We have two exciting announcements about our Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (ZCB)!

First, we just released ZCB 6.0. This new release works with Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0 and includes some cool enhancements:

• Better calendar synchronization
• Removes runtime dependency on Microsoft Outlook processes
• Improved performance and stability

But we didn’t stop there: Today we are also announcing plans for ZCB 6.5 Beta and are looking for Beta testers. ZCB 6.5 will add support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0. This is a terrific step forward for the Zimbra products and supports our commitment to providing ubiquitous access to messaging and collaboration data regardless of channel or device.

To learn more about ZCB 6.0 and download, click on the link below:

http://www.zimbra.com/products/blackberry-enterprise-server.html

http://www.zimbra.com/downloads

To join the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program:

Please send an email to beta@zimbra.com if you are interested in gaining early access to ZCB 6.5 Beta and trying BES 5.0 integration.

Thank you for your continued support!

In final installment of this series we recently had a chance to sit down with Frances Atkinson, the Director of Institutional & Academic Technologies, IT Services at Simon Fraser University, one of the over 500 educational organizations that have deployed the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Network Edition worldwide. Not too long ago, SFU decided to upgrade their collaboration system and investigated several options. No surprise, Zimbra won out! Now, two and a half years later, SFU is seeing how Zimbra is benefiting all of their campus systems.

Highlights from our discussion with Frances are below:

How are SFU’s staff, faculty, and students using Zimbra Collaboration Suite?

Zimbra has become more than just an email and calendaring solution at Simon Fraser – it has evolved into the campus communications “hub” used by all faculty, staff and students. With Zimbra, calendaring and document sharing are available to everyone for the first time, and fewer users are forwarding to external sites like Gmail. Additionally, SFU connected Zimbra to other campus systems increasing campus-wide organization and efficiency. Students and faculty also have the ability to access Zimbra via mobile devices, including BlackBerrys. This mobile access is even more important since we now have the ability to send out notifications to all users for emergencies, weather, downtime, etc.

 
How are you customizing Zimbra to meet the needs of the SFU student body?

SFU is taking advantage of Zimbra’s open source functionality by using several Zimlets – including Calendar Scheduler, Arcade, Google Translator and Yahoo Local – we are able to extend the product and bring features to people who may not have otherwise found these resources.

We have even generated Zimlets of our own. These SFU Zimlets offer students and faculty a simple way to access course information, alerts/tips & tricks and their mySFU profiles. The course resource Zimlet is definitely the most important Zimlet for the students. It allows them to pull up all their course information for the current, past and next term, including the course description, syllabus, video content and digitized lectures. It helps to keep students organized and on track to graduate. Faculty and staff also utilize Zimlets to reserve rooms and equipment.

Additionally, we have branded Zimbra as SFU Connect, and we got the community involved by holding a naming and logo contest. We’ve personalized SFU Connect by providing users with a tip/trick or message of the day upon startup to help them use the portal to its full capacity.

 
What are your students and/or faculty saying about Zimbra?

Zimbra satisfied the desire of the students and faculty to have access to a modern, feature-rich, communications environment. Not only is the email and calendaring solution functional and well-suited to serve the entire campus, but its open source nature is lauded by faculty and students alike. By choosing an open source product, SFU has the potential to integrate with other products as the University’s needs continue to evolve.

Telenet, one of the largest internet providers in Belgium, recently announced the rollout of a new webmail platform developed in collaboration with Zimbra. Since April 2010, Telenet has been providing access to the new system for over 1 million residential internet subscribers and will continue the migration through August 1st. The updated email suite – which is free to Telenet customers – provides 5 GB of storage, a built-in calendar and address book, many advanced tools like sharing, automated importing of external mail accounts, plus more features to come.

Previously, Telenet internet customers had a basic mail utility and minuscule quota space of 50 MB. The new interface, powered by Zimbra, is extremely user friendly and is supported by 100x more storage. Other improved features include the ability to set up rules for filtering incoming mail and access to a mobile browser version. Several factors, including lower disk costs and the broadening availability of both virtualization and cloud applications made it possible for Telenet to make this update available to its customers. (One such distributed object storage framework is from Bizanga/Scality, who developed a connector for Zimbra, and has a video on Telenet’s strategy here.)

According to Saskia Schatterman, Executive Vice President Residential Marketing, no less than 70% of their customers use Telenet email on a regular basis and just over half report that account is their primary address. Those customers can now send mail anywhere, from any device with Internet access; putting aside the need to also use alternatives like Hotmail or Gmail. With this cutting-edge webmail architecture, Telenet can provide all of their broadband customers with a sophisticated and full featured product, that’s still simple to use.
 
The rollout of the advanced Telenet email platform is phased, all existing internet customers will automatically be granted access to the new communication suite and will be notified once their mailbox has been transitioned. Brand-new users will receive access to the Zimbra webmail client by default.

With this integration Zimbra continues to deliver on its promise of providing hassle-free collaboration solutions to our partners around the world. We look forward to sharing news about additional international organizations in the coming months.

