Issues and impressions

[rajahd]

Installed .78 and so far it's head and shoulders above the last version (pre .5x) I tried. However, I'm still running into several issues.
1. During the initial setup I tried to enter all of my accounts one after the other. Unfortunately, as soon as it started syncing the first account I couldn't save a new account until that sync was complete (an error would pop up). Once the sync was done I could then save the new account, which would start syncing and prevent me from adding the next and so on.
2. The sync time is abysmal. I'm on the same gigabit LAN as the e-mail server. On the first account I had 6k messages ringing in at around 40MB and it took over 30 minutes to complete. On my largest account with some 150MB of messages (including attachments) it fails to complete. I just get the red circle with the exclamation point - no error message that I can find and clicking "Get Mail" doesn't do anything. It also kills off the connection for all other accounts. The other accounts can be converted back to online by clicking "Get Mail". Resetting the failed account will cause it to start over, get to some unknown point, and fail again.
3. When the sync fails the folder list disappears for that account. The only way to get it back is to close the deskop application and restart it.
4. Is there no way to reorder the accounts? It's not in the order I entered them, or even alphabetically. I would really like to have my primary account on top, followed by lesser used accounts.
5. The accounts frequently seem to lose connection. Again no error that I can find reported, just the red circle exclamation point. Sometimes "Get Mail" will reconnect, other times it won't. I can access the accounts via the web GUI just fine regardless of the status in Zdesktop.
6. The reading pane won't stay off! Intermittently on any given account it will come back on. I haven't found a pattern to this but it's very annoying as I hate reading panes.
On the plus side, the multi-account features look like exactly what I want. If I can just get all my accounts to sync I may stick with Zdesktop.

[jjzhuang]

Hi, thanks for providing detailed feedbacks! Please see my comments inline.
[quote user="rajahd"]

1. During the initial setup I tried to enter all of my accounts one after the other. Unfortunately, as soon as it started syncing the first account I couldn't save a new account until that sync was complete (an error would pop up). Once the sync was done I could then save the new account, which would start syncing and prevent me from adding the next and so on.

[/QUOTE]
This is a surprise. All the mailboxes run on their own and we do this all the time. Either your box is already running at high cpu and appears to not responding to creating new accounts, or we have a bug we can't reproduce. We'll keep an eye on this issue.
[quote user="rajahd"]

2. The sync time is abysmal. I'm on the same gigabit LAN as the e-mail server. On the first account I had 6k messages ringing in at around 40MB and it took over 30 minutes to complete. On my largest account with some 150MB of messages (including attachments) it fails to complete. I just get the red circle with the exclamation point - no error message that I can find and clicking "Get Mail" doesn't do anything. It also kills off the connection for all other accounts. The other accounts can be converted back to online by clicking "Get Mail". Resetting the failed account will cause it to start over, get to some unknown point, and fail again.

[/QUOTE]
Then you are probably running 4.5 ZCS server. Internally at Zimbra many of us have mailboxes as large as 5GB to 10GB, and even those can finish sync within a few hours with decent connection. That's because internally we are all running 5.0 servers and zdesktop does batch sync with 5.0 server. With 4.5 servers however it can only sync one message a time, which kills performance. Once your server is upgraded to 5.0, you'll get a boost in performance.
[quote user="rajahd"]

3. When the sync fails the folder list disappears for that account. The only way to get it back is to close the deskop application and restart it.

[/QUOTE]
This is a known issue that we are actively working on. Will provide an update soon.
[quote user="rajahd"]

4. Is there no way to reorder the accounts? It's not in the order I entered them, or even alphabetically. I would really like to have my primary account on top, followed by lesser used accounts.

[/QUOTE]
Currently no reordering. If it's important to you please file a ticket in bugzilla.
[quote user="rajahd"]

5. The accounts frequently seem to lose connection. Again no error that I can find reported, just the red circle exclamation point. Sometimes "Get Mail" will reconnect, other times it won't. I can access the accounts via the web GUI just fine regardless of the status in Zdesktop.

[/QUOTE]
If connection is lost, you should see a red square. When you see a red circle exclamation point, it means there's an actual error, not just connectivity issue. Please see if you can find any errors in the logs under /log/.
[quote user="rajahd"]

6. The reading pane won't stay off! Intermittently on any given account it will come back on. I haven't found a pattern to this but it's very annoying as I hate reading panes.

[/QUOTE]
This is a known issue. It will be addressed before GA.

