On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 08:03, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 01:53 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > That's only a factor on the availability side. Often you have
> > to just pick a time anyway and let the recipients deal with
> > conflicts. What I mean is that outlook will send meeting
> > requests to email destinations on servers that don't sync
> > and it goes into the recipient's personal calendar regardless.
>
> Okay, then that's the e-mail attachements. Because still, same concept,
> scheduling is done by the client (Outlook) itself. Whether Outlook
> retrieves from a server store, or receives an attachment.
That's what I want: my laptop should pop the reminders whether or
not it has access to any server.
> Ever since SR-1e for Outlook 98 broke Shared Folders, I _always_ use a
> server store. That's where the MAPI SP really helps "tame" Outlook.
> Bynari's InsightConnector does the same for IMAP.
But the client must continue to work when disconnected. Outlook
does reasonably well at this as of the office2003 version with
exchange. I'd be surprised if the same applies to using
connectors to other servers.
> > Evolution works with these but it was too buggy to depend on back when
> > I tried to use it that way.
>
> ??? To Evolution itself? Or just Outlook?
> Evolution does _true_ vCalendar, and I've _never_ gotten any other
> e-mail client to read what it sends out.
I could have sworn I had 2-way transfers working between evolution
and Outlook2000 configured for internet-only. But I gave up on it
because it didn't interoperate with OutlookXP which some people were
starting to use and Evolution kept forgetting to pop the reminders
and then would do several days backlog at once. I can't duplicate
it now with Outlook connected to Exchange. A notice sent from Evolution
shows the Vcalendar item in the body of the message instead of an
attachment both in outlook and when pulled back to evolution via imap.
> > The problem is that there aren't any great alternatives that combine
> > the features of outlook/exchange and even if some are available now it
> > is too late.
>
> ??? Please stop saying that. Honestly. Or at least rephrase it:
>
> "The problem is:
>
> A) There is no Freedomware server looks like Exchange from the
> standpoint of Outlook and transparently drops in without any client side
> changes, and
>
> B) There is no Freedomware client that has to work with Outlook's
> Shared Folder attachments which aren't even a proprietary standard and
> have changed and seen incompatibility between different Outlook versions
> itself."
>
> Much better.
No, those don't quite describe my problem. My personal problem is that
I believe something works when I see it working on a reasonable scale.
I've seen outlook2003 working with disconnected views of shared and
personal calendars that sync with the server when connected. That's
just a part of the feature set I mentioned, but one that I haven't seen
anything else do.
> How you went from admitting that Outlook doesn't operate well with
> itself to your above statement is beyond me. This is what I'm talking
> about when I say Linux people are sometimes Microsoft's best marketing
> agents.
That's outlook vs. outlook in internet server mode that fails. All
versions of outlook interoperate when used with Exchange server, but
pre-2003 versions have other bugs especially in the sync-for-offline
use configuration. I'm not at all a fan of Microsoft but outlook2003
basically works.
> > We're still on pre-2000 exchange
>
> Then you don't need ADS! Great! Now's the time to switch!
Until recently we were a small company and the costs of an exchange
server mattered so we didn't have one. Now we are part of a larger
company with a huge existing exchange/outlook infrastructure and I
don't see it going away. However, I'd prefer not to need windows
on my desktop to access it and the only likely approach to that
looks like Evolution with the exchange connector which won't work
until we update to exchange2000.
> > and its web interface sucks,
>
> Every Exchange alternative (even the proprietary back-ends) have a rich,
> integrated web client.
Exchange2000 is supposed to be much better too, but the nature of
web access means that the client can't be as responsive as something
native. Besides, laptops need to continue to work when offline.
> I personally like OpenGroupware.ORG (OGo)
> because it's a totally open back-end with server-side scheduling --
> including iCal, its own WebDAV (plus Evolution/Outlook connectors),
> Palm.NET, web and its own XML-RPC (don't know any clients that use that
> yet though).
>
> The only issue with OGo is the initial installation. It's not fun.
I'm not interested in touching every client.
> > Anyway, I consider it a feature that outlook adjusts calendar updates
> > like the time of a conference call when the mail is received even if
> > you don't open the message.
>
> Server-side scheduling can do this for you too.
> In fact, relying on client-side scheduling can be a coherency nightmare.
But then if you are offline you are out of business.
> I'm not sure if I should discuss this further because everything I say
> something, you turn it into almost a pro-Microsoft viewpoint, which is
> quite the opposite.
Microsoft bugs have caused enough trouble for me in the past that I'll
never be pro-Microsoft, but I'm trying to stay vendor-agnostic on this
issue. Outlook2003 seems to have the obvious bugs fixed so replacing
it would only make sense if it saved money or added functionality. More
importantly in this situation, management people already use it and are
happy with it, and I think the eventual upgrade to Exchange2000 or
newer will allow Evolution to work for more than imap. But, I'd still
like to know about other alternatives for interoperability. If the
discussion sounds pro-Microsoft it is because the alternatives mentioned
so far aren't all that attractive.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
