Blog Entry

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on 11 September 2008 - 1:13am.

Booker T & the mg's...

Well, I must confess, Haven't tried the beta but Im reading here about it as it is a very important product for our customerbase.

My impression is that ...well, time IS running out.
I like groupwise, I know that many decisionmakers accept GW's strongpoints.

BUT,, I do know that users in general do NOT care about backend, I know that the majority IS running windows & office.

Bell's and whistle's..?? Actually believe it or not... that's probably exactly what Novell should have aimed for. The need or desire for a product more and more comes down to the demands from the users towards the decisionsmakes. And in our customerbase,, it is NOT the users that demand or very much love groupwise......sorry to say.

Lasse, Sweden,

Submitted by Anonymous on 11 September 2008 - 1:53pm.

I tend to agree with most here that I expected more of it, and also see it more as a service pack than a real upgrade. I believe you when you say there is much more under the hood. The webaccess has some improvements but on my test system there are problems with sending html mail and replying to html messages (using webaccess). The mac client is a huge improvement, but it should have been like this with version 7.
Integration is also important to us, we use crm and reservation systems that use mapi and have problems with the GW7 client, so most of our clients are still 6.5. Also we need integration with SAP (portal and gui). If Novell does not address problems like this we will also be forced to move to exchange.
On the management side: I like consoleone (but it could be better without java), and don't like imanager, but have to use both (and even sometimes nwadmin32...). Please make all novell software manageable in one or both.
I could also not find anything on NFS support for the postoffice on Linux. If NFS would be fully supported and the POA could be quiesced, snapshots (supported by most NAS appliances) can be used for backup and as a restore area.

Evert
The Netherlands

Submitted by rmeijll on 12 September 2008 - 12:09pm.

Downloaded last week, and of course as always there is the issue of lack of time. There is just too much interesting stuff in the world.

Anyway, incredible improvements in the client. From small stuff to big things (to me) like iCal, subtasks and to-do/checklist cleanup.

I use the Windows client, so I haven't checked the Linux/Mac/Webaccess clients yet. I will in the next week.

"Bad" thing about this beta: it makes you want to install GW8 in your production environment ASAP :-D

Of course, I could come up with all kind of feature requests and critical remarks as well, however let's not forget that this is a happy event!
Besides, most of the missing stuff is caused by corporate choices, not by the GW team. The small peek on the iPhone/Exchange integration is a nice illustration of that. (Not a surprise since Microsoft saved Apple from doom a long time ago).

Anyway, Dean, I would like to compliment you with your respectful, insightful and honest responses to all the requests and critical remarks.
Keep up the good work.

Submitted by Anonymous on 15 September 2008 - 5:51am.

I have updated my test groupwise to v8. It seems to be a great release with many new features.
Our customers now are interested to know the final release date of the product.

Submitted by Anonymous on 16 September 2008 - 3:09pm.

http://www.packtpub.com/article/integrating-zimbra...

It seems to do everything that Novell seems unable to deliver!!!!!

Submitted by Anonymous on 17 September 2008 - 12:32pm.

Hello Dean

Whilst I think Bonsai doesn't exactly blow me away with new bling there are some good new features. I'm not sure the "What's New" link on the site explains them all.

The ones I'm most pleased about are ....
1) The ability to modify the recipients of an appointment without having to delete and resend the whole thing. End users hated the previous behaviour - we can "sell" this to them for sure. The dialogue for this is a little ugly but at least it can be done.
2) Oh Joy !!! We can now reply to an email from within the archive - this is going to save so many headaches and makes GroupWise native archiving so much better. This is a very good improvement.

Simon

Submitted by Anonymous on 17 September 2008 - 12:37pm.

Hello Dean

You never answered my question on whether eDirectory to GroupWise sync (as done by the MTA) has been fixed yet? In GroupWise 7 the scheduled task done by the MTA to sync eDirectory attributes into GroupWise was broken if the MTA was running on Linux (it didn't sync admin defined fields properly). Has this been fixed?

Simon

Submitted by Anonymous on 17 September 2008 - 7:38pm.

Hello I tried the forward email from archive feature which I raved about above. The first time I do it it works great but the second time I send an email it throws a D109 error. This is with the public beta on Windows XP (backend is SLES9). I'm not sure of the precise conditions required to reproduce this but I believe it is a defect. If I reply to an email it is fine but forwarding throws this D109 error.
Simon

Submitted by Anonymous on 18 September 2008 - 9:32am.

