Upgrade 11.3 to 11.4, Thanks a lot

[a.schild]

Hello,

I did just upgrade our company server from 11.3 to 11.4.

- Upgrade worked fine, no problems
- The new SWA theme is nice
- The SWA loads faster, great compliment !
- Smartcache tooltip is very good, at least now we know what is going on
- Displaying "loading items from smartcache (xy of jk)" is very very good. (So the users see why sometimes it takes a bit of time to show the items)
- The outlook connector installer now finaly no longer crashes at the end of the install (I know, it was a beauty problem, but also a first impression to the end users)


So far everything looks fine.

A big thanks to the whole Scalix team.

André

[florian]

Thanks for this positive feedback from the whole Scalix Team!

Florian.

[les]

Hello,

I did just upgrade our company server from 11.3 to 11.4.

- Upgrade worked fine, no problems
- The new SWA theme is nice
- The SWA loads faster, great compliment !
- Smartcache tooltip is very good, at least now we know what is going on
- Displaying "loading items from smartcache (xy of jk)" is very very good. (So the users see why sometimes it takes a bit of time to show the items)
- The outlook connector installer now finaly no longer crashes at the end of the install (I know, it was a beauty problem, but also a first impression to the end users)


So far everything looks fine.

A big thanks to the whole Scalix team.

André

i second that!!!

Just upgraded to 11.4 our our own server. Smooth as silk!

Outlook performs well. smartcache added info is great for the end users.
Speed is better on SWA and SAC, interface looks good.
I especially like the overlay calendars feature.

A question regarding the new SMTPMILTER.......

given that the syntax on the SMTPMILTER in smtpd.cfg is almost identical to what is used in sendmail.mc for filtering via sendmail, is it enough to just add.....

SMTPMILTER=TRUE
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER('spamassassin','S=local:/var/run/spamass-milter/spamass-milter.sock, F=, T=C:15m;S:4m;R:4m;E:10m')
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER('clamav', 'S=local:/var/clamav/clmilter.socket, F=, T=S:4m;R:4m')

...to smtpd.cfg in order to filter directly????

Is this a better scenario because mail gets filtering before it is handed off to sendmail?? does it avoid issues of mail looking like it comes from 127.0.0.1 which some users have talked about on the forum?

and where would the milter log to? could you only see it via auditing?


Now for a feature request.....in SWA you cannot select contacts from a public folder contacts list or a shared users contacts when composing mail. This would be extremely beneficial, a lot of my users have enquired about it.

Overall a big thumbs up! Well done to all the team.

[florian]

A question regarding the new SMTPMILTER.......

given that the syntax on the SMTPMILTER in smtpd.cfg is almost identical to what is used in sendmail.mc for filtering via sendmail, is it enough to just add.....

SMTPMILTER=TRUE
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER('spamassassin','S=local:/var/run/spamass-milter/spamass-milter.sock, F=, T=C:15m;S:4m;R:4m;E:10m')
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER('clamav', 'S=local:/var/clamav/clmilter.socket, F=, T=S:4m;R:4m')

Yes, in theory something like this should work, however we haven't tested extensively with MILTERs other than the commercial Scalix AntiSpam option. We have done sniff testing with Spam Assassin and ClamAV, however we haven't done enough to make it an officially recommended configuration, however we are planning to do so in the future and upgrading the respective docs on the Wiki to reflect.

Is this a better scenario because mail gets filtering before it is handed off to sendmail?? does it avoid issues of mail looking like it comes from 127.0.0.1 which some users have talked about on the forum?

Yes, that was part of the rationale for doing in this way. Also some milters really check the IP address for reputation information.

and where would the milter log to? could you only see it via auditing?

A milter, by design, is a separately running process and maintains it's own logs. Scalix AntiSpam milter logs to the usual Scalix places, any 3rd party milter would do it's own thing. There is no way for us to capture the milter's logging output.

Now, note that I need to do some further marketing for Scalix AntiSpam. We used SpamAssassin internally before, now switched to the new technology. The difference in quality for me and most our user's is truly day and night. Please accept my apologies for trying to sell this thing, but I must simply say I am completely sold on it myself and would happily pay the price out of my own pocket if I had to. It's really a Reclaim-your-inbox type of thing for me. You can request a free trial of it through our sales department.

Now for a feature request.....in SWA you cannot select contacts from a public folder contacts list or a shared users contacts when composing mail. This would be extremely beneficial, a lot of my users have enquired about it.

Yes, this has been requested from multiple, if not many sides. There are some infrastructural things to be done to SWA to allow for that but it will come in some future release, although I cannot say when.

Overall a big thumbs up! Well done to all the team.

Thanks. I guess those using commercial understand what they pay for with their subscription fees.

Cheers,
Florian.