Lot of times you need to make a quick note about something in an email or a little reminder for yourself like “I need to confirm those dates” or “add John’s phone number” or “attach the PPT” etc.  But there is no easy way to capture that thought instantly.  Sticky Notes Zimlet helps solve that problem by allowing you to attach a note to a particular email.

The Sticky Notes Zimlet is really easy to use…all you do is make a quick note and attach it to your email. Once you attach your Sticky Note, it will automatically pop up the next time you re-open your email.

How to create your own Sticky Notes:

Simply select an email and click on the “StickyNotes” toolbar button or drag and drop your email onto the Zimlet to add your notes.

StickyNotes in Contacts (v1.6+):

Similar to emails, you can attach notes to Contacts as well. Simply select a Contact and press “StickyNotes” button.

StickyNotes in Calendar (v1.6+):

Similar to emails, you can attach notes to Appointments as well. Simply select a Contact and press “StickyNotes” button.

How to Enable the Sticky Notes Zimlet:

Click on “Sticky Notes” in the left overview pane and select the following:

a. Select “Add StickyNotes button to main toolbar” checkbox

b. Select “Enable Sticky Notes Zimlet” checkbox

How to Find Your Sticky Notes (via Tags):

After your enable the Sticky Notes Zimlet, a yellow-colored tag called “Emails with StickyNotes” is created. When you attach a StickyNote to your email message, your email or conversation will have a yellow tag. This yellow tag is removed when the Sticky Note is deleted.

How to Search for a Sticky Note (via Tags):

You can search and keep track of all of your Sticky Note emails by clicking on the tag or by searching for them in the main search bar.

Download:

You can download the Zimlet here:  http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/sticky-notes

Release Notes:

1. Version 1.6 now allows attaching StickyNotes for Contacts & Appoints as well

2. Version  1.5 adds scalability via CustomMetadata API. You can now add Sticky Notes to as many of your emails as you want.

2. Version 1.5+ is only compatible with ZCS 6.0.7+

Every day, when you first login, this Zimlet scans your calendar and sends out a summary email about the current day’s events.

This Zimlet helps both frequent and lite calendaring users in different ways:

1. For power-users, this is like having a personal assistant; who summarizes appointments for the day, providing a concrete idea as to how many meetings you have.
2. For general-users, the Zimlet helps in reminding you that there is a meeting to prepare for (in case you’ve forgotten)

To make it easier to read, the appointments are sorted and divided along two simple categories:  Those that need your immediate attention (e.g confirmed or new events) and others that don’t (those you’ve marked tentative, free, out-of-office, or declined but not yet deleted).

Download:

Available in our Zimbra Gallery over here

Rate & Review:

After you have used the Appointment Summary Zimlet, please come-back to share what you thought of it at our Gallery.

PS: This is one of our favorite recent Zimlets within the Zimbra team, and we hope you enjoy it too!

Email templates are extremely useful for Sales, Support and SE or any one who constantly sends out the same email on a regular basis. This Zimlet allows users to quickly insert any earlier emails as templates to New, Reply, Forwarded emails & also to Calendar-invites.

Setting up Templates

Step 1: Create Templates:
This Zimlet uses existing emails(nothing special) as templates.  Also, it brings the power of html editor for you to use & design. So, to create templates, simply send few emails yourself.

You can use generic names technique to replace common words. And just before inserting the template Zimlet will alert you to replace them.
For example: You could have hi ${firstName} in the body or in the subject

An example Template email:

Step 2: Setup a folder to keep all your Templates
1. After you have created few template emails, move all these emails to some central folder, say “Sales Templates”.
2. Set this folder as your templates repository by going to Preferences > “Set Templates Folder” button
3. Refresh browser

Using Templates

Step 1: Select a template from the menu:
With two clicks you can insert a Template of your choice. You can insert in three formats. 1. Just the body of the template, 2. both body & subject and 3. Body, Subject & Participants.

Step2: Replace Generic texts(if need be):

If you have any general texts in your templates, replace them with valid ones.

Resulting email

You can see that ${user}, ${firstName} & also attachments are inserted.

Other uses

1. Templates in Calendar:
You can use any of these templates in Calendar as well.  For example, you can create a template with Conference-call details. You don’t have to search for those details anymore, Isn’t that cool?

2. Sharing Templates with others in the team:
Simply share your templates folder and ask your team members to point the Zimlets to this shared folder.

Download

Please download the Zimlet from here:  http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/email-templates

Have you ever found yourself scrambling to find a WebEx meeting invite minutes before the meeting is set to begin? Or if you are scheduling a meeting, you are constantly switching between WebEx and your calendar to create the meeting & calendar invite?

Well, those days are gone with the new WebEx Zimlet. The WebEx Zimlet now brings the power of WebEx right into your Zimbra calendar. To see the WebEx Zimlet in action, checkout this video.

Or to experience first hand, download the WebEx Zimlet at the Zimbra Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/webex.

Create WebEx meeting just like you would create a regular meeting.

Typically you would switch between Zimbra and WebEx to create a meeting. With the WebEx Zimlet, when creating your appointment in Zimbra, simply press the “Save as WebEx” button to create a WebEx meeting. The Zimlet automatically selects the configured WebEx account to be use (see below for information on multiple WebEx account setup), creates a WebEx meeting, inserts all the WebEx details (WebEx url, phone, passcode, etc) into the appointment body and saves the meeting.

