Blog Entry
During BrainShare this year in Salt Lake City, customers expressed excitement about the new features that were demonstrated in the Keynote, Solutions Lab, and break out sessions. However, we also heard from several people a standard complaint - Does engineering EVER implement those enhancement requests that we have been asking about for years?
I am here to declare - YES. We listen, we implement and we will deliver!! This list is not completely exhaustive, but pretty closely represents the many features, enhancements and usability improvements that our customers have requested. These are not the Headline features or even the ones that get the most attention, but they will help make Bonsai irresistible to avoid.
Here is the list - in no particular order.....
- Personalization – in addition to ‘my subject’, add notes, attachments to received messages
- Sort by due date in the tasklist (Sort by any field)
- Rule trigger on marking an item complete
- Click on ‘forward/reply’ indicators to see entire thread of messages
- Threaded View on any message
- Items with Attachments filter
- Sort ‘Find’ results by Folder
- Invite more people to an existing appointment – modify distribution list
- Spell Check ONLY the sender’s text
- Print Checklist/Message List
- Find Contacts capability from main mailbox – ButtonBar access
- Email Home Folder configuration
- Frequent Contact Book settings in ConsoleOne
- Color options on internet style replies
- Separate Reply and Reply All Buttons – no intermediate dialog
- Select Text and Reply
- Folder List visibility override for each folder
- Categories – Text and background color control
- Easier access to setting Categories on an item
- Easier to find other items with same category
- Mailbox size limits greater than 4 GIG
- Lock clean-up options from ConsoleOne all the way to caching mode
- Auto-accept your own appointments
- Favorites Folder
- Collapsed recurring appointments in mailbox
- Native RSS reader in the Windows client
- Accepting of appointments directly into a sub calendar. When accepting an appointment, you have the option of immediately accepting it into a sub-calender. (Versus now where you accept it and subsequently drag it into another calendar)
- Ability to send an email without anyone in the “To” field, CC or BC only recipients
- For a contact with multiple email address…When adding that contact to a group, you can specify which address to use with that group.
- Improved attachment handling…If you edit an attachment, the edited version is saved in a user defined directory and upon reply, original and edited documents are available as options to attach in replied email
- Drag and Drop Contact pictures right into the Contact Properties dialog
- Close Folder List – drag and drop triggers the appearance for dropping emails into other folders
- Use native applications to view attachments like Adobe, Office, Open Office, QuickTime, Flash and Auto Vue
- Message Preview mode
- Access to multiple email addresses during Name Completion
- Teaming + Conferencing Integrations
o Workspaces displayed in Folder List
o View ‘workspace’ available while name completing
o Teaming Calendars available as one of your multiple Calendars
o Personal Workspace field in Contact Properties
- Journaling through Contact Notes displayed in Calendar
- Export Contacts to CSV format
- Birthdays and Anniversaries for a Contact display in the Calendar
- Notify – preview sound files for notifications
- Contact Picture displayed as part of Name Completion
- Update address from company information for a Contact
- Copy Contact to clipboard
- Auto Save while composing emails
- Use Word/Open Office as your email editor
- UI to support Short vs Long distribution lists on printing of emails
- Better handling of encrypted/signed email – fewer dialogs, more usable
- Ability to reply/forward from Trash
Of course, I know I am going to hear about several more that we missed or did not get to, but I wanted to 'prove' that we listen and that we are making significant progress to make our users productive and our products usable.
Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).
It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.
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User Comments
very cool ...
Submitted by pvanlone on 9 April 2008 - 12:27pm.
is "proper threading" of discussions a forgotten feature?
:-)
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Proper threading????
Submitted by dlythgoe on 9 April 2008 - 4:38pm.
I must be confused :) BUT.... We have done several things with threading - even some of the "improper" things that competing products do....
1. You have, for over 10 years, had the ability to display any folder - including the mailbox - as a discussion thread.
2. We introduced in 7.0.x (not sure which one -probably 7.0.1) support for MIME "References"
3. In Bonsai - we finally did the improper thing - combine 'References' with 'subject' threading.
So - with any message you can open a 'thread' window and see all of the messages that match the 'Reference' MIME tag OR the 'subject' - NO matter what folder they are in... This is one of my favorite features. This 'thread' window is also available by simply double-clicking on the 'reply/forward' indicators. One of the features in the list from the blog.
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I'd like to add some others
Submitted by jsessler on 9 April 2008 - 10:46pm.
I'd like to add some others that would be great to have...
1) Display mailbox size, manage, without having to enable mailbox restrictions
2) For all my users that have ever opened a word, excel, etc. document from within GW, only to edit it, save, etc. then close GW and have it disappear when the "temp" file is deleted. Please set attachments opened from within GW to read-only to prevent editing unless the user "save-as" to another file. The other option is to warn users...
