May 2020 Zeta Alliance Weekly Call Summaries

[rleiker]

Hello Zimbra Community,

Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders:

• Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance
• Each week’s call agenda can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUU ... Ww2fY/edit
• Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome.

May 5, 2020 Conference Call Summary

Zimbra Connect Bug Fixes
Cine said the Zimbra Connect bugs reported earlier by Randy L. (http://forums.zimbra.com/viewtopic.php? ... 55#p296592) have been fixed and should appear in a Zimbra patch to be released soon. Randy asked if these fixes would be released as part of 8.8.15 Patch 10 and 9.0 Patch 3, but Cine was unsure of the release schedule.

Zimbra 9.0 Patch 2 Released
Cine reported that Patch 2 for 9.0 has been released: https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zimbra_Releases/9.0.0/P2 .

Patch Release Schedule
Mark S. asked about the anticipated timing of when patches will normally be released for 8.8.15 and 9.0. John H. said the next patch for 8.8.15 is unofficially estimated to become available in about 2 weeks. Mark commented that it appears that patches for 8.8.15 and 9.0 are now being released on a 4 week cycle, with the patches for 8.8.15 and 9.0 being released about 2 weeks apart from each other. John E. followed up on an earlier concern expressed by Zimbra Partners on the call related to visibility in to which fixes will be included in upcoming patches. He said he is working with an internal team at Synacor to try and establish an advance preview of the release notes for the patches, which will is anticipated to be posted to the Partner Portal.

New Exchange ActiveSync 16 Support in Zimbra
Noah P. said he installed 8.8.15 Patch 9 recently and expected to see support for Exchange ActiveSync versions 16 and 16.1 in the Zimbra Administration Console in the Home > Network Modules NG > Mobile section, but only saw support for up to version 14.1. Cine said that while support for ActiveSync 16 and 16.1 are currently in beta, it should be available in 8.8.15 Patch 9. He suggested refreshing the Mobile settings page in the Administration Console, as it may just be an instance of the web browser showing cached content.

Cine explained that ActiveSync 16 is expected to work far better than ActiveSync 14 with respect to less problems occurring with calendar synchronization. He also said that ActiveSync 16 includes support for including attachments in calendar appointments and the ability to synchronize the email drafts folder. For a summary of features in all ActiveSync versions, refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_ ... nc#History .

Upgrading/Downgrading ActiveSync Versions
Cine explained that earlier versions of ActiveSync required manually removing an Exchange account from a phone/tablet and re-adding the account in order to upgrade to a newer ActiveSync version, since the server’s capabilities and supported ActiveSync version were normally checked only once by a phone/tablet, when the Exchange account was first configured. He said that in later versions, starting with ActiveSync 14, phones/tablets will now routinely check for newer versions of ActiveSync on the Zimbra server and switch to 16 or newer automatically, if 16 is also enabled on the Zimbra server, which then makes new ActiveSync features available to clients. Randy L. asked if there had been any changes to the existing recommendation to run ActiveSync 2.5 for Samsung devices. Cine said that more testing for Samsung devices is needed yet to determine if Samsung devices can be moved to a newer version of ActiveSync without stability problems appearing.

Mark S. asked what happens if a Zimbra administrator sets the global maximum ActiveSync version to 16 or newer for all client devices, but then begins receiving reports of synchronization issues from clients, which results in needing to roll back to an earlier global ActiveSync version. Cine said that testing to-date shows the Gmail client app on Android devices seems to be able to downgrade without issue, but the native Mail app on iOS devices seem to have trouble making this downgrade without requiring the Exchange account to be removed and re-added to recover. Cine suggested proceeding carefully with upgrading the global ActiveSync version on a Zimbra server, and suggested using the ActiveSync filter feature built-in to Zimbra to target specific phones/tablets with newer ActiveSync versions for testing, rather than introducing new ActiveSync versions as a global setting roll out for all users simultaneously.

Zimbra Connect Client Apps
A new call participant, Robert W. introduced himself. He asked about the status of Zimbra-branded apps designed to work with Zimbra Connect, aside from the Zextras-branded Team app. John H. said that at this time, no client apps for Zimbra Connect are available. Robert said that this makes Connect difficult to sell to his customers. Mark S. suggested that we might see a future integration of the Qumu product line in to Zimbra, from the recent Synacor merger with Qumu, which could offer the requested client apps in the future.

Zimbra 9 Administration Console and Modern UI Questions
Robert W. asked about the status of updating the message count/volume reports that rely on Flash in the Zimbra Administration Console in version 9.0, since Flash support is being dropped by all web browser makers by the end of the year. John E. & John H. said that a replacement for the Flash-based reports is in the works, but they could not comment further with specifics.