Create a Quick meeting.

Allows users to quickly invite people and create a WebEx meeting.

Start or Join an existing meeting.

You do not have to scramble to find that WebEx invite or goto the WebEx site to find a meeting. You can view a list of meetings on your Webex Calendar and Start (as a host) or Join (as an attendee).

Manage multiple WebEx accounts.

You can store up to 5 WebEx accounts (with related conference calling information). This is especially useful if you are managing multiple shared calendars. For example, if you create a WebEx meeting in the CEO Calendar, the Zimlet will automatically uses CEO WebEx account information.

Full support for recurring meetings.

The WebEx Zimlet supports all of the WebEx recurring types and end-by patterns. Therefore, you can create virtually any kind of recurring meetings in Zimbra and the WebEx Zimlet creates an exact replica on WebEx.

Automatic time-zone configuration.

The WebEx Zimlet maps the 82 supported Zimbra time zones to the WebEx 61 time zones. This allows users to select a time zone and leave the setup of the WebEx meeting to the Zimlet.

Add meeting and tele-conference information to Subject/Location fields.

Lot of times its useful to just put the WebEx meeting and conference information in the location field itself. The WebEx Zimlet has a preference to select what you want to be appended and Zimlet automatically inserts the information.

As you can see, the WebEx Zimlet provides an awesome integration between Zimbra and WebEx. And will greatly simply your day-to-day online meetings.

Note: due to a technical difficulties, we apologize for the many updates and Tweets to this blog post.

Have you ever found yourself scrambling to find a WebEx meeting invite minutes before the meeting is set to begin? Or if you are scheduling a meeting, you have to switch between WebEx and your calendar to create the meeting and calendar invite.

Well, those days are gone with the new WebEx Zimlet. The WebEx Zimlet now brings the power of WebEx right into your Zimbra calendar. The WebEx Zimlet is available at the Zimbra Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/webex and checkout this video to see the WebEx Zimlet in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m_vne1cgvk

Create WebEx meeting just like you would create a regular meeting.

Typically you would switch between Zimbra and WebEx to create a meeting. With the WebEx Zimlet, when creating your appointment in Zimbra, simply press the “Save as WebEx” button to create a WebEx meeting.  The Zimlet will automatically select the configured WebEx account to be use (see below for information on multiple WebEx account setup), creates a WebEx meeting, inserts all the WebEx details (WebEx url, phone, passcode, etc) into the appointment body and saves the meeting.

Create a Quick meeting.

Allows users to quickly invite people and create a WebEx meeting.

Start or Join an existing meeting.

You do not have to scramble to find that WebEx invite or goto the WebEx site to find a meeting. You can view a list of meetings on your Webex Calendar and Start (as host) or Join (as attendee).

Manage multiple WebEx accounts.

You can store up to 5 WebEx accounts (and related conference calling information). This is especially useful if you are managing multiple shared calendars. For example, if you create a WebEx meeting in the CEO Calendar the Zimlet will automatically uses CEO WebEx account information.

Full support for recurring meetings.

The WebEx Zimlet supports all of the WebEx recurring types and end-by patterns. Therefore, you can create virtually any kind of recurring meetings in Zimbra and the WebEx Zimlet creates an exact replica on WebEx.

Automatic time-zone configuration.

The WebEx Zimlet maps the 82 supported Zimbra time zones to the WebEx 61 time zones. This allows users to select a time zone and leave the setup of the WebEx meeting to the Zimlet.

Add meeting and tele-conference information to Subject/Location fields.

Often it is useful to put the WebEx meeting and conference information in the location field itself. The WebEx Zimlet has a preference to select what you want to be appended and Zimlet automatically inserts the information.

The WebEx Zimlet is available for download at the Zimbra Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/webex

As you can see, the WebEx Zimlet provides an awesome integration between Zimbra and WebEx. And will greatly simply your day-to-day online meeting usage.

Have you ever found yourself scrambling to find a WebEx meeting invite minutes before the meeting is set to begin? Or if you are scheduling a meeting, you have to switch between WebEx and your calendar to create the meeting and calendar invite.

Well, those days are gone with the new WebEx Zimlet. The WebEx Zimlet now brings the power of WebEx right into your Zimbra calendar.
Using the WebEx Zimlet, you can:

Watch YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m_vne1cgvk

Create WebEx meeting just like you would create a regular meeting.

Typically you would switch between Zimbra and WebEx to create a meeting. With the WebEx Zimlet, when creating your appointment in Zimbra, simply press the “Save as WebEx” button to create a WebEx meeting. The Zimlet will automatically select the configured WebEx account to be use (see below for information on multiple WebEx account setup), creates a WebEx meeting, inserts all the WebEx details (WebEx url, phone, passcode, etc) into the appointment body and saves the meeting.

Create a Quick meeting.

Allows users to quickly invite people and create a WebEx meeting.

Start or Join an existing meeting.

