Zimbra ALE and a new preview demo

[KevinH]

Today we announced ALE - AJAX Linking and Embedding which enables rich text editing of documents on the web. The first example of this will appear in our 'Notes' application and can be seen on our new Hosted Preview Demo. Like the Hosted Demo the new Preview Demo provides a quick and easy way to see some of Zimbra's functionality. In this case preview provides a bleeding edge view into our development. The features on preview are still in development but we've now provided a way for the community to see what we are working on next. This is pre-beta code so there will be bugs and it may not work perfectly across all browsers. Firefox 1.5+ is recommended for the best experience.

Your feedback on the new functionality as always is appreciated.

FYI Here's some more detail on getting to the Notes app.

* Log into the preview by following the link Hosted Preview Demo.
* Click on the notebook icon (The bottom icon on the far left of the app window)
* You will get to a table of contents page
* Click on the "new" button in the app toolbar (the far left button. It has a page icon with a green plus sign on itO
* You should now be in an editable document where you can type/insert away
* The spreadsheet may be inserted via the insert object drop down
* Click save to save the page.

[Klug]

Terrific !

[papaya74]

IMPRESSIVE !!

BUT: I would like to lobby for an "alarm - notification" in the calender, reminding users for their appointments
Almost EVERY passably Groupware has this features, but ZIMBRA doesn't

A basic notification per email would be full effectual !

As i can see, ALE has a "Appointment Reminder" window, where you can adjust how long before you would like to be informed about the next appointment. The problem is, that this pop-up window is caught in the browsers' frame, so this window won't pop-up if you are in another window !

Nevertheless, that's the right way definitly, but is it possbile to connect that feature with the MTA to send this information per email ?!?!

I'm really looking forward to see that feature, because i know a lot of "normal office users" who want exactly that functionality.

Rock on ZIMBRA guys !

Best Regards,

/harry

[KevinH]

Calendar Reminder are in that demo as well. It will be included in our next release. The pop-up as you saw is just in the mail app but from our test with users most go to mail many times an hour and spend most of their day in email. Of course if your using Outlook Connector you'll get the bell warning.

[JoshuaPrismon]

Today we announced ALE - AJAX Linking and Embedding which enables rich text editing of documents on the web. The first example of this will appear in our 'Notes' application and can be seen on our new Hosted Preview Demo. Like the Hosted Demo the new Preview Demo provides a quick and easy way to see some of Zimbra's functionality. In this case preview provides a bleeding edge view into our development. The features on preview are still in development but we've now provided a way for the community to see what we are working on next. This is pre-beta code so there will be bugs and it may not work perfectly across all browsers. Firefox 1.5+ is recommended for the best experience.

Your feedback on the new functionality as always is appreciated.

FYI Here's some more detail on getting to the Notes app.

* Log into the preview by following the link Hosted Preview Demo.
* Click on the notebook icon (The bottom icon on the far left of the app window)
* You will get to a table of contents page
* Click on the "new" button in the app toolbar (the far left button. It has a page icon with a green plus sign on itO
* You should now be in an editable document where you can type/insert away
* The spreadsheet may be inserted via the insert object drop down
* Click save to save the page.

I saw this on Ajaxian this morning, and it really excites me. I have some (unfortunatly long and painful) experience with COM/DCOM that makes me a bit weary.

In Particular:


- Can it be shared between users? Or you do need to copy paste just the html form?

- Can you share these documents across multiple machines? Or is this strictly limited to a Zimbra only enviornment? Or will the system automatically package enough details and code so that anyone can edit the document if they can make a connection via http to the origination server?


In general, I really like it, even if it does hit one of the zimlets (a wiki zimlit) I was working on for the contest ;-(

[KevinH]

- Can it be shared between users? Or you do need to copy paste just the html form?

Not yet. The server supports full ACL's and Versioning so the client will get this soon.

- Can you share these documents across multiple machines? Or is this strictly limited to a Zimbra only enviornment? Or will the system automatically package enough details and code so that anyone can edit the document if they can make a connection via http to the origination server?

All the data can be pulled out from the REST interface so it can be shared. The goal will be to make that format simple and HTML friendly so a special viewer is not needed to get the basic content. Of course the integrated Zimlet's won't run on a remote machine unless they have Zimbra.

[JoshuaPrismon]

Not yet. The server supports full ACL's and Versioning so the client will get this soon.



All the data can be pulled out from the REST interface so it can be shared. The goal will be to make that format simple and HTML friendly so a special viewer is not needed to get the basic content. Of course the integrated Zimlet's won't run on a remote machine unless they have Zimbra.

Why is this? If the data can be pulled from a REST interface (say the spreadsheet data), and if the ACL's permit it, why not allow a user to login and just manage that one piece of data? I know situations (say a external vendor) where this would be a killer feature, and something that Exchange can't (easily) do, but that Zimbra would enable really easily....


Or for example, think about a simple piece of data that represents a work order with status, or a ticket. I could definitly see some utility to being able to edit remotely (going through a abbrievated login proccess to get ACLS) but still manage this information in Zimbra.

Also, can these pages also be tagged and sorted via the existing mechanism? That would also allow Zimbra to really do what Exchange promised years ago, coherently manage information and share it not only intra-organizationally but externally as well.

[KevinH]

Why is this? If the data can be pulled from a REST interface (say the spreadsheet data), and if the ACL's permit it, why not allow a user to login and just manage that one piece of data? I know situations (say a external vendor) where this would be a killer feature, and something that Exchange can't (easily) do, but that Zimbra would enable really easily....

Maybe I'm confusing you... The user themselves can login from any machine remote or local and via the Zimbra web ui make any edit/changes they want. REST is for that data one-way. ie you can pull but not push. We do have some push/edit REST interfaces we'll talk about in an upcoming blog entry.

Of course you can do ANYTHING with the SOAP api so in that case EVERYTHING is available for external edits. It just the rendering that requires the Zimbra UI magic.

Also, can these pages also be tagged and sorted via the existing mechanism? That would also allow Zimbra to really do what Exchange promised years ago, coherently manage information and share it not only intra-organizationally but externally as well.

Server-wise yes. Full search, tagging, folders, sharing are there. It's just not exposed in the UI yet. These are all part of the plan and coming in short order. We just released this demo to get an idea of what's coming and start discussions like this where people can voice what they think is most compelling or missing from our current thoughts.

[xzhang]

Does this support/allow user to view Rich Text email sent from AOL and outlook?

[FunkyPenguin]

Thanks for a very tangible insight into all your hard work. Worked quite nicely