ActiveSync in 11.4

[konman]

I'm trembling with anticipation!! I cant decide what is more exciting - waiting for the new Trek Movie or ActiveSync!!

Florian - I assume that you will do a post in 'Announcements' when it is ready for release?

I have the 'Annoucements' page as my desktop on the PC so I can keep a close eye on it when it is released !!!

(....we just bought the 50 license for 11.4 (from 11.2 Community) and ActiveSync will be the nicest, sweatest icing on the cake!!)

Is there a 'teaser' video anywhere on YouTube showing how it can be used ???

Cheers,
KonMan.

[florian]

Yes... I will post an announcement when it's done and you should also see some stuff on the Website, too.

Also... for those of you using Blackberry, we'll have some great news for you, too!

Florian

[Valerion]

Blackberry support of some sort sounds nice Eager to see what form it takes.

[billb3]

T minus 2 weeks until this thread becomes a year old. Keeping my fingers crossed we see AS 1.0 before then!

[propagandhi]

I'm with billb3 on this one. Some of us paying Scalix customers are getting very tired of waiting, as well as explaining to upper management why we cant sync all their iPhones.

[florian]

Prop,

that's fine - but what are you trying to tell us? Do you think we hold this back on purpose and because it's fun? I can tell you - it isn't, all the way. It's a complex product, Microsoft's specs aren't anywhere near as accurate as you would expect them to be, and during the work we found a couple issues inside the actual Scalix server that had never materialized with other clients. All good stuff, but it took time.

Current status is that active development is finished, all 1.0 functionality is working, it's being tested in QA with a variety of devices, number of issues found by them and subsequently fixed is low, I'm on my way to the airport to go see our dev team in Ottawa for some final syncs and if all goes well, it'll be out later this month. Still some risk there as you never know what may show up, but we're working hard on it.

You can bet that once it's ready and in good shape, it will ship immediately - no artificial delays for this one.

Florian

[propagandhi]

Prop,

that's fine - but what are you trying to tell us? Do you think we hold this back on purpose and because it's fun? I can tell you - it isn't, all the way. It's a complex product, Microsoft's specs aren't anywhere near as accurate as you would expect them to be, and during the work we found a couple issues inside the actual Scalix server that had never materialized with other clients. All good stuff, but it took time.

Current status is that active development is finished, all 1.0 functionality is working, it's being tested in QA with a variety of devices, number of issues found by them and subsequently fixed is low, I'm on my way to the airport to go see our dev team in Ottawa for some final syncs and if all goes well, it'll be out later this month. Still some risk there as you never know what may show up, but we're working hard on it.

You can bet that once it's ready and in good shape, it will ship immediately - no artificial delays for this one.

Florian

I believe what I am trying to tell you, or at least Scalix as an overall company is that I stand alongside others eagerly awaiting a product that has been far too overdue. Surely you can understand the embarrassment when you explain that even though exchange or other servers can do such and such ours cannot because we run Scalix. Needless to say you get a lot of funny looks and a lot of questions about who the idiot is that chose Scalix. I'm not accusing you or any of your developers of intentionally holding out. Perhaps you guys need to devote more time and resources to the project??

[florian]

Sir,

with all respect - do you really think we don't know that and that's news to me? So where's the additional point?

The number of people involved in this project is already pretty high and has been ramped up quite a bit during the course. Probably more cost at this point than the product will ever generate in direct revenue. Not the point, given it's need as a component in the overall solution.

Florian

[propagandhi]

Sir,

with all respect - do you really think we don't know that and that's news to me? So where's the additional point?

The number of people involved in this project is already pretty high and has been ramped up quite a bit during the course. Probably more cost at this point than the product will ever generate in direct revenue. Not the point, given it's need as a component in the overall solution.

Florian

Florian,

I can sincerely state respect for you, as I know you are committed to Scalix. However, the additional point here is that your customer base continues to grow concerned that we may never see activesync and that some of us may move away from Scalix, which overall would not be good considering the fact that Scalix is essentially a good product. In the two years I've been using it I've learnt heaps about it and would *almost* recommend it to business everywhere if it weren't for the fact that crucial show stopping features are slow to the market. I've definitely done my best to substitute for any weak points in Scalix, so much so that I've written several modules internally using the scalix API that help us better integrate the solution in our enterprise. I am a very patient person. I have been waiting since the very first mention of activesync.