You do not have to scramble to find that WebEx invite or goto the WebEx site to find a meeting. You can view a list of meetings on your Webex Calendar and Start (as host) or Join (as attendee).

Manage multiple WebEx accounts.

You can store up to 5 WebEx accounts (and related conference calling information). This is especially useful if you are managing multiple shared calendars. For example, if you create a WebEx meeting in the CEO Calendar the Zimlet will automatically uses CEO WebEx account information.

Full support for recurring meetings.

The WebEx Zimlet supports all of the WebEx recurring types and end-by patterns. Therefore, you can create virtually any kind of recurring meetings in Zimbra and the WebEx Zimlet creates an exact replica on WebEx.

Automatic time-zone configuration.

The WebEx Zimlet maps the 82 supported Zimbra time zones to the WebEx 61 time zones. This allows users to select a time zone and leave the setup of the WebEx meeting to the Zimlet.

Add meeting and tele-conference information to Subject/Location fields.

Lot of times its useful to just put the WebEx meeting and conference information in the location field itself. The WebEx Zimlet has a preference to select what you want to be appended and Zimlet automatically inserts the information.

The WebEx Zimlet is available at the Zimbra Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/webex

As you can see, the WebEx Zimlet provides an awesome integration between Zimbra and WebEx. And will greatly simply your day-to-day online meeting usage.

A common integration question we hear is how to handle “sign-on” between an external enterprise application and Zimbra? This scenario is when a user has signed-on to an enterprise application (for example, a Customer Relationship Management system) and that application needs to access data stored in the user mailbox hosted on a Zimbra server. To transition from the enterprise application to Zimbra, you could prompt the user to re-enter a username/password but that is not a very seamless experience. To automatically “sign-on” the user as they move between systems requires a trusted third party to “vouch for” or “assert” the user identity.

Zimbra includes a proprietary protocol for achieving this assertion, which is referred to as “Preauth“.  Preauth works by having a key that is shared between a third party application/system and Zimbra. The third party specifies the userid, a timestamp, optionally an expiration time, and an SHA-1 HMAC value computed over that data using the shared key. The Zimbra server, after successfully validating the HMAC value received in the request, redirects the user to the target Zimbra service.

There is also an alternative: SAML. SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) can be thought of as a standard way of achieving what Zimbra Preauth protocol does.

SAML is a standard that defines an XML-based framework for exchange of security information between various business services (see http://saml.xml.org/saml-technical-overview). It is a widely adopted standard for Single Sign-On (SSO) and Federated Identity use cases. So one can envision that in scenarios such as above, a SAML assertion could be issued for the user by a central/trusted Identity Management System within the enterprise, and that assertion could be used to allow access to Zimbra. A SAML assertion typically contains security information about a subject/principal and could, for example, convey information like “This user is John Doe, he has an email address of john.doe@example.com, he was authenticated into this system using a password mechanism, at this time and date, etc”.

Example Zimbra SAML Interactions

SAML interactions/exchanges take place between entities referred to as the SAML asserting party and the SAML relying party. An asserting party is an entity that creates/issues SAML assertions. It is also sometimes called a SAML authority. A relying party is an entity that uses assertions it has received.

The picture below illustrates a setup where a user accesses a Zimbra service using a SAML assertion without any Zimbra-proprietary authentication token/cookie or Preauth. In this configuration, the Zimbra server acts as the SAML relying party.

Here’s a brief description of the interactions happening in this setup:

1. User authenticates and requests a SAML assertion from the SAML authority. [Note: This step happens outside Zimbra]
2. The SAML authority makes sure that the user has been authenticated (by some means) and then issues a SAML assertion for the user. [Note: This step happens outside Zimbra]
3. The user’s client sends a SOAP request containing an assertion identifier to the Zimbra server: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap='http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope'> <soap:Header> <context xmlns='urn:zimbra'> <authToken type='SAML_AUTH_PROVIDER'>b07b804c-7c29-ea16-7300-4f3d6f7928ac</authToken> </context> </soap:Header> <soap:Body> <SomeRequest xmlns='urn:zimbraMail'>…</SomeRequest> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>

   [Note: The client could have alternatively sent the SAML assertion itself inside the request. Also, we are designating the auth token type as SAML_AUTH_PROVIDER, which is a custom authentication provider you must create for your environment. Later in this blog, we describe how to use Zimbra Server Extensions to implement a custom SAML Auth Provider.]