[rajahd]

Thanks for the information. You're right, I'm on FOSS 4.5.10 but plan to upgrade to 5.x when a few more of the known issues are addressed. That speed boost will be great. Perhaps item #1 is related to that as well and accounts for not being able to reproduce it internally.
I will also take your advice about filing a ticket under BugZilla for reordering.
The log file is full of errors. An example is:

[quote]

com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapFaultException: no such folder id: 31002

ExceptionId:mycomputer:btpool0-96:1202423054828:ff8715d236d8288f

Code:mail.NO_SUCH_FOLDER

at com.zimbra.common.soap.Soap12Protocol.soapFault(Soap12Protocol.java:99)

at com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapTransport.extractBodyElement(SoapTransport.java:243)

at com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapTransport.parseSoapResponse(SoapTransport.java:219)

at com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapHttpTransport.invoke(SoapHttpTransport.java:251)

at com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapTransport.invoke(SoapTransport.java:295)

at com.zimbra.common.soap.SoapTransport.invokeWithoutSession(SoapTransport.java:282)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.OfflineMailbox.sendRequest(OfflineMailbox.java:649)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.OfflineMailbox.sendRequest(OfflineMailbox.java:630)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.OfflineMailbox.sendRequest(OfflineMailbox.java:626)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.PushChanges.pushSimpleChanges(PushChanges.java:694)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.PushChanges.sync(PushChanges.java:221)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.PushChanges.sync(PushChanges.java:141)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailboxSync.sync(MailboxSync.java:125)

at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.OfflineMailbox.sync(OfflineMailbox.java:107)

at com.zimbra.cs.service.offline.OfflineSync.handle(OfflineSync.java:44)

at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatchRequest(SoapEngine.java:347)

at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:213)

at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:118)

at com.zimbra.soap.SoapServlet.doPost(SoapServlet.java:272)

at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727)

at com.zimbra.cs.servlet.ZimbraServlet.service(ZimbraServlet.java:175)

at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820)

at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder.handle(ServletHolder.java:487)

at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:362)

at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)

at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:181)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:716)

at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:406)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.handle(ContextHandlerCollection.java:211)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection.handle(HandlerCollection.java:114)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:139)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.RewriteHandler.handle(RewriteHandler.java:176)

at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:139)

at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:313)

at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:506)

at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.content(HttpConnection.java:844)

at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:644)

at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:211)

at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:381)

at org.mortbay.io.nio.SelectChannelEndPoint.run(SelectChannelEndPoint.java:396)

at org.mortbay.thread.BoundedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(BoundedThreadPool.java:442)

[/quote]
Other examples (just snippets instead of the full error) are:

[quote]2008-02-07 16:22:11,015 WARN [sync-timer-dir] [] offline - SoapFaultException: invalid attr name: [LDAP: error code 17 - zimbraPrefOpenMailInNewWindow: attribute type undefined][/quote]

[quote]2008-02-07 16:13:43,046 WARN [sync-timer-me@domain.com] [] offline - push: failed batch update of 3526; fall back to itemized push[/quote]

[quote]2008-02-07 16:07:09,562 WARN [sync-timer-dir] [] misc - checkValue: no attribute info for: zimbraFeatureBriefcasesEnabled

2008-02-07 16:07:10,203 DEBUG [sync-timer-dir] [] offline - dsync: synchronized account: me@domain.com

2008-02-07 16:07:10,218 ERROR [sync-timer-dir] [] offline - sync failure: me@domain.com

[/quote]
Would it be helpful to e-mail the log file in?
Thanks again.

[rajahd]

Round 2:
* Sometimes messages won't get flagged as read. I'm not using the reading pane. I double click a message and it pops up. When I close the message, it's no longer bold in the list, but sometimes the # of unread messages doesn't go down. When this happens to a specific account, right-clicking and marking all as read will not clear the unread message count, nor will "Get Mail" affect it. Only closing Zdesktop and reopening restores the proper behavior.
* According to the known issues the Zimlets section only shows up on the first account in the list. However, the Zimlets shown do not correspond to the Zimlets on the server. How do I get rid of them?
* When Zdesktop opens a new window (for reading a message or composing a new one) it's the same size as the main window was when Zdesktop was launched. If you resize and/or reposition the pop-up, Zdesktop will use the new dimensions/position when opening new windows until you close Zdesktop at which point it discards this information and reverts back to the "full size" pop-up window when Zdesktop is restarted.
* Why does the pop-up window of a message not have all the appropriate button functions of the main window? Reply, Reply to All, Forward, Delete, and Junk should be available for popped up messages.
* Is there some reason the system doesn't immediately send an e-mail when it's online instead of waiting for the next sync? I could see being at a hotspot and easily forgetting to "Get Mail" to force the send before leaving.
* I couldn't find any incoming mail notification options. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this would be a fundamental feature one would look for in a client side app.
* I don't see a good way in the interface to tell if you have unread e-mail other than checking each account individually. Maybe this is a wish-list item but I would find it helpful if each account's section bar in the Outlook style navigation area had the number of unread messages in it.
* Are there any plans to have Zdesktop be able to field "mailto:" links?
As always please don't take these comments/questions as an attack on the product. I simply pose this information in an effort to help Zdesktop become useful to as broad a base of users as possible. I look forward to seeing the GA product!

[jjzhuang]

[quote user="rajahd"]

Would it be helpful to e-mail the log file in?

[/QUOTE]
Yes please email to me directly to jjzhuang@zimbra.com
Thanks!

[jjzhuang]

[quote user="rajahd"]Round 2:
* Sometimes messages won't get flagged as read. I'm not using the reading pane. I double click a message and it pops up. When I close the message, it's no longer bold in the list, but sometimes the # of unread messages doesn't go down. When this happens to a specific account, right-clicking and marking all as read will not clear the unread message count, nor will "Get Mail" affect it. Only closing Zdesktop and reopening restores the proper behavior.