[les]

Now, note that I need to do some further marketing for Scalix AntiSpam. We used SpamAssassin internally before, now switched to the new technology. The difference in quality for me and most our user's is truly day and night. Please accept my apologies for trying to sell this thing, but I must simply say I am completely sold on it myself and would happily pay the price out of my own pocket if I had to. It's really a Reclaim-your-inbox type of thing for me. You can request a free trial of it through our sales department.

hmmm....I'd be interested to hear how your internal spam filtering was setup with spamassassin and compare. I have a recipe for spamassassin implementation which, in rough figures, usually knocks out at least 97% of spam automatically, The rest being caught and dropped into users Junk E-mail folders. Ofcourse a few still get through, mostly though just text based rolex watches with a single http link. But thats a discussion for another time and probably off list. Time to call it a night.

[florian]

I wasn't the one who set it up, so I don't know for sure. I could investigate, but...

The reason why the new technology inevitably works better in the long run is that it is completely content neutral. I basically detects spam based on recurrence patterns acquired from analyzing billions of messages every day - and again, it's only patterns, not content - so it doesn't need training, works from day one (I set it up for a friend of mine using Scalix today, 25 user organisation, it killed 50 spam messages in the first 10 minutes of it's existence and took 10 minutes to setup, NO configuration whatsoever), so it's completely foolproof, zero-maintenance, and also catches image spam, voice spam, international spam, etc., so works in Asia and across the globe and in many situations where SpamAssassin fails. It also automatically adapts to new Spam strategies automaticallyand without software update.

Again, this may sound like marketing gibberish, but I'm really speaking here as a customer and user and I'm happy with the results and the (zero) effort needed.

Florian.

[les]

I wasn't the one who set it up, so I don't know for sure. I could investigate, but...

The reason why the new technology inevitably works better in the long run is that it is completely content neutral. I basically detects spam based on recurrence patterns acquired from analyzing billions of messages every day - and again, it's only patterns, not content - so it doesn't need training, works from day one (I set it up for a friend of mine using Scalix today, 25 user organisation, it killed 50 spam messages in the first 10 minutes of it's existence and took 10 minutes to setup, NO configuration whatsoever), so it's completely foolproof, zero-maintenance, and also catches image spam, voice spam, international spam, etc., so works in Asia and across the globe and in many situations where SpamAssassin fails. It also automatically adapts to new Spam strategies automaticallyand without software update.

Again, this may sound like marketing gibberish, but I'm really speaking here as a customer and user and I'm happy with the results and the (zero) effort needed.

Florian.

My spamassassin recipe also only takes 10 minutes to setup. Spam these days makes up 90 percent of all email. I can send you some daily reports from clients that show those numbers.
You do need to train it though with whitelists, but in general its the end users who do that and i give them a web interface (webmin) with a cutdown spamassassin module to add these entries. over the first couple of weeks maybe they spend 30 minutes in total adding addresses, then one every other blue moon.
So from my point of view setup time isn't that big a deal.

Have you got a rough idea of pricing for the commtouch solution? i haven't found anything on their website. I assume its per user/mailbox and has yearly updates etc.

[florian]

Hi Les,

so how does your SpamAssassin setup react to image and audio spam? I haven't received any of those anymore since we switched the new stuff on....

Commtouch doesn't sell direct, but they only work with OEMs like ourselves, so in that sense they don't have a price - you buy the Scalix AntiSpam subscription through Scalix and our resellers.

Now, exact prices depend on the market and volume, but in very general terms it is a per-user/per-year pricing and the cost is anywhere between $7 and $25 per user per year, dependent on market and volume. Please contact Scalix sales or one of our resellers for details.

Cheers,
Florian.

[les]

Hi Les,

so how does your SpamAssassin setup react to image and audio spam? I haven't received any of those anymore since we switched the new stuff on....

we integrate additional sare rulesets into spamassassin, which are kept up to date via cron jobs. They catch all image spam, never seen audio spam so maybe they get caught already.

[charon]

did you have the time to test it against scalix 11.4?
it would really be nice to have the wiki updated soon!

[Clemens]

Hi,

11.4 works very well here as well, no problems during the upgrade. Good work! SWA seems to be a lot faster and more stable, but I had to delete the IMAP-cache for each user to make it work smoothly.

Is it possible to create custom themes for SWA myself?

Thanks,

Clemens

[Kris]

Nice! I'll do this upgrade next week I think. Looking forward to it :)

[a.schild]

Hi,
Is it possible to create custom themes for SWA myself?

According to some infos somewhere on the scalix site it should be possible.
There seems to be a SDK for this.

André

[florian]

yeah, at this point the file and directory structure is not optimal yet and it's not documented, but both whill be changed in the near future (give it 6-8 weeks or so!)

Florian.

[mikevl]

I would like to say a big

Thankyou!!!

To the Scalix team for your efforts in producing ver 11.4. The upgrade of our internal server went like silk. SWA is faster and just stunning in its looks. The promised feature set is as promised..

The Outlook Upgrades and does all it is suppose to do.

Once again thankyou for all your great work .

Mike