4. Zimbra server calls the SAML Authority and inquires about the assertion by passing the identifier: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"> <soap:Body> <samlp:AssertionIDRequest ID="id-1268148042731" Version="2.0" ... > <samlp:AssertionIDRef>b07b804c-7c29-ea16-7300-4f3d6f7928ac</samlp:AssertionIDRef> </samlp:AssertionIDRequest> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>
5. The SAML Authority trusts the Zimbra server (relying party) and looks up its store of issued assertions and responds with the assertion: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"> <soap:Body> <samlp:Response ID="id-1268148042741" ... > <samlp:Status> <samlp:StatusCode Value="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:status:Success"/> </samlp:Status> <saml:Assertion ID="b07b804c-7c29-ea16-7300-4f3d6f7928ac" ... > <saml:Issuer>http://samlAuthority</saml:Issuer> <saml:Subject> <saml:NameID>user1@domain.com</saml:NameID> <saml:SubjectConfirmation Method="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:cm:sender-vouches"/> </saml:Subject> <saml:Conditions NotBefore="2010-03-09T09:22:05Z" NotOnOrAfter="2020-12-05T09:27:05Z"> <saml:AudienceRestriction> <saml:Audience>http://zimbra</saml:Audience> </saml:AudienceRestriction> </saml:Conditions> <saml:AuthnStatement AuthnInstant="2010-03-09T09:22:00Z"> <saml:AuthnContext> <saml:AuthnContextClassRef>...SAML:2.0:ac:classes:Password</saml:AuthnContextClassRef> </saml:AuthnContext> </saml:AuthnStatement> </saml:Assertion> </samlp:Response> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>
6. Based on its trust on the SAML authority, the Zimbra server validates the SAML assertion and sends back a response to the client: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"> <soap:Header>…</soap:Header> <soap:Body> <SomeResponse xmlns="urn:zimbraMail">…</SomeResponse> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>

Note: The sample messages shown above are very simplistic. In the real world, the message exchanges, especially those between the relying party and the SAML authority, are secured using TLS and/or message-level security mechanisms.

Implementing the SAML Auth Provider

The Zimbra server provides various extension points to allow extending the Zimbra server functionality (see Extending Zimbra with Server Extensions). One such extension point is the com.zimbra.cs.service.AuthProvider abstract class and an abstract sub-class the ZimbraAuthProvider. These classes know how to process/validate the Zimbra proprietary authentication tokens (or cookies).

To support SAML assertions (or tokens) within Zimbra, you can write a SamlAuthProvider class that extends AuthProvider:

public class SamlAuthProvider extends AuthProvider { protected SamlAuthProvider() { super("SAML_AUTH_PROVIDER"); } protected AuthToken authToken(Element soapCtxt, Map engineCtxt) throws AuthProviderException, AuthTokenException { // Extract SAML assertion identifier from soap context // Call SAML authority and request for the SAML assertion corresponding to the identifier // Validate and return the SAML assertion (token) } ... }

The SamlAuthProvider can be registered with the Zimbra server by doing the following inside the ZimbraExtension.init() method:

AuthProvider.register(new SamlAuthProvider()); AuthProvider.refresh();

Additionally, the  “zimbra_auth_provider” localconfig property needs to be modified (using the Zimbra Command Line Interface) to add your custom saml auth provider to the list of registered “zimbra auth providers”:

zmlocalconfig -e zimbra_auth_provider=SAML_AUTH_PROVIDER,Zimbra

As you can see, this is a powerful mechanism for extending Zimbra to support SAML and create a seamless Single-Sign-On experience. Although the AuthProvider class is not officially supported yet in a production environment yet, it is fine to use it in a proof of concept or an experimental project.

As you may have noticed, we have just posted the recording of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6-to-7 and VMware Overview webinar. This was hugely popular — hundreds of customers, partners and community members attended — because it covered three critical areas of Zimbra’s future:

• What’s in ZCS 6.0 (powerful new admin features, Enterprise support and usability improvements) as well as near-term additions (such as support for Android, BES 5.0, BES Express, and Outlook 2010).
• The roadmap of ZCS 7.0 and beyond: a fascinating discussion of calendar wizards, powerful distribution lists, workspaces, and IM changes.
• The future with VMware: how Zimbra fits within the VMware stack and the value it brings to the Zimbra environment (notably an appliance, vSphere integration for DR, HA and site recovery).

 
We also received many excellent questions – too many to answer during the live session, so we’ll cover the remaining here:

Q: Zimlets, IMHO, should allow push as well as pull; akin to what IM does at the moment.  Realtime phone apps require that capability to allow popups in a client session.
A: Real-time push and pull updates are fully supported in the ZWC, Zimlet should be able to do the same.

Q: Is the IM server connection change slated for the Network or Open Source Edition?
A: External XMPP proxy/interop it is scheduled for both.

Q: Do you have public calendars for appointments or a conference room? And only certain people can reserve timeframe and all others can view?
A: The use case here is akin to a “board room” where only certain people have rights to book the room, but everyone can view the availability of that room. The answer is yes: you can create a public calendar for the conference room as a resource, and then permit only specific users to reserve that resource.

Q: Better quarantining of emails, AS/AV stats. and per user prefs. akin to MailScanner and MailWatch
A: Zimbra team is expanding its anti-spamming and anti-virus functionality. Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, you may want to consider using some postfix capable methods.

Q: Any word on per-user read state on messages?
A: The use case here is when multiple users have access to a single account, one user clicking on a message will mark it as read for all other future users. The feature enhancement (individual user state on shared messages) takes significant effort, has not been committed yet, but is discussed thoroughly in bugzilla. If this is a feature you feel is crucial, please vote for it or mention so in a support case.

Q: Would email tracking likely to be a feature that will be added back in; since zmmsgtrace was pulled?
A: There is a enhancement request for a tracing replacement, but have not yet released a schedule; stay tuned for more details. If you feel this is a key feature, please comment on its implementation in bugzilla.