[/QUOTE]
This sounds like a UI refresh issue. It may be related to instant update being turned off for the release. We are actively working on a follow up to re-enable instant update. Hope that addresses the issue.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* According to the known issues the Zimlets section only shows up on the first account in the list. However, the Zimlets shown do not correspond to the Zimlets on the server. How do I get rid of them?

[/QUOTE]
There's no sync of zimlets. Zimlets are pieces of code. You can think of them as plugins to software. Zimlets available on server are installed to that server. zdesktop comes with its own set of zimlets. This behavior is by design.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* When Zdesktop opens a new window (for reading a message or composing a new one) it's the same size as the main window was when Zdesktop was launched. If you resize and/or reposition the pop-up, Zdesktop will use the new dimensions/position when opening new windows until you close Zdesktop at which point it discards this information and reverts back to the "full size" pop-up window when Zdesktop is restarted.

[/QUOTE]
Which platform are you on? It sounds like the setting caching is not working.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* Why does the pop-up window of a message not have all the appropriate button functions of the main window? Reply, Reply to All, Forward, Delete, and Junk should be available for popped up messages.

[/QUOTE]
This is by design. It's not specific to zdesktop, as zdesktop shares UI code with ZCS 5.0 UI. There's a ticket open to change the design to add the buttons.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* Is there some reason the system doesn't immediately send an e-mail when it's online instead of waiting for the next sync? I could see being at a hotspot and easily forgetting to "Get Mail" to force the send before leaving.

[/QUOTE]
It actually does send immediately. The reason you feel it doesn't is because again we turned off instant UI update in the release. Once instant update is back on, you'll see outgoing messages gets sent right away.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* I couldn't find any incoming mail notification options. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this would be a fundamental feature one would look for in a client side app.

[/QUOTE]
Yeah definitely. It's on our wish list.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* I don't see a good way in the interface to tell if you have unread e-mail other than checking each account individually. Maybe this is a wish-list item but I would find it helpful if each account's section bar in the Outlook style navigation area had the number of unread messages in it.

[/QUOTE]
Yup, also already on wish list.
[quote user="rajahd"]

* Are there any plans to have Zdesktop be able to field "mailto:" links?

[/QUOTE]
No plans yet, but good point. I'll add that to wish list as well.
[quote user="rajahd"]

As always please don't take these comments/questions as an attack on the product. I simply pose this information in an effort to help Zdesktop become useful to as broad a base of users as possible. I look forward to seeing the GA product!

[/QUOTE]
Of course. We always welcome any suggestions and comments. Thanks!

[rajahd]

[quote user="jjzhuang"]Yes please email to me directly to jjzhuang@zimbra.com
Thanks![/QUOTE]
I ran into lots of lockups and other problems so I reinstalled Zdesktop. The uninstall deleted the existing log files which I didn't think to copy off first. On the good side, the reinstall seems to have solved the intermittent connection issues. There are still many soap exceptions showing in the log files so I'll shoot you what I have soon.

[rajahd]

[quote user="jjzhuang"]zdesktop comes with its own set of zimlets. This behavior is by design.[/quote]

Can I read into that there is no way to disable one or all zimlets in Zdesktop?
[quote user="jjzhuang"][quote user="rajahd"]If you resize and/or reposition the pop-up, Zdesktop will use the new dimensions/position when opening new windows until you close Zdesktop at which point it discards this information and reverts back to the "full size" pop-up window when Zdesktop is restarted.[/quote]Which platform are you on? It sounds like the setting caching is not working.[/quote]

Windows XP. I've verified the issue is still happening even after reinstalling.
[quote user="jjzhuang"][quote user="rajahd"]Why does the pop-up window of a message not have all the appropriate button functions of the main window?[/quote]This is by design. It's not specific to zdesktop, as zdesktop shares UI code with ZCS 5.0 UI. There's a ticket open to change the design to add the buttons.[/quote]

In the Zimbra Web GUI with the reading pane off, double clicking a message brings the message up in the content area replacing the message list. Why is this behavior not the same in Zdesktop?
I noticed an anomaly which has probably already been reported but just in case thought I'd mention it here. Turn off "Double-click opens message in new window" is in the Preferences->Mail. Then double click a message. In the upper left corner a over the "Zimbra" logo a horizontal bar control appears which you can't get rid of except by closing and reopening Zdesktop.
Thanks again for the responses and help.

[jjzhuang]

Usually there's no reason to disable a particular zimlet. If you don't need it just don't use it. Their existence don't cause any harm. Could you tell me why you need to disable them?
Regarding the preference issue, are you using it with multiple mailboxes? Currently there is no way to change multi-mailbox UI preferences. That is a known issue and will be addressed before GA. If however you are running a single mailbox, then that's a bug.

[Klug]

[quote user="rajahd"]Windows XP. I've verified the issue is still happening even after reinstalling.[/quote]

Same "issue" with a french Vista.
The thing that annoys me is that zDesktop did sync my "emailed contacts" (and main contact list) but it not using them to autocomplete.

I had a quick look to the preferences but found nothing about it.
Héhé, this is my 1000th post