Scalix overall is vastly better for me as I place firm trust in Linux based solutions where I will always avoid Windows based solutions. However, it is undeniable that Scalix still comes across as an infant in the mail space, and it is by no means easy to use and deploy on an enterprise level. We have 12 nodes running right now, and it took us a whole lot of learning to get this baby running smoothly.

If you guys don't want feedback, close the forum. You will face criticism and you sure as hell will face unhappy customers. However, here I am today still using the product, still telling everyone that when 11.5 rolls by they will start to see the true value of the investment in Scalix, still waiting for Activesync which despite the wait will I am sure be awesome.

Florian, don't take it personally when your customers cry out in frustration.

[florian]

Well,

if you've followed my posts in this and other threads, I hope you'll believe me that respect is mutual and from my perspective that's true for yourself and anyone else on these forums, except for a very few that get personal instead of sticking to facts and opinions.... I think part of my reaction is that, if things become difficult (and this has indeed been a very difficult project!), those having to carry out the work don't need constant reminder of where they've failed, but rather encouragement to continue with their mission and stick through it, even if some things turn out to be more involved than they expected. In that sense, it really doesn't help repeating the same statement or sentiment over and over again; on the contrary, it adds to the frustration of those involved, including myself, and you can bet that I'm frustrated about the delays more than anyone else. I want to ship working software, not find errors and omissions in Microsoft's specifications and our own system.

that your customer base continues to grow concerned that we may never see activesync

Well, with all respect, this is nonsense in my opinion. We had a very successful beta out there that worked better than expected for those who tried. This, actually, was one of the most encouraging things in the whole affair.

and that some of us may move away from Scalix, which overall would not be good considering the fact that Scalix is essentially a good product.

Sure. I can understand that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that some people have already moved away from using the product, some others have not signed the order form because they are waiting. This has had negative business impact for us (and at the end of the day that's what we have to care about) and it's continuing to do that until fully resolved. If we could have fixed it earlier, we would.

In the two years I've been using it I've learnt heaps about it and would *almost* recommend it ....

Your commitment to Scalix is greatly appreciated. I mean that.

Scalix overall is vastly better for me as I place firm trust in Linux based solutions where I will always avoid Windows based solutions. However, it is undeniable that Scalix still comes across as an infant in the mail space

Well, a now more than 20-year old (including the OpenMail legacy) would probably not really be considered an infant anymore I don't think it is. I can certainly walk, sometimes run and jump, has earned itself a couple credits and awards, but now needs to add to it's skills on the way to take the next ladder in it's carreer. I'd dare calling it out-of-school, though. (I like the analogy!)

... and it is by no means easy to use and deploy on an enterprise level. We have 12 nodes running right now, and it took us a whole lot of learning to get this baby running smoothly.

So - this is the kind of feedback I'm interested in; what went well, what didn't. Obviously, we monitor customer feedback on all levels, including these forums, and use this as guidance for our development priorities. Resources are sufficient, but certainly well-taxed, so we'll have to make choices. Detailed feedback, going down to a very specific level, helps us making the right one.

If you guys don't want feedback, close the forum. You will face criticism and you sure as hell will face unhappy customers.

We do want feedback. We do take criticism as well and hopefully react to it. Some have said that we should close it because someone's criticism may make someone else turn down the product. I don't believe in such thinking, at all, and I've put my head on the block, personally, to defend where we are. I've explained at the very top of the post what my opinion is on what's good, enough or too much. I stand by that. And while I don't take it personally, some of these things are painful for myself, and I'll probably respond in a passionate and emotional way, everything else would be denying character - which is something I've never in my life been ready to do.... those who have worked with me (or else ) will know quite exactly what I mean.

Anyway, it will happen. It will happen very soon now, the version I'm using myself right now is more or less the final-final, no Alpha or Beta caveats coming with it. We close more remaining bugs than we are opening, so in software engineering speak, we've reached a point of convergence for the release which is a good thing. The trajectory of this makes it possible to make the current projected release date, it's not totally foolproof and failsave, but it's become rather predictable now.

And, as said before, another team in parallel has been working on great news about Blackberry support, which we'll announce in parallel with the release.

