State of Universal UI ?

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ZS-Man
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State of Universal UI ?

Post by ZS-Man »

Hi,
what is the state of the Universal UI? Is planed any release in near future?
I plan to update the old version of Zimbra OSE, do I have to wait for the new one? Or it will take a long time to UniversalUI release?

Thanks.
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by phoenix »

The universal UI isn't in the current version of ZCS so I wouldn't hold your breath. Information about product updates and new features is sparse, to say the least, and Zimbra seems to have little inclination to keep it's users up-to-date on future features.
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by yllyxzmz »

Two concerns I have about this --

1. Though I'm disappointed that Universal UI is gone, I read in another thread that there's something else new that may replace it, and someone mentioned it being an NG UI, as in I guess the NG modules? That's uh... fine, I guess, except that as far as I can tell, the NG modules are all paid modules. I think it would be a dramatic statement by Synacor to put the new UI behind a paywall.

2. Phoenix's response concerns me. I know you've been around a long time, and generally positive of Zimbra and its progress. Seeing you frustrated by the situation and lack of info makes me even more nervous.

Our company has used Zimbra for many projects, both NE and OSS, since 2005 with the first beta of ZCS 3.0 milestone 1. It's disappointing to see so little feedback.
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by phoenix »

Yes, I've been using ZCS as long as you have and since the same release version. :)

First the web UI, I don't know where you saw a new name for it but when the test version was finished there was a post that asked for people to join a beta for the next iteration of the UI. I didn't sign up for that and, as you can see, there's zero information or feedback in the forums about it. I guess you can still sign up for it.

As far as the product is concerned I'm still positive about using it, it's the company response (or lack thereof) in these forums that concerns me. Although I've been here for a long time and been a moderator for most of that time my questions to Zimbra (in private) go unanswered or just replies with platitudes. There is also been no person in Zimbra that can be contacted about what's happening and not even a 'community manager', in effect there hasn't been one for years. :( There has even been an appointment of the new VP of Email and Collaboration, his name is Rene Otto and he was appointed in December last year. Not much input from him in the forums.

Enough of my ranting. I don't think the UI will move to a 'paid' product and I haven't read the licence in quite a while but if I remember correctly it's open source in the current versions, I can't believe that Zimbra really would be that foolhardy with the product.
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by L. Mark Stone »

I agree that Zimbra could do a better job of communicating, but as a partner I can tell you that when I ask a question about something I either get a specific answer, or I get a "We are aware, working on it, and I can't tell you anything more." which is fine by me.

Honestly, it's better with LESS communication in many cases; many of us recall mailbox server automated failover being promised for Zimbra 4.5! And then there was "Always On" demoed way too early at the Big Social in 2013 in Texas... At least with less communication we don't make plans based on vaporware...

But as far as the Universal UI goes, I can tell you that the new UI in the next BIG release of Zimbra will be based on https://reactjs.org/. This is totally public info; there's a Zimbra developer's conference in Buffalo later this month that anyone can attend for free to see a preview.

The UniversalUI beta still required, as I understand it, some zimlets to be recoded to work with it. And there's a body of zimlets out there already that are nice, but which haven't been updated for current versions of Zimbra. My speculation therefore is that Synacor didn't want to ask zimlet devs to do double the work in a short period of time. The UniversalUI looks (looked?) very nice, but I personally consider it a nice-to-have, not a must-have. As a partner, I haven't lost any new sales on account of Zimbra's existing UI, and in my previous company, no customer ever walked away from Zimbra on account of the UI. But I have lost sales on account of the current state of the Broadsoft and Salesforce zimlets, and that Zimbra can no longer access Google calendars, so that Zimbra is even having a conference for developers to start coding for the next BIG release is great news.

Hope that helps,
Mark
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by phoenix »

L. Mark Stone wrote:I agree that Zimbra could do a better job of communicating, but as a partner I can tell you that when I ask a question about something I either get a specific answer, or I get a "We are aware, working on it, and I can't tell you anything more." which is fine by me.
Mark, that's all well and good for you but it doesn't really makes sense with regards to these forums and Zimbra's lack of communication. The "we're working on it" has been a recurring theme when I've asked questions about the need to complete a form download the OSS version, what gets posted the other day after a gap of eighteen months oh, "we're working on it" - this simply is just platitudes and not any sort of engagement with the community here.

You're a VAR and you have direct access to Zimbra staff, I'm not in that position and neither are most of the users that visit these forums, we're left to ponder what Zimbra's intention is by the occasional crumb of information they deign to drop on some social media channel or blog post - there's never any interaction with anyone from Zimbra around here. There are even customers posting here about problems with Zimbra when they don't get answers, or acknowledged, by Zimbra support. There are people that post on the online forms trying to purchase the products and no response after two days. Do those comments adequately express the user's frustration with Zimbra and the state of these forums?

