aevans's blog

So, it looks like we are all headed to San Diego at the end of the month to attend GWAVACon.  I think we have quite an entourage planning to attend.  I am certainly going, as is Dean but also Phil and Daniel who are the 2 T+C product managers as well as a lot of other Novell management and techies.  We will, of course, be showing what's coming in GroupWise Bonsai as well as doing many Teaming+Conferencing sessions.  This will be my first GWAVACon so I am intruiged to see how it all works, and it is certainly good practice for Brainshare, which is only 10 weeks away.

Talking of Bonsai the beta is doing great.  We are having a lot of participation and we have a queue forming in case any of the other sites drop off.  Our beta manager, who is new to the GroupWise beta program but a seasoned veteran with other products was amazed at just how much interest and how many requests there are from customers desperate to be on the program. I spend a good portion of my days at the moment saying 'no' to customers wanting to join, which is a nice problem to have really.  I wish we could accommodate everyone but it simply becomes too hard and time consuming to manage effectively.

A few weeks ago Erno de Korte handed me a copy of the GroupWise Powerguide. It has been put together by members of the GroupWiseR initiative and I have to say that it's a pretty handy book. As a 9 year user of GroupWise even I have learnt (yes, that is a word) things from it. It has sections for GroupWise 6.5 and 7.0 and they will be releasing a Bonsai version too, as well as translating into multiple languages. All in all it's a handy guide for both the GroupWise beginner wanting to learn more, or the GroupWise poweruser looking for those extra tricks.

I forget to mention that we released GroupWise Mobile Server, powered by Nokia Intellisync for Linux into public beta.  It offers all of the same functionality as the Windows version, except there is now no need to roll out a windows server.  Give it a try if you can and let us know of any problems you find.  The best way to report issues with the beta is to post on the GroupWise forums.

In other news, we also entered authorized beta for GroupWise Bonsai, which means that my Post Office will also be updated soon and I can't wait.  The authorized beta sites have all been identified and the program is full sorry - if you come to any tech fairs you can have a look at it though - I think that GWAVACon is going to be the next one, in January.  My new found favourite feature, besides the web panels, is the quicksearch in the address book.  It seems like I can search almost field and it will find partial matches too.  It helps if, like me, you can't remember names for love nor money.

I am headed off to Germany this weekend for work. I'll be spending a few days in the Frankfurt area, followed by a few days in and around Rotterdam, before heading down to Brugge for the GroupWiseR summit. There are a few seats left and we are really pushing for a full house. So if you think that you want to learn about GroupWise, Teaming+Conferencing, GroupWise Mobility and other partner offerings then make sure you sign up now. This is not a Novell sponsored event, it's organized by our most fanatical fans - in fact I wish I could clone Erno for the US and AsiaPac markets.

You'll also get to see me which, though not that interesting in and of itself, it means you get to bend the ear of the GroupWise Product Manager.  Tim Draper, who is a lead developer on our SOAP interface, will also be in attendance, so if you have designs on creating your own custom SOAP application this is the perfect opportunity to get a head start.

Since becoming the GroupWise Product Manager I have spent some time investigating the integration of GroupWise with various CRM systems.  A couple of weeks ago Omni-TS announced SugarCRM integrations - SugarCRM is a very popular open source CRM system.  It seems to be a very complete solution that does some smart things without your users needing to either install anything, or even think about the CRM system - a lot of the data is sucked over automatically.  The question is which one should be next?  There is a survey on coolsolutions that we would love all of you with a CRM need to fill in - this will help Novell and Omni to target where to go next.

At the beginning of December I will be travelling to the beautiful city of Bruges in Belgium to take part in the GroupWiseR Summit. GroupWiseR is a initiative that was started by a bunch of enthusiastic GroupWise consultants across Europe, including Erno de Korte from the Netherlands. I currently count 25 hands on sessions that you can attend, delivered by 25 speakers from Novell and partners:

Cobus Burgers - GroupWise Bonsai - Collaboration Redefined
Tim Heywood & David Baldry - Making Teaming + Conferencing Workflow work
Diethmar Rimser & Arnaud Delin - Getting Things Done - How to Enable your GroupWise Power Users
Tim Draper & Tommy Mikkelsen - Advanced Workshop on GroupWise Web Services (SOAP/XML)
Sander van Vugt & Patrick Frontéri - Clustering GroupWise on pure Linux
Jan-Arie Snijders - Advanced Troubleshooting with Novell Support
Diethmar Rimser - Diving deep into Outlook - Can it get any better?
Denis de Wit & Peter Reck - M+Archive in Real Live - Building a Customer Case
Matt Hillier & Ancel Schouwink - Expand Your Vision! GroupLink’s everything HelpDesk not just for I.T.
Uli Neumann & Uwe Krause - Your World at your Fingertips - Redline 3
Stéphane Zanoni & Aldo Zanoni - How Omni Can Really Make Your GroupWise Rock
Mark Pletsch & Tariq Tahir - Beyond BlackBerry Enterprise Server Quick Start Edition
Václav *am*a - Advanced Usage of eDirectory with GroupWise
Tim Draper & Tommy Mikkelsen - Understanding GroupWise Web Services (SOAP/XML Protocol)
Tim Heywood & David Baldry - Keeping Novell Teaming + Conferencing in Good Shape
Cobus Burgers & Johan van Zyl - Connect Novell Teaming to GroupWise DMS using SOAP
Denis de Wit - M+Guardian - Troublefree SPAM + AV protection
Uwe Krause & Uli Neumann - From Now to Eternity - GroupWise Archiving and Compliance with Retain
Svetlin Petrov & Tim Heywood - Installing & deploying Novell Teaming + Conferencing
Danita Zanrè & Stéphane Bullou - GroupWise Mobile Server on Linux - Way to Go!
Danita Zanrè & Patrick Frontéri - Upgrading to GroupWise Bonsai
Paul van der Cruyssen - Freeware Tools for the GroupWise Administrator
Svetlin Petrov - Deploying GroupWise Bonsai on Linux
Paul van der Cruyssen - GroupWise Backup & Restore - Quick & Easy?
Suresh Seth - Make GroupWise Mobile Server shine with Nokia Modules

If you have not been to one of these before it is well worth the trip - it is a small event, 75 attendees and 25 speakers, which means that you get a lot of one-on-one time with the experts. And of course, it is in Bruges, which is about my favourite city in the world. Like Venice only less smelly.