Snow Leopard to add Full Exchange Support to Mac OS

[playnada]

Apple has put a page up relating to their just announced, upcoming Mac OS release dubbed "Snow Leopard". One of the core features they are promoting is full, native Exchange Support in Mail, iCal, and Address Book using the "Exchange Web Services protocol".

My question is probably pretty hard to answer this early in the game but I would like to know if this is something that Zimbra is looking at supporting or doing?

More info can be found here.

Thanks!

-Justin

[stevegarriques]

Yeah im curious to see if Zimbra is planning on supporting Macs more. I was really disappointed in the apple connector and am actually looking at Kerio since it supports macs natively. Zimbra works great on the PC side but really blows on the Mac side. I'll stick it out for the year I paid. If Snow Leopard fully supports exchange and I haven't gone somewhere else or I don't see Zimbra putting more effort into supporting Macs, then I'll go for Exchange. It'll be worth the hefty price to get FULL support on the mac side.

[jholder]

Originally Posted by stevegarriques

Yeah im curious to see if Zimbra is planning on supporting Macs more. I was really disappointed in the apple connector and am actually looking at Kerio since it supports macs natively. Zimbra works great on the PC side but really blows on the Mac side. I'll stick it out for the year I paid. If Snow Leopard fully supports exchange and I haven't gone somewhere else or I don't see Zimbra putting more effort into supporting Macs, then I'll go for Exchange. It'll be worth the hefty price to get FULL support on the mac side.

Sorry to hear your disappointment. Most us here at Zimbra use Macs, including me. Guess we can't make everyone happy, but we try.

You should log each of your issues with Zimbra Support, and if you're terribly unhappy, you should call your account rep and let them know.

Simply posting how you think the Macintosh support "blows" isn't a constructive way to get things fixed.

We'll work with you to resolve your issues.

[stevegarriques]

Well its just that the apple connector syncs through iSync which in itself isn't fun to play with. It syncs the E-mails fine but when it comes to Contacts, Multiple contact lists, Calendars and Multiple calendars, as well as the need for public folder support it just isn't there.

The biggest thing for me tho is you can't sync public folders with the apple connector which is a big deal in a corporate environment. We have many clients that have macs and we even setup test accounts to see how they liked Zimbra but unfortuantly unless your looking for really basic syncing capabilities with the apple connector, zimbra isn't the best of options if you really need public folders and advanced features that you can get with other products. I do like Zimbra Desktop (which supports everything I listed above) but these guys are die hard entourage fans and it would be next to impossible to get them to convert (as I have already tried).

Sorry, its not that it "blows" but many of the features you need (like public folders) aren't supported with the apple connector.

PC Side of things, Zimbra is great on I will say that. I will also say with the PC side of things I am much more satisfied over exchange due to it being a lot more reliable. Ever since day 1 I have had no problems with the server. The only time I ever take it down is when I need to update it. I just wish there was better Mac support and I would be 100% sold on zimbra.

[kirme3]

You are aware that Microsoft is planning to discontinue public folders natively in Exchange, I think in the next version(whatever is after Exchange 2007), right? It actually wasn't originally going to be included in Ex2007. I know that is a long way off, but if you are into planning ahead for the next revision, you may want to look into that. I believe the public folders are going to be migrated into a Sharepoint Server and Exchange Server combined setup.

Of course, it's probably been 18 - 20 months since I've looked at an Exchange roadmap, so I could be wrong(that's my disclaimer). I do admit that it would be nice to have a public folder setup, or something in Zimbra without having to do the nasty workarounds of large calendar/mailbox sharing...etc. If only there was some way to request that...hmmmm. I guess I'll have to visit bugzilla or something

[playnada]

The issues that you speak of relating to Zimbra and the Mac, I would argue, are not Zimbra's, but are Apple's. The way that Apple designed the backend of Mail, iCal, and Address book is very limiting, and is not intended to have third party apps plugging into it. This is much the same way Microsoft built Entourage. This will do no more than relegate Apple's PIM clients to personal use only, not anything that can seriously be used for business.

I applaud Zimbra for coming up with a creative workaround to the limitations posed by the Apple PIM clients. I do agree with you that the iSync method is not the most ideal situation, but it is what we have, and 99% of the time it works flawlessly. With that said, I would like to see a "cleaner" solution that hopefully Apple may provide.

The fact that Apple is embracing Exchange syncronization in some fashion (yet to be determined) is giant step forward, and I am glad they are admitting there are limitations in their existing clients. This will hopefully allow Apple products to be further be embraced by businesses.

[stevegarriques]

Well Yes and No. Currently with exchange you can get the full function (even tho its not the most reliable way) and get public folders through exchange OWA. Kerio also supports public folders as well as full support on everything else (but on the PC side of things Zimbra does a better job with advanced features).

Public folders is a big deal due to a lot of our clients holding a lot of information that is needed to be accessed in public folders, so its a huge drawback to them which they aren't able to commit to Zimbra.

[mgibeault]

Originally Posted by jholder

Sorry to hear your disappointment. Most us here at Zimbra use Macs, including me. Guess we can't make everyone happy, but we try.

You should log each of your issues with Zimbra Support, and if you're terribly unhappy, you should call your account rep and let them know.

Simply posting how you think the Macintosh support "blows" isn't a constructive way to get things fixed.

We'll work with you to resolve your issues.

A lot of work has to be done to make me happy again with Zimbra.
We have paid for ZCS but all the support options seems to be directed to Open Source users and IT professionals.
Filing bug reports through bugzilla may be fun for IT guys or programmers but is not a place to send customers.
Look at all the unanswered posts here. I keep searching for answers to my problems in the forums and I see that other users have the same problems but no good answers or conclusion.
The Wiki has no section that is user-oriented and is useless for the problems I encountered.
The documentation is good... but about 50% complete.
Where can I find information about Mail configuration? Should I check the box that allows meetings request in email to be put in iCal?
What should I do with ICS attachments in emails?
What are the steps to make sure I correctly accept meetings? Or refuse meetings? Right now some senders receives two meeting confirmations from me -looks professional!- but they do not show in iCal. Well sometimes they show...
How come meetings I create in iCal vanishes after a few minutes? And then reappears if I initiate a manual sync?
Should I check the Webdav option in Zimbra panel? What are the pluses and minuses?
Should I remove the Zimbra connector and simply use the IMAP connection? What are the pluses and minuses?

[jurness]

I am finding similar problems. I could not actually get Mac Mail on 6.02 and Snow Leopard 10.6.2. I thought it would just be seamless, but I ended up having to configure Mac Mail to use IMAP. iSync seems to work OK with iCal and Addressbook (although I see a lot of complaints here so maybe I speak too soon), but for some reason it does not appear to have anything to do with Mail.

When I setup the iSync connector, I was under the impression it set up Mail as well, but I guess not and after muddling my way through it, I got it to work over IMAP which required additional holes poked in the firewall.

On the other hand, the ZCO was relatively seamless and it works mostly as expected. Maybe my expectations were incorrect around Exchange integration/emulation and Mac Mail.

Can anyone point me to a Mac Mail setup document? Is there a way to get it to work over port 443 like Outlook and the webclient do or is the Exchange piece used in the mail account setup not working?

[y@w]

Using IMAP is how we've always had to setup Apple Mail. It's not possible to run IMAP over port 443 at the same time as using the web client and Outlook connectors.

You can read more about the integration with (current and potentially future) OS X Snow Leopard and Zimbra here Mac OS/X 10.6 Snow Leopard

The setup for Apple Mail will just be the same as it would be for any other IMAP client that you have configured to your server.