Once again we're left without anyone actually responsible for these forums but the recent erstwhile community manager hasn't really been doing anything on the forums for a long time.
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by L. Mark Stone »

Bill,

I don’t disagree with you, which is I opened my reply above acknowledging that Zimbra should do a better job of communicating.

To me, these forums are comparable to the Citrix forums in that they are a community endeavor and not an official support or communications channel.

Citrix staff do participate in the Citrix forums more than Zimbra staff participate here, but not so much more that there aren’t users who complain there about the lack of Citrix corporate involvement periodically.

If Zimbra one day decides to make these forums an official vehicle for communications and support, great. But right now it’s a community supported effort where we can pay it forward and learn in return IMHO.

All the best,
Mark
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by phoenix »

L. Mark Stone wrote:Bill,

I don’t disagree with you, which is I opened my reply above acknowledging that Zimbra should do a better job of communicating.
The point is that there is no communication, at all.
L. Mark Stone wrote:e forums are comparable to the Citrix forums in that they are a community endeavor and not an official support or communications channel.
After being on these forums I think I know that by now.
Citrix staff do participate in the Citrix forums more than Zimbra staff participate here, but not so much more that there aren’t users who complain there about the lack of Citrix corporate involvement periodically.
I'm not talking about these being a 'replacement support' forum I'm talking about there being no interaction with the community whatsoever, a community forum needs to be encouraged and not ignored. They proudly boats about '400 mill OSS mailboxes' in their marketing but don't mention these forums are basically dead.
If Zimbra one day decides to make these forums an official vehicle for communications and support, great.
I'm not saying this should be official support but some interest from Zimbra would go a long way. The requests here are from people that want an answer to their problems that they're not getting via the official support channel. There are also potential customers who ask for information via the online request forms, they don't even get the courtesy of a response after days - is that going to be acceptable for you in your new venture.?
But right now it’s a community supported effort where we can pay it forward and learn in return IMHO.
I don't think I needed to be told that, after thirteen years on the forums I guess by now I've realised that ;)
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by L. Mark Stone »

Hi Bill,

Parts of my response were written for others reading this thread who don't have the long history with Zimbra that you and I have; sorry if you took some of my comments more personally than I intended.

We both agree more participation from Zimbra would be helpful, but I disagree that these forums are dead. There are a number of active users here frequently offering help, and from all the posts I approve, I see a lot of new faces trying Zimbra for the first time (and often making some of the same newbie mistakes I made more than a decade ago when I first started with Zimbra).

I'm glad to be here to help. When I can share things that Zimbra have shared with me that are intended to be public I'm happy to do so. Not sure what else I can say!

All the best,
Mark
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Re: State of Universal UI ?

Post by yllyxzmz »

phoenix wrote: The point is that there is no communication, at all.
I think this is the problem -- an "open core" project has to maintain a careful balance between enthusiasm about the open source core of the project and enough paywalled features (and/or support) to keep revenue flowing. More so probably than fully open source projects, an open core project needs to keep information flowing to the community to keep them on board. I disagree with Mark that no communication is better than wrong communication -- not ALL of the promised features in previous versions ended up as vaporware. A vacuum in an environment like this will foster FUD. A community centered around a single-company open core product needs constant reminders and proof that the "open" part of the project is still important to the company. I've been on the wrong side of that more than once (thanks, Oracle!), so this isn't idle fearmongering. In fact, a company that has plans to neuter the "open" portion of their product usually goes silent.

I also agree that it would be fantastically self destructive for Synacor to put something like the new UI behind a paywall, but when no information is given about a product or feature, all we can do is guess, especially after a precursor version is yanked with little to no explanation. And the little info I saw in the forums had someone referring to the new UI as the "Next Gen UI", as in "NG Module", which are all (as far as I can tell) paid modules. Hopefully that's an unlikely outcome, but I have nothing else to go on.

At any rate, the Zimbra -> Yahoo -> VMWare -> Telligent -> Zimbra -> Synacor (did I miss one?) transitions have been difficult for us longtime users. Synacor should recognize the stress that all those transitions put on their community, since each transition offers an opportunity for the product to go through a Sun -> Oracle style transition, and be that much more conscious of their efforts to reach out to the community. Instead, especially since the Synacor acquisition, gone are all the roadmaps, and the blog is mostly notifications of patch releases and "did you know about this feature Zimbra has had since 2009".

I'm sorry to be so negative about it. I wouldn't care if I didn't love the product. Without additional communication, people will eventually leave due to the uncertainty, even if the current state of the product is good, because they don't know whether they're building on a solid foundation for the future or not.
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