Connector for Thunderbird

[ilexius]

Hi,
just started planning a Scalix Connector for Thunderbird. This would allow our customers to use MS Windows as operating system and all applications as open source (Client: Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Firefox, Server: Samba and Scalix).
Up to now many of our clients use Microsoft Outlook because it is the only messaging app that provides nice groupware functionality.
Thunderbird has a calendar and address book, but using it with others is a pain. We try to change this now, but we need your help to do this.

To all scalix experts:
What do you think is the best interface to access Scalix? We dont want to synchronize, we will try to implement a storage provider for calendar and address book data. As far as I know there are two documented interfaces to access Scalix: API over HTTP or via IMAP.

IMAP:
Using IMAP looks very convenient becaue we can use the offline feature of Thunderbird to access all items even when we are offline. One big problem is how to edit items, I dont know how to edit messages over IMAP. One workaround would be to delete the item and create a new one.

HTTP-API:
Best way to access all Scalix items. But we have to cache the data to work offline. One approach is to use Thunderbirds native storage for address book and calendar and sync this with scalix.

I'm looking forward to read your pros and cons, please write all your ideas how to implement this.

And to all Scalix users and admins: Please tell me, would you use the Thunderbird connector? Which features are most important for you?

We will release the connector free of charge for you under GPL.

Cheers,
Sebastian

[jaime.pinto]

Hi Sebastian

This is a great initiative.
The majority of our "IMAP only" accounts under Windows are/were Thunderbird users already. In general they hate having to move to Outlook just to be able to enjoy the MAPI features. Some absolutely refuse it, and go the firefox SWA route (again no Explorer either).

We've been experimenting with the Lightning extension, but it's really a pain to get the proper path setup, and it doesn't let us change the entries, just display. We don't have a good solution for contacts with scalix yet.

Such a connector would make a number of our users very happy.
(and if you want to do something for linux and Macs we take it as well!)

Jaime

[William]

I am a Scalix user/admin.

This is a fantastic idea. Perhaps there should be Scalix / Mozilla wiki pages about it too?
I have just tried Thunderbird + Scalix + IMAP and it works well as far as managing email goes(one folder could not be accessed for some reason - i will start a seperate thread), Thunderbird does not however show contacts very well (or searching inside of the contacts) nor seems to tie into the calendar 100% (with lightening).

In fact Thunderbird 2 seems to function in a very similar manner to Outlook Express 6 (except outlook express does not have a tie in calendar?).

We would just need basic group and personal contact viewing/item creation, email management and group/personal calendar viewing/item creation, then we would/could use the Thunderbird connector. I am not sure if some of the limitations described here are actually only solvable by changes to Thunderbird or Outlook Express.

[ilexius]

Wiliam and Jaime, thanks for your feedback.

The issues that Thunderbird integration is not very tight is exactly what we want to fix with our Thunderbird connector extension. It will allow you to use the Lightning calendar and Thunderbird address book with Scalix.
Development is in progress, a first version will be released in a few weeks.

Cheers,
Sebastian Koch

ilexius GmbH
http://www.ilexius.de

[friedmar]

Sebastian,

keep me on the list as well. I volunteer testing thunderbird for mac os (Intel).


Regards

Friedmar

[Kris]

Sounds very interesting, I would be very happy with such a connector.

[noon]

We are using scalix and Thunderbird (thunderbird for a long time but just migrated to scalix). Connector that would allow using calendar and addressbook would be really nice.

[dougp23]

Add me to the list! Have just started playing with the lightning extension. It's pretty nice, but the Scalix box seems to be totally unaware of it....but I am only 10 minutes into testing!!!

[les]

We are using scalix and Thunderbird (thunderbird for a long time but just migrated to scalix). Connector that would allow using calendar and addressbook would be really nice.

i second that.....if i could get away from "bloaty" outlook i would!!!

Right now i use thunderbird 2 via imap and really only rely on outlook to look at shared folders.

It would be great if thunderbird could sync calendar and contacts directly with scalix!

[dboreham]

We are using scalix and Thunderbird (thunderbird for a long time but just migrated to scalix). Connector that would allow using calendar and addressbook would be really nice.

i second that.....if i could get away from "bloaty" outlook i would!!!

Right now i use thunderbird 2 via imap and really only rely on outlook to look at shared folders.

It would be great if thunderbird could sync calendar and contacts directly with scalix!

I can see shared folders in thunderbird via IMAP. Is there some specific
functionality that's not available that way ? (I haven't done anything with them,
just noticed that they're visible).

You can obviously get corporate address book functionality in t'bird with LDAP.
Current Scalix releases also allow read (but not write) access to the user's personal
contacts via LDAP, which I believe should work in t'bird if you configure a second
address book directory with the right parameters.

Lightning/Scalix calendar integration would I think be best achieved with a
CalDAV interface to Scalix.

