Question re Public Folders: Zimbra / Exchange Coexistance

[pat_allen]

Good morning!

I'm trying to get a handle on what a migration might look like if we select Zimbra as an alternative to our current Exchange 2003 environment. First, we would have a pilot with a subset of users and then a migration that would probably take a month or so.

Currently I've got Zimbra set up in our test lab in a split domain configuration. Mail flow between Zimbra and Exchange is working like a charm so I'm not really worried about that during this extended pilot and migration. What I'm concerned about is public folders. We use them a lot in our Exchange environment for project and resource calendars. I've modeled that in Zimbra using a hierarchy of shared calendars which I've mounted to the user accounts. (Very cool!) But is there any way to keep the data in sync between the two systems while the pilot and migration is underway?

Both the public folder on Exchange and the shared calendar on Zimbra are mail enabled. Can you send email updates between the two so that when one is updated it shows up on the other? I see the "Forward calendar invitations to these addresses" in the account properties; will that forward calendar requests to the public folders? Is there a similar function in Exchange that I'm not seeing without enabling moderation?

Thanks!
Pat

[cjasonw]

Pat,

I'm currently looking at implementing Zimbra in a configuration exactly as you describe. Public folders are a worry of mine as well, so I'm very curious to see what answers you receive.

How have you seen free/busy working between environments? Is the interoperation between Zimbra and Exchange "invisible" to your end users?

Thanks,
Jason

[momohteks]

Hi folks,
Any answers ont thaht? I'm faced to that exact scenario, and can't figure out how to maintain public folder in sync with shared calendars or shared contacts.

Thanks for any help.

[batfastad]

For the calendar side of things what would be really good is if you could have some sort of 2-way CalDAV sync going on between Zimbra and Exchange.
But I believe Zimbra only does 1-way sync with CalDAV at this stage... it's a CalDAV server but not client.
Not sure about CalDAV support in Exchange though.

We also had a very extensive Exchange Public Folder system but mainly mail items. We migrated from SBS 2003 to Zimbra last year and I've been able to get close to the same level of usability. I have an account called shared@domain.com which exports all shared resources.
But from an admin perspective there's a few annoying bugs/RFEs that I'd love to see implemented in Zimbra's sharing to make it equivalent to Exchange...
Bug 16411 – RFE: Bold/Italicize parent folder when subfolder contains unread mail
Bug 24567 – Support per-user seen status for shared mail folders
Bug 24727 – Shared mail folder delete warning
Bug 43733 – Can't move subfolders in shared email folder
Bug 49941 – Option to make shares persistent when shared through distribution list, choose mount point name/color ... very important!
It's particularly worrying that a user can delete the entire shared mail heirarchy, it goes to their trash, then if they empty trash... it's gone.

Sorry to have not been of more help on the calendar sync thing though.