3)Option to archive a attachment while leaving the message in the mailbox. If you then select the attachment, have it pulled back from the archive.
4) If a user drags an attachment out to say the desktop, and it's large, put up a progress bar... or better yet, background it (maybe offer a download window).
5) Mailto: and Notify for xPlat Mac.
6) Integrate GW into Mac sync services so that contacts and other items can be synced to compatible devices and/or Mac applications have access to GW data.
7) SETUPIP support 64-bit Vista
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Even some of these....
Submitted by dlythgoe on 11 April 2008 - 3:44pm.
We even did some of these....
1. Mailbox size, manage without restrictions is THERE! At least you can manage the mailbox size and you can see how much your have used - Tools | Check Mailbox Size - it does not show in the 'status' bar unless the administrator has set a restriction.
2. Issue two with attachments - FIXED in Bonsai.
3. Archive an attachment - not there for Bonsai, but we did introduce a technology called 'stubbing' that our partners will be able to provide a solution.
4. No progress bar yet
5. Notify will be there for Mac/Linux AND 'mailto' as well. Linux had 'mailto' in 7.0, but Bonsai has it for the MAC.
6. Not yet - sorry
Not bad - we got three of your issues in Bonsai - one more by partners!!
Dean
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Followup
Submitted by jsessler on 10 June 2008 - 6:03pm.
A little late but worth it!
I'm happy to see that we're making progress.
What about:
7, SETUPIP support 64-bit Vista? This is killing us here in the .EDU as we have many students and faculty that want to use 64-bit Vista.
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addition to your list
Submitted by wbro1 on 9 April 2008 - 11:47pm.
Using Groupwise Messenger without password. Like Groupwise itself. (no password with eDirectory option).
If already logged on to eDir, users will automatically show online, which makes Messenger more effective.
Now users just click Cancel when asked for their password.
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Messenger...
Submitted by dlythgoe on 11 April 2008 - 3:45pm.
We receive this request a lot. Sorry - not for Bonsai. But is still on our 'to-do' list!
Dean
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Well thats all fabulous....
Submitted by FlyingGuy on 12 April 2008 - 1:35pm.
How about the:
- Binary API's for:
- Win32
- Linux
- OSX
- iPhone Integration. This is starting to be a serious impediment to keeping GroupWise in lots of client locations. I know that NotifyLink is supposed to have something in June, but they are a fairly expensive service, yeah I know $300.00 a year is not that much, but clients are still wincing when they hear it. Yes we can cludge up an outlook interface to do this, but we of the GW faithful don't want to have to do that, because clients start asking, "Well why don't I just run Outlook then?" and the ensuing discussion gets a bit sticky.
Yes you guys are doing a good job, yes you are listening, but you are either listening selectively or your not talking about things that at least critical to me and quite possibly a few other people who are just tired of asking, because all we hear from you guys is "We are thinking about it".
LOTS of people have been begging for a clean of set of binary API's for GroupWise that are X-Platform. We have been begging for the Messenger API SDK, and yet none of those are forthcoming it seems. So are you really listening, or just leveraging what you have done so far to appear to be listening?
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APIs and iPhone
Submitted by dlythgoe on 15 April 2008 - 8:44am.
Integrations continue to be a challenge. We are working on several major ones - including the iPhone. APIs have improved and expanded during Bonsai as well. We have expanded the OAPI, C3PO, Tokens, and SOAP. We have also done significant work towards our new Admin API and we continue to add to our internal Java API (Linux/Mac). We intend to release these APIs as soon as they are ready. We are also using our APIs more and more internally. We have also done significant work around a new Windows Client API called 'stubbing' that will be released in Bonsai.
I am fully aware that there is more to do in this area. We will get there!
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addition to your list
Submitted by RogerIThomas on 15 April 2008 - 3:00pm.
Thanks for the list as I can pass it around.
additional requests
I was hoping that this was in 7.0.3 as it was commented on at Brainshare - the ablity for GW in caching mode to index more that 1000 messages everytime it starts up.
Also
Can you provide some form of intergration with desktop search engines. The GW based search is getting a little old when compaired to the features and speed of products such as Google desktop.
10 year's ago the GW engine had to provide searching on systems with limited disk space and at this time did an OK job at it - today users have no problems commiting 20-30% of their disk to search tables so that they can do complex serch queries 'at internet speeds'.
The current system is also very slow for large mail boxes and returns results in odd orders - as examples
a) often results are returned oldest first - not good
if someone has 11 years of email in their account.
b) in remote/caching mode you can have messages returned
from the day the database was built, going back to
the oldest message. It will then start to return
messages newer than when the database was built.
