Teaming Up with Zimbra's Collaboration Suite

By: Rob Reilly
Monday, October 24, 2005 01:42:22 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6053/1/

Build It And It Will Be Easier

Email is a pretty mundane topic these days. Since it's so pervasive, the subject is rarely brought up at social gatherings. And, if other email systems work, why switch to anything new?

Zimbra wants to make email easier and more useful. Their collaboration suite aims to do just that.

Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra's CEO, along with CTO Scott Dietzen, led me through an online demo session, so I could report on how the software worked.

Dharmaraj said that Zimbra looked at the pain points for users and administrators. One big hitter was that users spent too much time shuffling messages around. Administrators had the ever escalating challenge of storing and maintaining massive numbers of emails and attachments, for the users.

Possible solutions were spelled out in the company's 'The Top Ten Ways To Fix Email' white paper. Here's a quick overview:

• Self organizing mailboxes - getting rid of the folder habit.
• Active messaging - email content links connect seamlessly to back office applications.
• Extensible 'Integratable' collaboration - let emails also provide services for enterprise applications.
• Self organizing conversations - cut down on manual conversation re-assembly.
• Efficient context switching - make it easier to switch between my email and calendar view.
• Better storage management - increase the sharing of attachments, and cut down on redundant storage.
• Unified search, retention and archiving - make it easier to comply with information retention policies and regulations.
• Integrated Web collaboration technology - roll tools like RSS and Wiki into the collaboration software.
• More server-centric architecture - archiving requirements, multi-client support and faster client/server synchronization are pushing messaging products to be more server-centric.
• Security - do tasks like single sign-on, encryption and virus protection on a server, rather than each individual client machine.

The Zimbra approach keeps track of things in a number of ways. First, it indexes messages and attachments into Apache Lucene. The Linux file system is used for messages (one message per file, which is great for OS utilities and troubleshooting). Everything else, which is mutable meta-data (folders, read/unread, tags, etc.) goes into the MySQL database. This comprehensive model allows ideal optimization for each store--files systems are the best for immutable byte-oriented messages, while SQL databases are best for mutable, structured data. This approach also gives great caching performance, which is a big win for I/O-oriented messaging systems. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is used to create the application and content that is displayed in a client's browser.

Other clients supported by the Zimbra server include Outlook, Evolution, Apple Mail/iCal, Chandler, etc.

By indexing email content, attachments, and associated files of various formats, the program can build queries that connect things together. Take email conversations between colleagues, for example. If all of your emails and their contents are indexed, it's easy to collect and call up the back and forth exchange of information pertaining to a project.

Putting everything in a Zimbra server and Ajax, makes it possible to connect applications to elements of the content. Flying the mouse over a phone number in a mail message, make it possible to dial the phone via an external program like Skype.

Indexing can also help the poor old email administrator. Instead of saving volumes of actual attachments across many email users, links are created to the attachments and a single copy is maintained. Zimbra's smart backup and restore makes it easy for administrators to restore old versions of content, if needed, from any time period.

Another advantage of using a Zimbra back-end, is that programs like AJAX can then be used to construct Web pages that display the content. It also confines any viruses or malware to the server and lowers the possibility of infecting a client machine. Administrators can then automatically deal with the virus at the server level.

Surprises And Features

Surprises can happen in the strangest places.

The Zimbra folks had originally planned a WebEx teleconference for the demo. For various reasons, Mozilla (version 1.7.2-17.12 for the X86_64 architecture) on my SUSE Linux 9.2 Athlon 64 laptop, wouldn't work. I didn't have Java installed or something. Dharmaraj and Dietzen handled the awkward situation by having me log into the hosted demo on the Zimbra Web site. They then walked me through the screens, while we were on the phone. Their confidence and knowledge were reassuring, even though they couldn't always see what I was clicking.

I guess I ought to look into the errant WebEx/Mozilla situation.

In no time, we were back in business.

The three features that I liked the most were roll overs, conversations, and searches.

Roll Overs

The main screen is pretty much like any other browser based mail client. Where it gets interesting is when you roll the mouse over a link. Links displayed in Zimbra are colored blue without an underline. It could be a Web address, a word like 'today' or a phone number.

Rolling over a Web address immediately displays a little thumbnail view of the page. If you roll over the word 'today', while in a mail message, appointments show up in the little floating window.

Hovering over an address in a mail message, brings up something really unique. A little floating window sporting Google Maps, showing the exact location. Now that's something I'd really use.

Zimbra solves the problem of context switching by seamlessly linking content or an application to the on-screen links. Why should you have to click to a contact manager window, just to get a phone number or find out where a business located?

Conversations

Forget about folders--back and forth mail messages are tracked automatically so you know what has been sent and what has been received, during a conversation.

The conversations can span folders. You can still broadly organize messages into folders, if you like.

Conversations save users the trouble of manually organizing their threads. One of the advantages of indexing with MySQL is that Zimbra keeps track of a thread or conversation automatically.

It also makes quick work of creating complicated searches.

Searches

Simple searches can be done using the text box at the top of the Zimbra screen. Punch in a text string, hit the search button and appropriate messages show up at the bottom.

Real search fun begins when you push the Search Builder button, at the upper right.

When you do that, a basic search form appears on the left. You can plug in values for From:, To/cc:, Subject:, and so on.

You can also push the various other search buttons, along the top, to bring up those forms. They include Date, Domains, Folders, and others.

The form approach, coupled with everything being indexed in MySQL make narrowing down a search easy and painless. I can see where this would really help out if you needed to find an obscure message, in a pile of fifty thousand emails.

You can give a search a name and save it for later use, too. Click on the little floppy disk icon at the top and it will put the name under Searches, in the window on the left.

The combination of roll overs, conversations, and enhanced searches will definitely make email more productive.

Wrapping Up

Zimbra seems to have succeeded in addressing most of the issues with today's run of the mill email. Of course, it's impossible to truly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a product in a an hour long demonstration.

The Collaboration Suite also has a calendar and contact list that are tightly integrated with the rest of the Zimbra server. Appointments, dates, names, and addresses are all coordinated across the applications.

The Open Source release came out about three weeks ago. Translations to languages other than English are being developed out in the community.

Medium and large organizations will probably opt for on-premise management of the system, while smaller business would be interested in a hosted management model.

A new networked product will be available around the end of October, offering various support options.

Licensing for the network version is $30 per mailbox per year. The open source release is free.

The current product shows a lot of polish and looks like a solid collaboration system.

Rob Reilly is a consultant, writer, and commentator. He advises clients on a variety of business & technology topics. He is also a Contributing Editor for LinuxToday.com. Send him a note or visit his Web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.