Hello Dean,
I deployed Groupwise 7.0.3 almost a year ago to much to my delight. However, the fact that the Outlook connector was not working 100% to my bosses' expectations, and some Outlook crashes, I find that I am constantly having to defend Groupwise and Novell's decisions with regards to Outlook support.

I find it hard to believe that only a small percentage of your customer base runs Outlook as the front end. As mentioned in other posts, Outlook is the defacto business communications tool. My boss will have nothing to do with the Groupwise client, and insists on my finding a solution to the Outlook problems. How is Groupwise supposed to make a dent or inroads in a market dominated by Exchange when it drops development on a key component for the world's #1 business tool?

I have long been a supporter of Novell and it's products since the birth of Netware....but I am very disappointed having been left flapping in the wind with no recourse. As I read in other posts, I can take solace that I am not alone.

On behalf of the other uses of Outlook, I beg Novell to reconsider and put the resources necessary to development a connect that works the way it should....

Sincerely,

Ed

Submitted by Anonymous on 18 September 2008 - 8:43pm.

Dean:

We are making the transition to using Outlook because of the ability of a critical application to integrate with Outlook rather than the GroupWise client. We currently have 10 people using Outlook. There are no problems with the integration. The users are happy with Outlook because the integration very much streamlines a paperless workflow.

We have found that installing the full GroupWise client (7.0.3) is better than just the connector. Not only is performance more reliable, but we can still use the GW client for certain functions that are only available in the GroupWise client, such as looking up archives, or doing things that simply work better in the GroupWise client such as searches and proxy access. I keep both open all day because I am less productive without the GroupWise Home View, fast searches, and Categories. But I need Outlook open for the integration for our paperless procedures.

We have found that with Outlook 2003 a Task can be entered in Outlook and it shows up fine in GroupWise, but a Task entered in GroupWise does not show up in Outlook unless you create a group task and change it to a posted task (too much work.) We have also found that Outlook works much better if mailbox size is kept very small. I keep mine less than 500 MB. I started out with a GroupWise mailbox of 6 GB and Outlook performance was unbearably slow. Outlook 2007 works fine for mail and calendar but Tasks do not work at all. POP3 is an option to increase the speed of Outlook if you want to give up other features. Performance is much slower through a VPN, depending on the bandwidth and mailbox size. Outlook always starts slower than GroupWise except for POP3 mode.

I can list many features and functions of GroupWise that are either executed better in GroupWise than Outlook or simply do not exist in Outlook. And whoever came up with the Outlook un-editable .NK2 cache file idea for auto-complete is a knucklehead. But that really is a moot point since the productivity gains through integration far outweighs the better features of GroupWise compared to Outlook.

I contacted the developer of the product that integrates with Outlook about GroupWise and they said while they appreciate that there are those that want to use GroupWise with their product they can’t justify the resources.

In summary we have people using the Outlook client with a GW7 backend and they are happy because it greatly streamlines the paperless procedures and documentation. I understand your point about the great effort expended to make Outlook and GroupWise work together, but I think it is a worthy investment. Many of the reasons that this is good for Novell and their customers have been mentioned already.

I believe Microsoft created the Lotus Connector. Can they help with a GroupWise connector? And isn’t Lotus a much different backend from Exchange presenting similar challenges to the GroupWise backend? Does Novell have a division or person that a developer can go to for help in product integration? Regarding the product we use, the integration partially works with the GroupWise client. Maybe it is a simple job to get it to work completely, but how would we find out? I think you have done a great job with the GroupWise client since 6.5, but at this point, to have a real serious affect won’t you have to do something that changes the way people think about the email client, in a way similar to what the iPhone did for cell phones, or the way Firefox made a lot of people realize that there is an alternative to Internet Explorer? Short of this it seems like the best strategy is to hang on to existing GW customers, even if it means supporting their current need for Outlook, while continuing to improve the GW client, including integration.

Submitted by Anonymous on 19 September 2008 - 12:56am.

hi there !

i am currently playing arround with gw8 beta, but im not able to install the webaccess.
At the installation point 'configure webaccess agent' it always says
'groupwise web access application 8.0.0 is not installed . please install it...'
i have clicked the button install webaccess application a lot of times now and the installation ends just normal with 'installation complete'.
i am running sles10 oes2 and all other components of gw8 work fine.
any suggestions or hints ?
is there a forum for gw8 beta ?? didnt find one...

kind regards

jan (germany)

Submitted by Anonymous on 19 September 2008 - 6:21am.