Q: Which of the features are targeted @ the FOSS or the Network Edition?
A: We generally don’t make final decisions until we approach the release date. Check pm.zimbra.com for specific feature release information, and vote for the features you see as most valuable.

Q: Will Zimbra DR allow realtime replication and from a multi-tenant experience allow geo connection to the most appropriate server ?
A: We are going to leverag all of the High Availability and Data Recovery options that are provided by vSphere (and partners). We’re also looking at additional capabilities beyond that using direct server sync – stay tuned.

Q: VMware recommends single processor vms for best performance. Looking forward to easier multi-component zimbra installation or guide.
A: The VMware team suggests using the fewest number of virtual cpus required to satisfy the workload. If you need four, you should use four. See the new Zimbra on vSphere Recommendations wiki article for more information.

Q: Will VMware Update Manager take care of the updates?
A: Look for future announcements – perhaps for a release sometime in 2011.

Q: With respect to the appliance, would one be allowed to tune SA and CLAMAV?
A: By design, there is no CLI or shell in the Zimbra Appliance. It’s built for simplicity of management, so all configuration and administration will be done through a new web-based streamlined UI; likewise if something is not in our current admin console it’s probably not built into the appliance yet either.

Q: Could you expand on the AD / External Auth changes that you will be making? In connection with that, will you be able to deploy Zimbra and have it automatically keep in sync with users in Active Directory?
A: For the appliance, there will be a one time bulk import.
Here are the RFE’s: 44835 | 45223 | 45174 Please vote for the features that are important to you.
For ZCS, we are not making any AD/ External Auth changes. Zmexternaldirsync does this today.

Q: Any plans to improve the management console for zimbra network edition, i.e. Monitoring and Status tools? I would like to see the kind of admin tools you’d find with mdaemon or other similar apps. Right now it’s slow and doesn’t provide much visual feedback.
A: We’re working with Hyperic for additional monitoring and reporting capabilities. We have not released a schedule yet, more details soon.

Q: Are there firm time lines on 32 bit phaseout?
A: The end of 7.0 will be the last time 32-bit is supported, and the dates are not yet finalized. Therefore, it will be quite some time before 32-bit is depreciated. We recommend that you move to 64-bit if you are new to Zimbra or planning an upgrade. See the phase out FAQ for more details.

Q: Will migration from physical 32 bit system to Appliance be built in to appliance? or have migration tool to perform this?
A: The zimbra-to-zimbra migration tool is completely independent of the hardware. You should be able to migrate from a 32-bit machine to the appliance without a problem.

Q: There has been a lot of contention on the forums about the priority of particular rfe’s/bugs; now with greater resources would Zimbra look at a different type of voting mechanism?
A: If you are having trouble with the current methods or a hitting ’show-stopper’ issue please contact the community mangers to help you. (As always, customers also have the option of directing inquires through support to raise their urgency.) Having said this, we’re always open to new ideas for the community process. If you prefer a specific voting mechanism, we’d like to hear about it – and the 7.0 detailed roadmap will be open soon.

Q: Scaling on VMWare… it’s going to be 2011 before we’ll be able to run mailbox servers on VM with thousands of accounts per mailbox?
A: Zimbra already supports thousands of mailboxes in a virtualized environment. The Zimbra Appliance, which will require little-to-no configuration or administration — a “cloud in a box” — is slated for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Q: What about official CentOS support?
A: Since one cannot get support at the operating system provider level, our technical staff can’t 100% support it. Having said that, it should perform similarly to RHEL.

Q: Is HSM going to change?
A: The Hierarchical Storage Management in the Network Edition doesn’t have any major changes targeted till 8.0 server. (We did add the ability to offload other items besides messages in 6.0 with a search type query.) There are no plans on adding HSM to the Open Source Edition.

Q: Are there plans to allow installation on big iron like HP IA64 ? (RX range)
A: Not yet, as there does not appear to be a business case to build and test on big iron. You can file this as a feature enhancement and ask others to vote for it.

Q: How do I find new zimlets?
A: We have a renewed Zimlet plugins site with more than 80 contributions. Look for future additions such as a revamp social & IM zimlets, additional salesforce integration, webex changes, smart scheduler and many others: gallery.zimbra.com

Q: ZCS web question: Being able to separate windows from Zimbra is nice for emails. How about having that for all of the other apps (contacts, calendar etc)?
A: Yes, this is something we are working on. An example is tabbed calendaring, which is slated for version 7.

Q: Will there be tool to bulk loading documents into Briefcase, especially if supporting collaborating workgroups?
A: Yes, there will be a migration tool. And at some point in the future, we’ll have multi-file import in the web-client. If you are looking for convenient file sync today, so far we’ve built-in webDAV support.

Q: Looking forward to whitepapers and wiki for vmware/zimbra. Encourage?. mailto is also a problem for us.
A: Whitepapers and wikis are soon to come. Were looking into EWS for Entourage. The Zimbra Desktop does work with mailto links. It is defaulted off (to change it, go to the preferences and select zimbra desktop as the default mailto handler).

