Strict Threading (Conversations)

[david]

For what I can see on the hosted demo and on my own installation, Zimbra uses the same approach of Microsoft Outlook to create "conversations" (message threading), which is to based a relationship on the subject line. That is very inaccurate, extremely. People who might use the same subject over and over --on completely different emails, different conversations-- will see their messages "tangled" with others.

Please, use message-id, in-reply-to and reference for threading. In other words, please, please, make threading strict.

[KevinH]

Thanks for the note David. Zimbra use's the subject and a date range to create our conversations. Your right that this does cause a few improper groupings. There is at least one open issue on that:

http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5935

Technically speaking we'd need to store a bit more data in the database to make conversations based something more that subject and date. At this time we don't have to store *all* the headers in the database, so this would increase the complexity a little.

[david]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Thanks for the note David. Zimbra use's the subject and a date range to create our conversations. Your right that this does cause a few improper groupings. There is at least one open issue on that:

http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5935

Yes, that bugtrak entry says it right. I added my bit as well.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Technically speaking we'd need to store a bit more data in the database to make conversations based something more that subject and date. At this time we don't have to store *all* the headers in the database, so this would increase the complexity a little.

Yes, the headers message-id, in-reply-to, references and I think there is another one, that escapes my mind now. Only by checking those one can create a truly conversation relationship.

[Verbunk]

Hi Guys,

Sorry to intrude but how do I 'ungroup' messages?

Background: I'm a home user so to transfer my mails from my collective imap accounts I needed to boot up Thunderbird and setup the imap accounts and just drag and drop using the builtin imap of zimbra; I also had fetchmail grab my pop mails from gmail etc. This created many incorrect groupings (like my employer and mum in an email where friends were setting time for the pub, defintely not correct).

Question 1: So is there a way to make Zimbra take a second look at the groupings or to selectively remove email members from the group?

I know I can choose to not use grouping features but they are usually really handy.

Wish Item 1: Grouping would be much more powerful if the replies were stripped out of the emails. Example, The third time respond there exists my initial email, their reply, my reply, and their last reply's text in the latest email. Rather than the text all following the latest email it would be nice if Zimbra would strip out all but the latest text and format it like a chat log. This may be an easy problem since most clients add unique formatting marks to replied to text. Zimbra is an 'email solution' but it doesn't have to follow the conventional clunky nature of past email clients. What do people think?

[KevinH]

This created many incorrect groupings (like my employer and mum in an email where friends were setting time for the pub, defintely not correct).

Did those both have the same subject? If not seem you hit a bug. Can you post an example?

For your wishlist items feel free to post those into bugzilla.

[Verbunk]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Did those both have the same subject? .

I don't know if it's a bug or not, they were just 'Re:' 's etc that were put in automatically by the mailclient b/c a topic was not initially set. Unfortunately now I have (I estimate) over 100 emails in the group with subject Re: and more like '(no subject)' '<no subject>' 'hi' and every other common subject you can think of. To make matters worse, when fetchmail (I used the howto for aggregation as described in the forum) grabbed my emails from my various pop accounts every email has the same time stamp as being recieved on that day.

I don't mind waiting if implementing the fix to Bugzilla Bug 5935 will cause Zimbra to go through and regroup messages.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by Verbunk

I don't mind waiting if implementing the fix to Bugzilla Bug 5935 will cause Zimbra to go through and regroup messages.

That would be a separate request, we currently have the ability to re-index the mailbox but it doesn't also redo the conversation grouping.

[Verbunk]

Alrighty then, this is bug > enhancement #6528

http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6528