Roger
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Indexes and Searching...
Submitted by dlythgoe on 2 May 2008 - 6:31am.
In Bonsai, the tracker records for the caching mailbox will now be processed and indexed 1000 at a time, but not just a start up. Every time you sync with the master mailbox, another 1000 tracker records will be processed. You will catch up much quicker and there will be less user interaction.
On GroupWise using a different Search engine.... This is not something we were able to complete in Bonsai - however this is something we are looking at and we very much want and need to be able to do the kinds of searches you describe. Look for this functionality in a future release.
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Thanks for the reply, With
Submitted by RogerIThomas on 4 May 2008 - 10:48am.
Thanks for the reply,
With major releases of GW being every 2-3 years you are going to have to start thinking more like MS where they can treat their email client (Outlook) as an independent product from their email server (Exchange) and so has a quicker release cycle.
All other email clients can be intergrated with the main desktop search tools directly with connectors that come with the search tool or third party modules, this leaves GW stuck as a black box. As with so many issues with the GW client this is a power user request as maybe only 1-2% of a company will use the feature - its just that that 1-2% is made up of the same people who have the power to just dump GW.
Roger
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API's and such
Submitted by FlyingGuy on 16 April 2008 - 11:46am.
I know you must support older versions of the API's. But this is your chance to get a fresh start. Fork the API's by which I mean compile the requisite DLL's / Libs without all the cruft in them. It is WAY past time to abandon OLE, its a dead technologie and it requires the windows 32 bit client to be installed, this has been an impediment for lots of very small very tight, but VERY useful applications.
As an example, I would love to write a program that handles court calendering that has a simple DB engine getting data from say, MySQL that would shoot information directly into the GW data store in the form of appointments and tasks. This cannot be server based since it has to have a desktop interface. Right now I X-Compile using FPC to windows and Linux. FPC can link in any standard Lib or DLL but it wont link in JARS or any of that sort of thing. When will the API's be rationalized across platforms with standard C or C++ ( yech ) bindings? SOAP does not make for small, fast, efficient programs. While I see SOAP's value for large server side things, binary API's are far faster, lighter weight and less prone to error.
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My response will seem hollow....
Submitted by dlythgoe on 2 May 2008 - 6:38am.
This is a long standing request. I completely understand the need and recognize the urgency. This will not be in Bonsai. We are working with Product Management to identify and plan out the next several releases of GroupWise. This will be a major part of that discussion.
We have created - beginning with 6.5.3 - a cross-platform business logic component. This is what the original Linux/Mac client binded to. In 7.0, we moved the Windows Client on top of this same component. It contains most of the business logic of the client pieces. It currently has a very good Java binding. We want to include C, C++ and .NET bindings - document it and publish it to our partners and the GroupWise community. That is still the plan - but I still can not commit to a delivery date.
Plus you won't believe me until we actually ship it!
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File on Send Maybe?
Submitted by karimk on 29 April 2008 - 3:11am.
Hi All,
A facility I really like is the ability to file a sent item into a different folder as I send the item. I have this facility in Pegasus Mail (I know its old school but really good for just e-mail on a PC).
So I send an e-mail to customer A, GW automatically asks me where I would like to save the sent item, I then have the opportunity to file in Customer A's folder in my mailbox, rather than having to go to sent items and drag the item out of sent items and file it.
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File on Send...
Submitted by dlythgoe on 2 May 2008 - 5:45am.
We do receive this request from time to time. We think we understand the use case and why this would be important, but this feature did not make Bonsai. Sorry :)
I would like to better understand how/why you would like the product to work this way and what benefits it would provide you. This may help shape our thinking and designs.
Dean
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Why File on Send...
Submitted by mikedelaat on 10 May 2008 - 5:51am.
I guess the main reason we would like the product to work this way is:
As we get more mail every day, we try to archive all incoming mail and our responses/replies to that mail into seperate folders. It saves a lot of time when the Groupwise Client stores the response/reply mail automatically in the folder where you archived the incoming mail. Or at least it asks you where to store your response/reply mail. This way your send mail folder keeps almost empty. Maybe it is also possible that the send folder only shows links (in stead of the real mail) of your replies to the mail in the archived folders?
One other request: is there going to be a key combination in the Windows Client (or other clients as well?) to the reply/reply all button? Something like Ctrl-R in the Outlook client for example?
Thanks for the work.
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File On Send
Submitted by cransomsr on 15 May 2008 - 12:45pm.
There used to be a C3PO for this, I last used it on 6.5.x, but I have not attempted to use it on a 7.x client.
