Cool Blog: What's New in Bonsai

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Dean Lythgoe

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 6 Nov 2007

There is a lot of interest and excitement about Bonsai. As we consider our authorized BETA plans, I thought it would be a good idea to give a more definitive and complete list of "What?s New!"

Thanks to our fantastic documentation team, in particular - Jill, I will point you to our online documentation for Bonsai. The documentation is not in its finished state, but does contain just about everything that is NEW. Not only does it include the Headliner features such as Task Management, Extended Calendaring and Contact Management, but also lots of the smaller features such as Discussion Thread Search, Birthdays in the Calendar, RSS and Auto Save. The document is not only a list of features, but also provides some descriptions about the feature, the extent of the functionality, and the experience users should expect. It covers each of the clients - Windows, Linux/Mac (Home Folder, Notify and POP/IMAP Support, WebAccess (Virtual Lists, HTML Compose and Multiple Calendars) and Outlook Connector. It also covers administration, agents and install.

Here is the link: http://www.novell.com/documentation/gw8
Check it out!

Now - as you know - Bonsai is code complete. We are working on going to BETA and preparing for internal roll outs and meeting our Ship Criteria. I invite your comments and suggestions on what else GroupWise should do. However, I want to set your expectations appropriately and say that we are locked down for Bonsai. Any new enhancements will have to wait until the release after Bonsai - code named: Monterrey!

Switching gears slightly ...

Engineering - some insight into what Engineering is up to. We are fixing BUGS! We are engaged in two major endeavors. We are trying to get Bonsai to Authorized BETA, and we are trying to get 7.0.3 to Public BETA. Like any major software project, there are defects to fix, but even more important there are test plans to execute. We have an awesome Quality Assurance team, and they are executing on current processes and working to create and implement newer/better ones. Automation, Test Cases, Priority Level and Regression Testing are all part of our strategy.

This past spring, we invested heavily in updating our validation lab, the software and the machines. We are in the middle of organizing and implementing quality assurance procedures to better provide metrics and insight into the code coverage and validation objectives. We hope that this will pay major dividends in the quality of our code in Bonsai and in our support packs.

The engineering team is very proud of Bonsai and we want our customers to feel confident that it will be solid. We are starting with our BETA program. With help from our partner, BrainStorm, we are creating some downloadable demos of the newest features in Bonsai. We hope this will provide better understanding of the features, as well as help our users/administrators know how best to use GroupWise as their Personal Productivity Assistant!

Reader Comments

• Good to see it is coming along. In a future version, it would be nice if we were able to force/maintain settings across the clients. For instance, disabling Frequent Contacts, removing it from the search order, and hiding it from view. That is just one example of something that would be nice if we could manage those settings globally.
• I'd like to see a facility to allow admins to merge accounts easily and quickly. Archiving, changing FIDs then unarchiving is clumsy and time consuming

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