hope its still on the table to be worked out soon.....

Maybe a multiple identity feature in the webclient?

For the end user who just wants to receive mail from external accounts but not send as those identities fetchmail works fine and suits the need.

But for the end user who wants to be able to access external pop accounts and "send as" those pop identities its a problem.

IMAP is no good because you loose calendaring and not to mention the fact that some of your folders are stored in a pst and some on the server. The whole point is to have everything on the server so that it is backed up and also accessible via any client interface.

From the end user perspective (especially if they are coming from exchange, and yes i know that scalix is not meant to be/ replace exchange, just provide similar functionality ;) ) they had this before and now they dont. If you give them imap then they cant see their calendar via the webclient, but they could before. If the laptop is stolen and the local pst is not backed up they lose calendar, contacts, sent items etc...Before they were all on the server.
Users will hate that, its great when you introduce new features, but when you take some old ones away its a different story.

I guess the other alternative is a different client ....

evolution - not possible, users run windows (has anyone ever tried evolution on windows?)
thunderbird - would be my pick but it needs a connector to store all data on the server, not just in imap.
any others?

I've always wondered why no vendor has ever wrote their own cross platform email client to rival outlook. Of course the obvious answer is that 90% of people use outlook.
But if you wrote your own client then there is no limit to what you can achieve and you dont have to worry about hidden MS code or API's etc, just use your own.

In Scalix's case the webclient can be this client. It just needs its functionality extended to have multiple identites with pop based accounts, giving the user the ability to send as the pop account.

[ausyvr]

We set up Scalix, rolled out to test users, was thinking how great it was UNTIL..a user setup an external POP account.
We have a similar story to all the other postings, about a 2nd POP account. Fetchmail is not an option for our environment.

We will have to work on looking at another solution. Such a shame.

Cheers.

[florian]

Can you describe the environments in which you would want to use this, i.e. is this corporate, home user, consumer, hosted, whatever?

I'd like to - and need to - understand the possible business case for such a feature as it's implementation, especially when managed by the server and done in a secure way, would be a pretty major development effort.

For Outlook, I'm afraid, it might just not be possible (at least as per our last investigation into it) because Microsoft do not provide the appropriate APIs to Outlook to allow this.

Florian.

[les]

Can you describe the environments in which you would want to use this, i.e. is this corporate, home user, consumer, hosted, whatever?

I'd like to - and need to - understand the possible business case for such a feature as it's implementation, especially when managed by the server and done in a secure way, would be a pretty major development effort.

Corporate business.
Scenario 1
say you have a big multinational (or even a not so big one). They have there own domain xyz.com already setup and running scalix fine.

They then decide to branch out and diversify, picking up another business. This business has its own domain abc.com, and has been in business for years. All its customers communicate via abc.com. The domain is linked to the business and it is not an option to drop it.

Now users in the currently company, like the GM, Fin Controller etc have to look after both, but they want to email customers of abc.com as abc.com and customers of xyz.com as xyz.com. There's all sorts of tax and financial reasons for keeping two branches of the one company separate, i don't pretend to know or understand, but i've seen many clients do this.

Scenario 2
Corporate business has xyz.com. They employ contractors and setup internal mail addresses at xyz.com.
The contractors have external businesses and need access to remote email - i.e. pop3. they would like it all in the same inbox and have the ability to send as either address.

Scenario 3
Corporate business xyz.com again. General manager wants to see his home based hotmail account in his xyz.com mailbox, Not an unreasonable or uncommon request from a general manager.

Hope that gives some insight into which situations this would be necessary.