Zimbra in a Mac world

[Sgcicom]

Hi Everyone,
I'm with the IT dept for a firm of about 30 OS X systems and 1 XP system running a mix of Eudora, Mail.app and now some Entourage. We also have some Blackberry's active as well. Our current mail system leaves much to be desired. It's a POP3 system with SpamAssassin. I'm looking for a package that will allow sharing of calendars & contacts. Zimbra looks very promising but I'm curious how well it plays with a client such as Entourage. I'm looking to overhaul our mail environment by implementing a new server along with a standardize of our mail client. We don't want to have to rely on a web browser though, but have it available as an option for out of office and whatnot. Any experience with Macs you can share is much appreciated!

Thanks
A.

[Chris_H]

Originally Posted by Sgcicom

Hi Everyone,
I'm with the IT dept for a firm of about 30 OS X systems and 1 XP system running a mix of Eudora, Mail.app and now some Entourage. We also have some Blackberry's active as well. Our current mail system leaves much to be desired. It's a POP3 system with SpamAssassin. I'm looking for a package that will allow sharing of calendars & contacts. Zimbra looks very promising but I'm curious how well it plays with a client such as Entourage. I'm looking to overhaul our mail environment by implementing a new server along with a standardize of our mail client. We don't want to have to rely on a web browser though, but have it available as an option for out of office and whatnot. Any experience with Macs you can share is much appreciated!

Thanks
A.

FWIW I've done some superficial testing of Entourage with Zimbra 4.0.2 and it seems to work just fine as a normal IMAP client. I haven't tested any of the non-IMAP integration.

-chris

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by Sgcicom

Hi Everyone,
I'm with the IT dept for a firm of about 30 OS X systems and 1 XP system running a mix of Eudora, Mail.app and now some Entourage. We also have some Blackberry's active as well. Our current mail system leaves much to be desired. It's a POP3 system with SpamAssassin. I'm looking for a package that will allow sharing of calendars & contacts. Zimbra looks very promising but I'm curious how well it plays with a client such as Entourage. I'm looking to overhaul our mail environment by implementing a new server along with a standardize of our mail client. We don't want to have to rely on a web browser though, but have it available as an option for out of office and whatnot. Any experience with Macs you can share is much appreciated!

Thanks
A.

Sgcicom,

We are a primarily Mac shop and use Mail.app in the office to connect to the mail server and use the web UI remotely. You lose some of the "experience" by using Mail.app, but it works fine. The web UI is really fantastic and you may want to move some users over to it to make your support life easier. If you have any question about Mac specific stuff, fire away.

[Sgcicom]

gmsmith,
Nice to hear from someone with regular usage with macs. What have you been using for Calendar and contact sharing, iCal and Address book I presume? Does it work well for planning multi meetings amongst multiple users? Do you have any experience with different clients such as entourage or experience with handhelds ie: Blackberrys?

The web UI looks very nice from screen shots actually, but I know many user's here will want a standard client like Mail.app or Entourage. The VP actually is pushing for Entourage, but I think as long as I find a way to share calendars... everyone will be a lot happier. Our Telco, which a partner of ours to a certain extent, is pushing for their web based Exchange solution. I'd much prefer for it to be hosted in house with this type of solution.

Any other info you can give on your experiences would great!
Thanks.
A.

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by Sgcicom

gmsmith,
Nice to hear from someone with regular usage with macs. What have you been using for Calendar and contact sharing, iCal and Address book I presume? Does it work well for planning multi meetings amongst multiple users? Do you have any experience with different clients such as entourage or experience with handhelds ie: Blackberrys?

The web UI looks very nice from screen shots actually, but I know many user's here will want a standard client like Mail.app or Entourage. The VP actually is pushing for Entourage, but I think as long as I find a way to share calendars... everyone will be a lot happier. Our Telco, which a partner of ours to a certain extent, is pushing for their web based Exchange solution. I'd much prefer for it to be hosted in house with this type of solution.

Any other info you can give on your experiences would great!
Thanks.
A.

You can in iCal send out invitations to users, but I have not seen a way to see "free time" similarly in Entourage. The only way I have seen how to do that is in the web client itself. Frankly, I haven't spent much time even looking at it so I could be missing something in Entourage (iCal is pretty simplistic). In iCal you can subscribe to someone else's calendar if they shared it with you...

I do think that many users want a standard client because they haven't seen anything like the Zimbra webUI.

Blackberry support is interesting, it is a "pull" then push technology and not true BES server behavior...kind of klunky today, but it will get there.