Forget about Outlook Connector.... MAKE YOUR PROGRAM KNOWN!!!

How about releasing a cross-platform GroupWise Home client for... well, home users...?
That and a good marketing campaign could increase the publicity of GroupWise greatly. And as you may know, Office Home edition 2007 does no longer contain Outlook.
I am sure it wouldn't be too hard to make a home edition of GW...

GroupWise could become to Outlook what Firefox currently is to IE, a well known and widely accepted alternative!
This would definitely boost GroupWise in corporations too, and would increase the support of many 3rd-party companies.
Don't underestimate the power of the end users! ;)
"no one" knows GroupWise today, you need a lot of good arguments to win the management for it. It's hard to convince someone to something he never heard of.

You can go either this way or constantly trying to catch up with outlook, never-ending compatibility troubles and unhappy customers...

Just a crazy idea... ;)

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on 24 September 2008 - 6:05pm.

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question.
Does anyone know if Groupwise 8 will support "Protected Distribution Lists", or Secure Distribution Lists. And if not, when ?

Thanks

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on 25 September 2008 - 6:29am.

I just installed the Beta 5 and in my folder list , I got the teaming folders, but nothing inside, I check everywhere in my Groupwise settings nothing seems to pointing to my teaming website, can you help me?

Thanks , and It's a great product so far , thanks you!!

Denis

Submitted by markcasey on 1 October 2008 - 9:57pm.

Dean

I feel I have to add my bit. I am a reseller in Australia, with a fair number of clients (and users)

The mac client is fantastic, the www is a huge improvement. Well done.

But, I have to add my peace on the Outlook Connector.
Yes I understand what you are saying about the development issues and I suspect the reasion it has been dropped is thta it got to hard!

I disagree with your statement about utilization though, I have about 30% of my GW clients as outlook connector users. (Yes there are problems) but this is my current ratio, so for me the connector is not insignificant.
(BTW: Of your 29Million nodes was it ? How do you know its not used, neither myself nor my clients have been asked ?)

I have also lost clients to exchange (which results in moves from OES and Zen to AD and windows servers group policies as well) Why? the connector would not integrate with a 3rd party application and the supplier was inflexible!

Worksite intergration, Hummingbird Intergration to name 2 are far better in outlook vs Groupwise client. So if I dont have a connector, I dont have a client.

What am I saying, this needs to be solved!
As a Novell reseller, I have/will loose market share to Exchange and it will only become a greater issue as time goes on!

So, for those that want it, hit the enhancement requests, maybe if Novell think its important they.might move it up the priority list
Or Maybe its not important, in which case I had better brush off my MCSE and learn 2007 (yuck)

Happy Bonsi ing

Mark
PS. The math questions are a bit hard :)

Submitted by avery_larry on 8 October 2008 - 1:39pm.

I'd like doc. management integration with InterWoven WorkSite.

Submitted by Anonymous on 9 November 2008 - 10:59pm.

Will there ever be GorupWise password polices ? Do they ever think about it ? I would not want to use the Ldap authentication and have the same password as the edir user and use the edir password polices.

Submitted by MFaust on 10 November 2008 - 9:05pm.

I just installed GW8 Beta and I love the new webacces.
It needs way less reloading than the GW7 one and altough some parts are 'heavier' is feels a bit faster than the GW7 webaccess over a far and not to fast link (just about 10000km)...

Finally the categories made it into the webaccess. Love it... but why there is no option to set the category when creating an email/appointment ?? If I create a posted appointment some month ahead I dont want to go to the calendar to just set tha category...

By the way: Is the spell checking settings (check before send) linked to the win32 client setting? If yes, WHY ??? On a fat client I maybe want to check, but the checking on the webaccess is more nice to have and rather slow (for mails with some "history"). Therefore I'd like to have separate settings...

Mathias

Submitted by Magic31 on 11 November 2008 - 4:45pm.

Hi Dean,

I've been following this thread with much interest and have also seen your Groupwise 8.0 video.
You are doing much good work! Thanks for that!

Testing the public beta, there is one thing in the Contacts that I wonder if it is possible (as customers also want this feature).
The Novell Groupwise addressbook... can pictures be added in any way? I was told so but using the client it states 'read-only' for the global contact, and using ConsoleOne there is no place to input pictures. This is a feature my customers would very much like to see as it can replace a facebook type application.

Curous to know!

Regards,
Willem