Customisation of AJAX interface / Zimbra LDAP Auth

[batfastad]

Hi everyone

Our Exchange SBS 2003 server is on its way out. We've got a new remote worker in the USA and Exchange's IMAP is proving pretty horrible.
Plus to administer, I hate Exchange and cannot wait to get rid!

Anyway, I've been messing around with the Zimbra online demo for a while now. And I'm convinced that most of our users (20 total) would prefer to work with the AJAX client than Outlook.
Today I started looking at the options for customising the AJAX Zimbra interface

1) I'd like to get rid of the Y! Local button and the 4 search engine options that drop down from the Email search dropdown at the top.

2) Change the Yahoo web search box at the top of the screen, to search our company intranet database.
Basically pass a querystring to the URL of our database server, but open the search results in a new window.
I also will look at Zimlets for adding extra features from our intranet DB.

3) AJAX/HTML interface titlebar text. And Zimbra logo from the top-left.
Is it possible to replace those wth our own?

Finally on something different.
4) Auth our shared files Samba server, proFTPd FTP server, Apache intranet server with Zimbra LDAP.
As far as I know, it's possible to auth Apache, proFTPd and Samba against an LDAP server. Does the Zimbra LDAP allow this?

Would be awesome to finally have a single password required for all our services!

I assume 1-3 would involve editing the skins. But is there a way to change those through the admin GUI?

Thanks, Ben

[Rich Graves]

1) I'd like to get rid of the Y! local

That's just a zimlet you can disable in your default class of service.

2) Change the Yahoo web search box at the top of the screen, to search our company

Removing the box entirely is supported; search these forums for "evil yahoo search." Save the screen width for the email search box, especially on laptops.

To add company search, do a zimlet or make a search provider plugin for the search box already present in all current web browsers anyway.

3) AJAX/HTML interface titlebar text. And Zimbra logo from the top-left.

The "free" license prohibits changing these, but they're easy to change in any of the supported editions. Resist the temptation to change much, because you'll regret it at every software update. Logos can be replaced in the _base skin.

4) Auth our shared files Samba server, proFTPd FTP server, Apache intranet server with Zimbra LDAP.

All trivial except the samba server, because microsoft protocols require microsoft-encrypted passwords (registry hacks to allow plaintext are possible, but a bad idea). Several ways to crack this nut: 1) There exist unsupported tools for extending zimbra ldap schema to provide posix and samba users. Search the zimlet gallery and zimbra blog. 2) You could go the other way, making samba-ldap (or apple opendirectory, or ms ad) your authoritative password store, and cross-authenticate zimbra against that. 3) Maintain accounts & passwords separately, but have people set/change passwords via a web page that talks to both systems.

Or, depending on what you use it for: Drop the samba server entirely. Use the WebDAV protocol to access Notebook/Briefcase files on the zimbra server instead.

[batfastad]

We were thinking of going for the NE version eventually with zimbra mobile. Essential for us really since out of our 20 users, there's 8 of those that use ActiveSync to check their mail on the move.

#1 Ok that's great news. Sounds easy enough to do

#2 Sounds like it can be removed which is good. I already have various search providers set up, with JSON auto complete, and they work well. I will look into adding a Zimlet as well to allow quick access

#3 I agree, changing too much gets very annoying having to make those changes each time you do an update. I found that out with an old phpBB installation which took days to patch up again after each update.

#4 Ok the Samba sounds like the most difficult. I know for a fact that there's LDAP modules for proFTPd and Apache.
To be honest Samba's not a big deal... We currently have it set so that no password is required to access Samba so that anyone can access any file they like.
And in reality, it makes sense to keep it that way.
I don't think the Zimbra Notebook/Briefcase would be seamless enough, we have a 3TB NAS device where we archive pictures and design files for our magazines.
I'd like to keep all our shared files NAS separate to the rest of our email/groupware.

Our local IT contractors tried to push that MS SharePoint rubbish down our throats, we ended up using it and breaking Exchange because we ran out of disk space within about 2 days.

I cannot wait to get rid of Exchange!
But from looking at pm.zimbra and the roadmap, I think ZCS 5.5 will be the point we purchase the NE. With testing happening now on the OS edition