Receiving Mail from Pop3 accounts

[drank]

Hi

Try fetchmail. Works fine

Mike

Yes, for receiving mail it can be used. Though no selfrespecting company would allow it's employees to store their personal mail in the corporate servers.

The real problem is with sending mail. Sometimes one would like to send his personal e-mail through his personal account, not Scalix. And using another program or switching profiles is just stupid. Try telling this to a customer that you try to convince migrating to Scalix.

If Scalix people would just try to picture the situation from the point of view of an average Outlook user they will know that this is a must for their product.

BTW, I also dislike Microsoft, but I'm so used to using Outlook that even the best Exchange replacement such as Scalix cannot make me migrate to it without having this simple feature. As aI said before it's a damn strong showstopper for us. Sorry.

Best regards

[drank]

How about this?

We were evaluating Scalix with the idea to become the regional resellers for it. We had the idea to start providing our products with Scalix platform integrated in them.

Everything went fine, we almost launched our marketing program and then stumbled upon this "simple" drawback. Bottomline - cancel Scalix, go to Zimbra or something else. If we do not find anything better we'll cancel the project.

Scalix, does that ring any bells? I'm sure we're not the only company in the world that gave up Scalix because of this only lack.

Best regards

[mikevl]

Hi

Can't please everybody

Mike

[drank]

Yes, you're right. But this is not what Scalix marketing says.

And actually I'd be more interested to hear Scalix's opinion about this.

Best regards

[mikevl]

Hi

I think the official line would be that Scalix is designed for the Corporate and enterprise markets. In these markets it would not be advisable to have every employee adding there personal pop accounts to their profiles as this is defilitly a security risk that should not be bourne by the employer. Ther employer in those cases will have put a lot of effort int gateway filtering for spam and virus protection and mitigating such risks. Pop3 is a chance for increased exposure to risk that is not necessary.

We service a number of enterprise clients and have never been asked to provide pop mail for the Outlook clients. I think you may have answered your own question before.

Ask your self this. If I went to the CEO of my client and asked if I could install fetchmail so the joebob can retrieve personal mail on the corporate network. What would the answer be? By installing pop connectors in Outlook profiles, and allowing employees to secerately retrieve their personal unfiltered mail, you are not giving the CEO an upfront choice about the security of the network that he is paying to have installed.

IHMO only

Mike

[drank]

Hi

I think the official line would be that Scalix is designed for the Corporate and enterprise markets. In these markets it would not be advisable to have every employee adding there personal pop accounts to their profiles as this is defilitly a security risk that should not be bourne by the employer. Ther employer in those cases will have put a lot of effort int gateway filtering for spam and virus protection and mitigating such risks. Pop3 is a chance for increased exposure to risk that is not necessary.

We service a number of enterprise clients and have never been asked to provide pop mail for the Outlook clients. I think you may have answered your own question before.

Ask your self this. If I went to the CEO of my client and asked if I could install fetchmail so the joebob can retrieve personal mail on the corporate network. What would the answer be? By installing pop connectors in Outlook profiles, and allowing employees to secerately retrieve their personal unfiltered mail, you are not giving the CEO an upfront choice about the security of the network that he is paying to have installed.

IHMO only

Mike

You are absolutely right, BUT from the point of view of Scalix, who are NOT ABLE to provide this functionality. That is the main reason they give us the explanation you just described above. Their inability to provide a solution in the development layer makes them invent explanations in the marketing layer. We're not buying it.

Wouldn't it be better to have the POP3 functionality and let us decide our company security policies regarding POP3? Why should Scalix decide for us? I am a CEO and yes, I would restrict my employees but what about me and the managerial staff? This is our business and I know that I won't break any rules. Should I also start Thunderbird every time I need to check one of my other e-mails?

And what if our company have the policy to allow POP3 access?

Bottomline - see the first paragraph.

Thank you for your opinion, though

Best regards[/quote]

[les]

Wouldn't it be better to have the POP3 functionality and let us decide our company security policies regarding POP3? Why should Scalix decide for us? I am a CEO and yes, I would restrict my employees but what about me and the managerial staff? This is our business and I know that I won't break any rules. Should I also start Thunderbird every time I need to check one of my other e-mails?

Why is it that the CEO's and management always want to be above the rules? Are they above everyone else?

If you have a company policy not allowing external pop3 accounts for all users why should management be excluded?

And if management "think" they know they wont break any rules, wouldn't you say the same for IT departments? Technically they will know what they should and shouldn't do and they also have the battle-scars to prove it because they've had to clean up messes before. In my experience it has always been a CEO or senior management person who has done something silly and let a virus loose on the network by downloading it via pop3 or by browsing to a website and downloading it, because an IT person had to give them full unrestricted access to the internet, bypassing the corporate proxy because it stopped them from browsing to a non-work related site!!!!!!

Sorry but a company policy should be for the entire company, no exceptions. otherwise there's no point having one.

And what's wrong with webmail for external accounts? sure "outlook or thunderbird might be a bit friendlier, but webmail will work fine.

Too many times in my experience it has been senior management who have broken things because they've been treated differently to others in the organization by being allowed to bypass company policies.

[drank]

And if management "think" they know they wont break any rules, wouldn't you say the same for IT departments? Technically they will know what they should and shouldn't do and they also have the battle-scars to prove it because they've had to clean up messes before. In my experience it has always been a CEO or senior management person who has done something silly and let a virus loose on the network by downloading it via pop3 or by browsing to a website and downloading it, because an IT person had to give them full unrestricted access to the internet, bypassing the corporate proxy because it stopped them from browsing to a non-work related site!!!!!!