Florian

[konman]

Ok everyone, lets cool down, go down to the pub, have a few drinks and let Florian get on with the things he needs to...

[florian]

couple those actually I had myself after that 8 hour flight to Ottawa yesterday.

Florian.

[camerond01]

IMHO the majority of frustration expressed by most customers, including myself, could be addressed by a little more transparency into the progress and even the process of creating these major function pieces. I've been checking the forums every few weeks for updates about ActiveSync, and lately every few days since May was tentatively mentioned. Perhaps by creating a new forum for ActiveSync, and the first posts detailing weekly progress with a warts and all commentary of development would immediately allow people to see there is progress being made. At the moment all we see is poor Florian copping flack whenever he announces a revised estimate of the due date. I guess we've all turned into a rather cynical bunch, after being previously burned on more than one occasion by other vendors making promises and not keeping them. I don't think that is what's happening in this case, as estimates have always been approximate and on the proviso that remaining work went smoothly. From what I've gathered it hasn't gone smoothly for a number of reasons, but who can say they've worked on a worthwhile project that worked perfectly from the get go?

I guess that as paying customers we (rightly or wrongly) figure we deserve to know more about the progress being made than what is currently available on the forums. When I sold management on Scalix, ActiveSync was certainly listed as providing immediate benefits, and I'm guessing other people did too. Now we are nearing the release of AS, it's less of an issue, and I can tell users it's going to be a month or so. Apart from being slightly jaded, I think we're all impatient buggers as well, and the users we support are worse!

Cameron

[florian]

Cameron,

thanks for your feedback. I think from my perspective, there are two parts to say in response. First, I think we've f****d this one up more badly than anything before, schedule-wise. I could now again add that this was caused big time by things outside our control and/or unexpected stuff, but then the commercial customer could still rightfully say that that's not their problem; he'd be quite correct about this, especially given that we claim to be a professional software development organization, and project management in such environments should try to account for the unknown and put some contingencies in as well. That's part of my role, actually, and in a way one could say that I totally screwed this one, a) in being too bold in the planning/early expectation phase, b) in not seeing warning signs early enough, c) in not phasing the whole thing in such a way together with the dev team to make it more digestible. Which may all be true, but it doesn't help at this point and even if I offered our customers or the company my resignation because of this, it wouldn't help much right now.

On your other item, while it sounds appealing at first, not sure how well it would work in practice. Couple reasons. First, this is not open source software development, and indeed some of the work is based on licensed (from Microsoft) material. So we simply cannot publish the code, and even opening up all internal work items/bugs/etc. is not possible in the case of this module, so simply and without overhead showing what we are at wouldn't fly. Second, in theory we could have just published our nightly builds, but a couple of them were broken badly and, more importantly, some of the issues only showed up with real-world usecases and data and also required server updates - so we would have had to publish updated Scalix server nightlies with it. For this to be useful to anyone, they would have had to put that up on production systems, which is something we wouldn't do internally (or only after careful evaluation), so couldn't recommend. To come out with a whole series of alpha and beta releases that are "fit for purpose" on the other hand would require additional QA with signoff criterias attached to it, creating more work, resulting in further delays. I think it's about correct to say that any public release of the stack that we do costs us about 4 weeks in real time, all things considered, in addition to the dev work that needs to be done anyway. As a remaining option, I could have posted more detailed "this is what we are working on" updates here on the forums every week (which, through this discussion, has somehow happened anyway , but there are only 24 hours in a day, some people in the company already believe that there must be multiple clones of myself running around given the amount of text I produce per unit of time (I think it's just unexpected that I type so fast! ), and at some point even I may be reaching my limits....

Anyway, let's get through this one now, there are certainly lessons learned here and we'll treat future projects differently, promised. I couldn't stand another one like this either.

Florian

[les]

i agree that Scalix cannot publish the code or open up all internal work items/bugs/etc in a forum or similar.

Maybe all we need is a sort of "scoreboard" for the major projects updated regularly (weekly or monthly). i.e. something like....

Scalix Active Sync
total bugs 10
absolute showstoppers 3
new bugs this week 4
bugs resolved last week 2

it could be an rss feed or a post to the announcements forum.

I think this kind of system may help as everyone could see progress being made.

p.s. i have no inside knowledge, the above numbers are fictional