[les]

I can see shared folders in thunderbird via IMAP. Is there some specific
functionality that's not available that way ? (I haven't done anything with them,
just noticed that they're visible).

yes, that works but there are two issues......

1. you cannot properly see a shared calendar or contacts or any special folder.

2. its a bit clunky. I have an ordinary shared imap folder in another users mailbox. Mail comes in to this folder via an inbox rule.
Fetchmail is then used to "suck" the mail out and into request tracker. fetchmail deletes the mail message after doing this. The problem is that thuderbird "keeps a history" of mail in these shared folders, and it sometimes sees messages as unread, but they are no longer there. A restart of thunderbird is usually necessary but thats not a valid solution as we get multiple emails in this way.

[quote"dboreham"]You can obviously get corporate address book functionality in t'bird with LDAP.
Current Scalix releases also allow read (but not write) access to the user's personal
contacts via LDAP, which I believe should work in t'bird if you configure a second
address book directory with the right parameters.[/quote]

[/quote]

yes, i'm sure that would suffice, but im more in need of looking at public folders or shared contacts folders from other users in thunderbird.

[dboreham]

yes, that works but there are two issues......

1. you cannot properly see a shared calendar or contacts or any special folder.

Ok, but that's not a shared folder issue per se, right ? There's no support
for contacts nor calendar entries in thunderbird at all, regardless of what kind
of folder they're in.

2. its a bit clunky. I have an ordinary shared imap folder in another users mailbox. Mail comes in to this folder via an inbox rule.
Fetchmail is then used to "suck" the mail out and into request tracker. fetchmail deletes the mail message after doing this. The problem is that thuderbird "keeps a history" of mail in these shared folders, and it sometimes sees messages as unread, but they are no longer there. A restart of thunderbird is usually necessary but thats not a valid solution as we get multiple emails in this way.

This sounds like a thunrderbird bug. If you can show that we're not implementing
the IMAP protocol properly here please let me know. I just did a simple test :
in a public folder I used SWA to create and then delete a post. At the same time
I had thunderbird (I happen to be using T'bird 3.0 on this machine) open displaying
the same folder. What I saw was exactly what I"d expect : the new post appeared
in t'bird within a second of being posted by SWA. And then it vanished from t'bird
within a second of being deleted in SWA.

yes, i'm sure that would suffice, but im more in need of looking at public folders or shared contacts folders from other users in thunderbird.

CalDAV and CardDAV would give you what you want here, I believe
(once thunderbird supports CardDAV of course).

[rbardoel2]

Sounds very interesting, I 'm looking forward tot his tool!

[jryden]

Hi,
just started planning a Scalix Connector for Thunderbird. This would allow our customers to use MS Windows as operating system and all applications as open source (Client: Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Firefox, Server: Samba and Scalix).
Up to now many of our clients use Microsoft Outlook because it is the only messaging app that provides nice groupware functionality.
Thunderbird has a calendar and address book, but using it with others is a pain. We try to change this now, but we need your help to do this.

To all scalix experts:
What do you think is the best interface to access Scalix? We dont want to synchronize, we will try to implement a storage provider for calendar and address book data. As far as I know there are two documented interfaces to access Scalix: API over HTTP or via IMAP.

IMAP:
Using IMAP looks very convenient becaue we can use the offline feature of Thunderbird to access all items even when we are offline. One big problem is how to edit items, I dont know how to edit messages over IMAP. One workaround would be to delete the item and create a new one.

HTTP-API:
Best way to access all Scalix items. But we have to cache the data to work offline. One approach is to use Thunderbirds native storage for address book and calendar and sync this with scalix.

I'm looking forward to read your pros and cons, please write all your ideas how to implement this.

And to all Scalix users and admins: Please tell me, would you use the Thunderbird connector? Which features are most important for you?

We will release the connector free of charge for you under GPL.

Cheers,
Sebastian

It's not entirely clear to me exactly what you are trying to get Thunderbird to do. Most of the stuff we miss when using Thunderbird is all aspects of the Calendar integration, editing your own calendar, viewing shared folders and calendars, setting permissions on mail folders and calendars, free/busy scheduling, filtering rules editing / out of office setting. If you can get those implemented somehow I'd almost be willing to kiss you, though maybe a monetary donation to your project would be more appropriate

[dboreham]

It's not entirely clear to me exactly what you are trying to get Thunderbird to do. Most of the stuff we miss when using Thunderbird is all aspects of the Calendar integration, editing your own calendar, viewing shared folders and calendars, setting permissions on mail folders and calendars, free/busy scheduling, filtering rules editing / out of office setting. If you can get those implemented somehow I'd almost be willing to kiss you, though maybe a monetary donation to your project would be more appropriate

IMHO the way to do this would be to add CalDAV support to Scalix, and use
the CalDAV client support already present in Lightning. This also would allow the
use of other fat clients (Apple iCal, Evolution for example).