And having said that, I'm installing it now using the 7.0.1 client.
It looks like it worked, but I must confess it blew up my client, but in this location I have multiple C3PO's running - one for document management, one for RPOST, the old Extract C3po and file sent items.....
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Yes iPhone is definitely required!!!!!
Submitted by stideswe on 29 May 2008 - 6:23pm.
Apparently the iPhone has really good Exchange integration. I just dread the day an end-user (e.g. the CEO) brings their iPhone into IS expecting to hook it up to email and we have to sheepishly admit that we can't do it because we are using GroupWise!
Can't Novell at least provide an ETA on iPhone support? I have seen a blog of yours Dean talking about the iPhone elsewhere but the iPhone has been out for some time now and Novell ought to have their position on it and an ETA set by now.
Simon
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Add things back into the client
Submitted by RogerIThomas on 31 May 2008 - 4:28pm.
A lot of your recent replies to this blog entry and the your other recent blog are focussed on everyone's requests for better intergration with third party products and the work Novell must do to cause this to happen.
Another problem with the GW client is that over the years it has lost features such as basic workflow and basic TAPI intergration. At the time of their loss (GW 5.5 to GW 6.0) things like TAPI intergration was low on everyone's requirment lists as few people have TAPI based phone systems. Today its a feature many people expect as any new phone system supports the serviceand it needs to be added back.
Companies such as SkyPro make offer advance tools, but for many people just basic tools are a good starting point.
Roger
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Can you please give an indication of iPhone support timeframe?
Submitted by stideswe on 10 June 2008 - 9:33pm.
Hello Dean
Are you able to give an approximate time-frame for iPhone support? It is becoming a hot topic as there is a LOT of press in Australia regarding this at the moment. If Novell could commit to the release of a version of GMS to support iPhones within the next few months it would take some pressure off.
Simon
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WebDAV support by the Win32 client
Submitted by johnstob on 12 June 2008 - 2:39am.
Hi Dean,
I like the new goodies coming in Bonsai. I'm also waiting like many others for a position from Novell re the iPhone. It's just about to hit Australia and it will hit the University sector by storm and can see it being a serious challenge for GW sites like mine.
However, WebDAV support in the GW client is biting hard at the moment. Specifically the ability to drag'n'drop an attachment to a WebDAV location. This is particularly a problem when using a portal product like Blackboard that provides WebDAV to upload content quickly.
Yes you could drag'n'drop to the desktop first but if it could be supported natively by the client, then that would be one more whinge to put to bed.
Keep up the great work.
Ben.
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First Run option
Submitted by nickho on 18 June 2008 - 8:26pm.
Hi Dean,
I would like to see the GroupWise client promoted more and have it used by non-GroupWise users as there POP client. This is not simple to setup without joining a GroupWise system first, you can do it via Switches (not available on cross-platform clients).
I would like to see a first-run option where a Novice user can simple choose pop/imap/GroupWise etc the first time the run the client. Most other clients like Evolution and Outlook have this feature, making this a popular feature for POP email.
Good work on the Client Dean
Nick
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archives
Submitted by lowalcohol on 1 August 2008 - 5:18am.
In case you still are listening...
I mis the abillity to open a GW archive on a read-only medium (CD/DVD) as was posible in GW6(.5?). This is our method to transfer mailboxes of ex-employees to their successors.
a viewer for groupwise archives that doesn't care about the GW fid (same reason)
also a more advanced mail-export option, to make it possible to export multiple email messages with same attachmentnames. This can be done by putting a datestamp in front of the filename.
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Contacts
Submitted by Anonymous on 2 September 2008 - 10:54am.
I still haven't heard anything about how the Address Book is going to be fixed. For example. If a user uses a GW client to send a message, that contact gets added to the Frequent Contacts as Firstname Lastname. When the same user logs into Webmail and sends a message, that contact gets added to the FC as Firstname Lastname <emailaddress@domain.name>. Then the same user uses a POP3 or IMAP4 client and sends a message, that contact is added to the FC how ever the user has the client configured. ALL THREE COME FROM THE SAME USER ON THE SAME ACCOUNT WITH THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS! THERE SHOULD BE ONLY ONE CONTACT! Why has no one fixed this?! The reason this is a problem has to do with when you try and search for a message or sort your message list by name. The messages from these contacts are not grouped as one. If I know that Bob sent me a message 2 months ago about something why do I need to care how he sent it to me. I just want the message. I shouldn't have to search three different ways for the message. Please fix this now. If it's not fixed in Bonsai I have no choice, I have to dump GW. I've been loyal since WPOffice and I don't wanna leave but my users are killing me. PLEASE FIX THIS!
--joebananas
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