Article re: Xandros, Scalix, Microsoft

[techsharp]

Thanks - I am in the US - who should I call?

Florian - also what is your suggestion - wait on the new Scalix Connector (11.2) to see how Active Sync works?

Our company eventually will use a standard- it might be the BlackBerry - only 1 user has that and the others have a Q-Phone which uses AS- however as you know we have had a lot of problems with AS - but the new connector is to fix that problem (hopefully ;p)

I guess right now I am just looking into my options to see what would be best for the company.

[florian]

Well, just to be clear...

the enhanced support for ActiveSync in 11.2 is over-the-wire, i.e. USB-based ActiveSync; we are also working on Active Sync OTA, but that will be early next year.

If you need wireless or blackberry support, Notify is the way to go....

Cheers,
Florian.

[techsharp]

Florian -

Wireless would be excellent - a lot more efficient then just USB. Right now in the researching process.

Who is the contact here in the USA I should get a hold of?

Thanks

[florian]

ping me an email and I'll forward that to notify and the most appropriate person would contact you....

cheers,
Florian.

[techsharp]

Sounds good-

Also does NotifyLink work with the Q-phone devices?

Thanks for your help!

[charon]

did someone evaluate the z-push technology?

http://z-push.sourceforge.net/

[julez]

did someone evaluate the z-push technology?

Yes. Tested it yesterday and it does look very promising.

- Server Scalix Community 11.2
- z-push with "BackendIMAP"
- HTC TyTN WM5 connected via WLAN to Intranet

Actually native ActiveSync over WLAN worked fine with email without any plugins installed on WM5-device. ActiveSync for tasks, contacts and calendar caused error 0x80830003 on WM5.

But all folders are visible and downloadable as emails on WM5-Outlook.

Right now i can't tell. why ActiveSync of contacts, calendar and tasks does not work yet.

But z-push indeed gave best results with the shortest setup time since we started testing sync-mechanisms for WM smartphones.

[charon]

the question is:

is it worthwhile to develop a scalix module, should one continue the funambol connector project or simply wait for 11.3?

[florian]

Can't comment on the overall subject, but what I can say is that our Active Sync implementation will not yet be part of Scalix 11.3, so with the exception of CalDAV, which will be the preferred API to do things like that for calendaring, that release won't bring much news - the key one for ActiveSync is the one after that, scheduled for release in late Q1/2008.

On Z-Push, the implementation is currently email-only, so it doesn't provide much advantage over running IMAP directly from the device, especially as the IMAP client in Windows Mobile is quite decent these days. As they are aiming on using open standards, I wonder which one they will choose for Calendaring - CalDAV, again, would be the most natural choice here.

Hope that helps,
cheers,
Florian.

[sharky]

Z-push actually itself does support contacts, calendaring and tasks, but only from a specific backend. If you were to add a scalix-specific backend, it would work fine.

The main advantage over IMAP is the 'push' technology depending on whether you actually want that

I think any PHP programmer with some knowledge of contacts and calendar items in scalix should be able to create a backend for z-push in less than a day.

As you said, it would also be an option to write a CalDAV backend for z-push and then use that...

[florian]

As far as I can see, the only available backend is IMAP, right?

I'll see the Z guys tomorrow at Systems in Munich and will ask to be sure.

Florian.

[charon]

looking forward to your report

[seany]

Did anything come of this? I'm quite interested in evenuating z-push.

[florian]

so why don't you just do it - it's simple PHP stuff and should take no more than a couple hours to setup.

Florian.

[jplorier]

Hi everybody,

Florian: is there any news on the active sync connector? at least any time frame so I can tell my bosses they can choose to by notifylink now or way a few to get it right from scalix?
Thanks,