Q: Can you mention the URL for the new dev Wiki?
A: A good place to start wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/ZCS_6.0:Zimlet_Developers_Guide:Introduction

Links: Video of the above webinar. You can also browse a list of existing or sign-up for upcoming webinars here.

With over 55 million commercial Zimbra mailboxes deployed worldwide, and millions more on open source, there are many users reaping the benefits of our next-generation collaboration experience. Many factors contributed to our rapid adoption — such as integrated conversation views, tagging, sharing, powerful search, and mobility — but one of the most important is the ability to customize and extend Zimbra.

To promote extensibility, the Zimbra platform exposes powerful Theme, Data and Zimlet APIs. With these APIs, you can customize everything from branding and interface styles…to integrating external applications & services…to implementing new features. And with a vibrant Community continually using these technologies to enhance Zimbra, the customization you are looking for might already be available.

To that end, we have been busy at work leveraging new resources from our friends at VMware and are pleased to announce the new Zimbra Gallery as the destination for sharing Zimbra product extensions.

The new Gallery includes improved navigation and search capabilities so it is easier than ever to find extensions for Zimbra. The Gallery supports ratings and reviews so Community members can share their feedback and experiences. It is also much easier to share extensions, update status and highlight your work with improved extension “landing pages.”

Checkout the new Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com

The Gallery includes new Zimlets & Themes as well as some updated favorites such as Appointment Summary, Birthday Reminder, Email Attachment Alert, Email Downloader and Email Quotes.

Please visit the Gallery, download extensions, provide feedback and contribute. We look forward to seeing the library of available extensions in the Zimbra Gallery expand in the weeks and months to come. Enjoy!

Recently we updated our listing on VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace with a trial version of ZCS Network Edition 6.0.6. We packaged it up in two formats – traditional VMX/VMDK and the Open Virtualization Format, OVF for short, using VMware Studio. The traditional VMX/VMDK package can be use with VMware’s desktop products like Workstation for Linux/Windows and Fusion for MAC. You can also go grab VMware Player for FREE and test drive the ZCS trial on either Linux or Windows. The OVF package can be used “out-of-the-box” with VMware vSphere or imported to other VMware desktop and server products using the standalone OVF Tool 1.0 or vCenter Converter.

The OVF 1.0 format is a platform independent, DMTF standard that streamlines the application setup process in a virtual environment.  This makes deploying the ZCS trial fast and simple to testdrive the latest features.

• You can deploy the ZCS trial OVF package right from a URL directly to VMware vSphere using the “Deploy OVF Template” wizard in the vSphere Client or the OVF Tool 1.0.
• The vSphere Client reads the OVF template and auto-configures certain virtual machine settings as well as guides you through mapping the network and storage configurations into your target runtime environment.
• You will also be prompted to answer runtime specific installation parameters like the ZCS server’s hostname and the admin username/password.

All of the captured input is used on “first boot” to automatically configure the ZCS trial as a unique running instance complete with an activated 15 day trial license! This is a good example of the collaboration that’s been happening between the Zimbra and vSphere teams and a sign of good things to come as we are busy building our Zimbra virtual appliance.

The Zimbra virtual appliance will be ready to ship later this year and will feature a

• Simplified Admin experience
• Expanded usage of OVF properties to further streamline the deployment process
• New capabilities to simplify patch management, mailbox creation, and migration

For more information, you can check out the appliance RFEs in bugzilla.

In today’s climate IT departments are under a lot of pressure to cut costs yet maintain services that don’t compromise on features.  So it’s no surprise we hear more and more the questions, “How does Zimbra total cost-of-ownership (TCO) compare with Microsoft Exchange?”   In fact, it recently hit #3 on our popularity chart as organizations contemplate Exchange upgrades again (we’ll save the top two questions for another day).

Public field data typically shows Zimbra Collaboration Suite ahead of MS Exchange Server when licensing and hardware costs are compared for various on-premises deployments.   However, while licensing and hardware cost data is readily available, perhaps the most significant recurring cost components in the equation are less well documented — additional time spent administering servers and software and the high cost of support contracts.

This cost differential often gets hazy because most organizations do not closely log time spent on specific tasks, including software administration or escalated user support issues.  Instead, in most circles you simply hear something analogous to “my Exchange servers are really cranky.”   But how much valuable productivity are you actually losing?

It turns out at EDUCAUSE when we caught up with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) they shared some great field data with us on this very topic from their own TCO case study.

Exchange Zimbra Users 3,100 13,700 FTEs 3.2 2.2 User/FTE 969 6,227 Per User Cost $7.5 $3 Above: Penn admin resource distribution and resulting monthly per-user costs charged back to departments

According to Adam Preset,  an IT Technical Director in Information Systems & Computing (Penn’s central IT organization), Penn’s IT Services added Zimbra 18 months ago to provide departments across the campus a Web 2.0 option in addition to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange 2007 (Zimbra can share Active Directory, resources and free-busy times with Exchange).  Today their split-mode deployment consists of 3,100 Exchange users and 13,700 Zimbra users (each with grad students, faculty and employees) running equivalent feature sets (email, calendaring, sharing, mobile, etc).