Sorry but a company policy should be for the entire company, no exceptions. otherwise there's no point having one.

Are you trying to tell me what our company policy should be? I think the topic has gone out of scope. It was about a needed feature, not about how should one run his/her company. Please calm down. This was just an example and you jumped as if I tried to limit you. It is obvious you've never been a CEO (And just FYI I am also a developer)

And what's wrong with webmail for external accounts? sure "outlook or thunderbird might be a bit friendlier, but webmail will work fine.

Would it hurt you if that is for me to decide? OK, let me ease it for you - we have a policy to allow our employees to use POP3 along with their corporate email and we DO HAVE a very high security setup where using POP3 will not hinder our operations in any way.

The topic here is about a major feature that is not implemented by Scalix and is needed (please read the entire post again). The fact that you do not need it and can use the workarounds does not mean that everybody has to. We are potential Scalix customers (well, we were actually and that is for Scalix to think about, not you) that give up because of this lack. Believe me, we do not give up so easily on promising products (and Scalix is).

Too many times in my experience it has been senior management who have broken things because they've been treated differently to others in the organization by being allowed to bypass company policies.

This has nothing to do with the current topic

I would have expected you to be more helpful on this. You're a pro around here after all. Thank you anyway, but my opinion stays the same.

Best regards

[les]

And if management "think" they know they wont break any rules, wouldn't you say the same for IT departments? Technically they will know what they should and shouldn't do and they also have the battle-scars to prove it because they've had to clean up messes before. In my experience it has always been a CEO or senior management person who has done something silly and let a virus loose on the network by downloading it via pop3 or by browsing to a website and downloading it, because an IT person had to give them full unrestricted access to the internet, bypassing the corporate proxy because it stopped them from browsing to a non-work related site!!!!!!

Sorry but a company policy should be for the entire company, no exceptions. otherwise there's no point having one.

Are you trying to tell me what our company policy should be? I think the topic has gone out of scope. It was about a needed feature, not about how should one run his/her company. Please calm down. This was just an example and you jumped as if I tried to limit you. It is obvious you've never been a CEO (And just FYI I am also a developer)

And what's wrong with webmail for external accounts? sure "outlook or thunderbird might be a bit friendlier, but webmail will work fine.

Would it hurt you if that is for me to decide? OK, let me ease it for you - we have a policy to allow our employees to use POP3 along with their corporate email and we DO HAVE a very high security setup where using POP3 will not hinder our operations in any way.

The topic here is about a major feature that is not implemented by Scalix and is needed (please read the entire post again). The fact that you do not need it and can use the workarounds does not mean that everybody has to. We are potential Scalix customers (well, we were actually and that is for Scalix to think about, not you) that give up because of this lack. Believe me, we do not give up so easily on promising products (and Scalix is).

Too many times in my experience it has been senior management who have broken things because they've been treated differently to others in the organization by being allowed to bypass company policies.

This has nothing to do with the current topic

I would have expected you to be more helpful on this. You're a pro around here after all. Thank you anyway, but my opinion stays the same.

Best regards

I just found it interesting that you suggested different rules for management as opposed to other staff.

Of course its up to you how you implement your company policy and how you access emails etc etc.

i just relayed some experiences i have had with that sort of a decision in a company. And you hit a nerve because its always been me who's had to spend hours the next day cleaning up things when someone's done something wrong, which they should have never had the opportunity to do in the first place. ;)

....back to the topic at hand....pop3 account in outlook in the same profile with the scalix connector.....

As i understand it the implementation of this is not a trivial matter. The last time i heard something about it there were difficulties with finding a way to implement it via an API in Outlook.

There is a bug registered below, which references this thread.

https://bugzilla.scalix.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14837

But that bug hasn't been touched since 2007-05-03.

Given that forum response by Scalix is "best effort" it would be better to post to bugzilla which may draw more response and perhaps a resolution.

[drank]

Thank you for the help. I posted to bugzilla and will wait to see what Scalix people will say.

Best regards

[TRACKS]

I too believe this issue to be one of the biggest problems I have to work around when selling the product.

I sure wish they would address this!

[mikevl]

Hi

As mentioned before. Fetchmail takes care of this issue very well.

Mike

[TRACKS]

Hi

As mentioned before. Fetchmail takes care of this issue very well.

Mike

I know Fetchmail will work however this is a pain to manage in a large scale environment. Can you imagine telling a user that has had years of experience with Outlook and setting up pop accounts… Just use Fetchmail……. you’re going to get a blank look of confusion.

Simply put.. This is a huge drawback in Scalix and it needs to be fixed.

[florian]

Simply put: Complain to Microsoft as Outlook is what doesn't allow us to change the behaviour.

We will resolve the usecase situation behind this, however in a very different way, i.e. by allowing pass-through access to other email accounts in our server. This will then allow a user to access external email accounts through any of his clients-of-choice, including Outlook.

Florian.

[da]

I notice that Bug 14837 (https://bugzilla.scalix.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14837) has been updated to show that Scalix is again considering this bug, specifically to determine whether or not it can be fixed.

This would be a fantastic enhancement. We have users with a valid need to have both Scalix and external POP/IMAP accounts in the same profile, who have been waiting for a long time on this issue. From the other posts in this thread, it is clear that others are in a similar situation.

Good luck to the developers, we are hoping for a positive resolution!