Split-mode deployments are not uncommon (see Argonne National Labs), but in the case of Penn, the central IT staff’s administration time is closely logged on each system because they charge back time for service rendered to the other departments.   Combined with a single team managing both systems simultaneously in split-mode and you have a natural control for cost data.

Adam says they have found Zimbra takes significantly fewer man-hours to administer.  In absolute terms Exchange servers take 33% more effort and require one extra full-time headcount per year — even with 4.4 times more users on the Zimbra servers.

Here is a video where Adam discusses their deployment, cost methodology and why more users chose Zimbra over Exchange on campus:

Adam later noted, “to bring the Exchange user base up to Zimbra’s scale and provide the expected level of support we’d need to hire new administrators – probably two or more FTEs, which isn’t practical.”

He also added that common culprits impacting costs in the Microsoft deployment are Outlook client and PST data issues, more support needs on the desktop due to lack of adoption of Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange data restores and more frequent server downtime. Whereas advantages for Zimbra are easier overall server administration and fewer help desk incidents because so many users say they prefer the Zimbra AJAX Web Client over traditional desktop clients.

So what’s the key take-away?  Though every organization has different cost sensitivity; data points like this serve as gentle reminders not to forget the whole picture. While a license discount or storage price drop can be helpful for initial TCO calculation, the human capital component is key to understanding real long-term value!

Adam Preset spoke at EDUCAUSE Annual with Pam Buffington of Georgia Tech on “Implementing a Cost-Effective and User-Friendly E-Mail, Calendaring, and Collaboration System.”

Zimlets and the ability to extend the Zimbra Web Client is a pretty widely known capability. But did you know that Zimbra also has a framework that allows developers to extend Zimbra server-side functionality?

Zimbra Server Extensions provide a mechanism to add functionality to the server in lieu of modifying web.xml and other web server configuration files. By implementing a Server Extension, you can inject or in some cases, intercept, server-side functionality. Some examples include:

• Handling authentication requests against a user store different than the built-in Zimbra LDAP user store. Server Extensions provide a way to “plug-in” your custom authentication mechanism.
• Creating custom SOAP requests to augment the current Zimbra SOAP API.
• Registering custom mime handlers for the processing of message mime components (i.e. body, message and multipart nodes).
• Performing registration or “bootstrapping” of server-side components, such as the Microsoft Exchange Free/Busy resolver.

Getting Started

Writing an extension starts by implementing the com.zimbra.cs.extension.ZimbraExtension interface:

public interface ZimbraExtension { /** * Defines a name for the extension. It must be an identifier. * @return the extension name */ public String getName(); /** * Initializes the extension. Called when the extension is loaded. * * @throws ServiceException */ public void init() throws ServiceException; /** * Terminates the extension. Called when the server is shut down. * */ public void destroy(); }

To create your Extension:

1. Write a MyZimbraExtension class that implements the ZimbraExtension interface.
2. Create a JAR file (for example: myext.jar) and include the following attribute in the JAR manifest file:
   • Zimbra-Extension-Class: com.example.MyZimbraExtension
3. Place the myext.jar into the {zimbra_install-dir}/lib/ext/{my-ext-dir} directory.

Below are a few examples, though not an exhaustive list, of how the Server Extension framework can be used:

Custom HTTP Handlers

A Server Extension can process HTTP GET/POST/OPTIONS requests by extending the com.zimbra.cs.extension.ExtensionHttpHandler abstract class and registering the subclass in the Extension init() method.

public class MyHttpHandler implements ExtensionHttpHandler { // the path under which MyHandler is registered public String getPath() { return "/myext/myhandler"; } // override doGet/doPost/ doOptions as needed ... }

and in MyZimbraExtension.init(), do the following:

com.zimbra.cs.extension.ExtensionDispatcherServlet.register(this, new MyHttpHandler());

This would result in processing of requests at http://{my-zimbra-server-url}/service/extension/myext/myhandler being delegated to the MyHttpHandler class.

Custom SOAP Requests

If an Extension needs to support extra SOAP requests, it can do so by implementing the com.zimbra.soap.DocumentService interface and registering custom SOAP requests & operations handlers from it.

public class MyDocumentService implements DocumentService { /** * Registers <code>DocumentHandler<code> instance with document dispatcher. */ public void registerHandlers(DocumentDispatcher dispatcher) { dispatcher.registerHandler(HelloWorldOp.REQUEST_QNAME, new HelloWorldOp()); } }

and in MyZimbraExtension.init(), do the following:

com.zimbra.soap.SoapServlet.addService("SoapServlet", new MyDocumentService());

Custom Authentication

If your Zimbra deployment needs to authenticate user passwords from, for example, a “home grown” authentication system and not from LDAP (which is the out-of-the-box Zimbra solution), the Extension can do so by extending the com.zimbra.cs.account.auth.ZimbraCustomAuth abstract class.  The subclass would have to implement an authenticate() method to which the plain-text password is passed as one of the arguments.

Learn More

A detailed implementation document is available at ZimbraServer/docs/extensions.txt. Now that we’ve introduced the topic, stay tuned for more information on specific Server Extension implementation examples.