Robert asked if in the Zimbra 9 Modern UI, there is a means to determine if an email message has been replied to or forwarded, similar to the Classic UI, as this appears to be missing. He also said that the Modern UI does not appear to be able to display more than 50 mailbox folders. John E. said that he thinks this issue has already been addressed, along with another related issue pertaining to nested folders that could not be accessed, which is likely to be available in a future patch.

Robert reported that in the Zimbra 9 Modern UI, he could not find a way to attach files to an email message from his local computer’s drive, although he could successfully attach files from Zimbra Drive, Dropbox, and other sources. John E. said that this is a known bug and is scheduled to be fixed very soon. Mark S. offered an overview explanation of how Zimbra handles bug reports/fixes, and suggested that Robert open support cases for these bugs to ensure they are officially brought to Zimbra’s attention.

Email Tracking in Zimbra 9
Robert said that the option to request delivery receipts in the Zimbra 9 Modern UI does not appear to be available, but noted that read-receipts are available. He said that in the UK, delivery-receipts are important. He also said that delivery receipts do not appear to work in Outlook. John H. said the challenge with delivery receipts is that recipients can and often do disable them for privacy and security reasons. Randy L. suggested that Robert could look in to Rmail.com for a Zimbra and Outlook plug-in that offers expanded delivery tracking functionality.

Zimbra Docs Server Upgrades & Document Previews
Robert asked how to update the Zimbra Docs server. Cine explained it involves downloading the latest Docs version from https://www.zimbra.com/downloads/zimbra-docs/, then spinning up the new Docs server, usually as a VM, followed by deleting the old Docs server being replaced. He said that the Docs server is designed to operate as a mostly black-box server requiring minimal configuration. He also mentioned that Zimbra is investigating the option to be able to perform future in-place upgrades of a Docs server by upgrading the LibreOffice packages included within the Docs server. However, this may not be practical, as LibreOffice often introduces breaking changes between versions.

Robert also asked about the document preview feature in Zimbra 9’s Modern UI for email attachments and for Zimbra Docs, when viewing documents from Zimbra Drive. He said that the previews for email attachments and Docs did not appear to be working. John E. said that document previews in email should be working, and that it uses an embedded viewer in Zimbra, apart from the Zimbra Docs server, which is normally used with Zimbra Drive. He suggested that Robert open a Zimbra support cases for additional assistance.

[DualBoot]

Hello,

why talking about Zimbra 9 ? The community version should be the 8.8.15 unless I miss an episode of the serie "how to make a close source program and involve the community" ?

Regards,

[phoenix]

why talking about Zimbra 9 ?

For the simple reason that these forums are for the OSS & NE user Community, the word community in this sense does not exclude users of the NE edition of Zimbra.

[DualBoot]

From my own opinion, it was making sense before they close source some part of the code like the New UI.
Now, I am asking my self about it. And as you can see I am very disappointed from Synacor. How to help the community without the ability to install and test a product with the constraint of a limited time or without paying a license which is for some people too expsensive for one account. In my job, I always prefer to indicate to my customer to use a Network Edition even if the last years Zimbra support has terribly decreased their quality.

Regards,

[phoenix]

I would agree with your sentiments about Synacor as I've made clear on these forums many times but these forums never have been, nor ever will be, exclusively for the OSS users of Zimbra. FWIW, the NE edition has features that are closed source. In any case, what happens if an NE user comes to the forums asking a question about an 'open source' feature, do we exclude them from the forums? I, for one, do not believe in that approach and it's not what these forums are about nor have they ever been like that.

BTW, as far as I know the ZCS 9 version still has the thirty day trial licence so you could always use that to test that version.

[DualBoot]

what happens if an NE user comes to the forums asking a question about an 'open source' feature, do we exclude them from the forums?

You're absolutely right about this point.

BTW, as far as I know the ZCS 9 version still has the thirty day trial licence so you could always use that to test that version.

As I wrote trial version has a limited time, and "working" for community should not depend on this parameter. I offer my time and I do not want to work under time pressure. I know there were already some of the part which were only available for NE, but the UI is something that each version should have by default not only related to NE. UI is the first thing a user sees which is an important part when you want people to adopt something.

[phoenix]

I offer my time and I do not want to work under time pressure.

Don't we all?

...but the UI is something that each version should have by default not only related to NE. UI is the first thing a user sees which is an important part when you want people to adopt something.

That's a different point to your original comment and I'd fully support getting that available for the OSS version but the problem is the fact that there is no involvement from Synacor in any of these forums and any involvement from 'Zimbra' staff is limited as I've complained about long and bitterly. Synacor does not 'get' nor understand what a valuable asset they're wasting here and it seems they don't care so what I or others can do is strictly limited.

For example, I've been a moderator here since 2005 and when Zimbra was sold to yahoo I received a personal telephone call from a Zimbra VP telling me about this before the announcement was made. In addition, and for many years, moderators were given an NE licence (for 10-20 users, I can't remember the exact number) so we could help with NE questions and as a 'thank you' from the company - these have gone by the board since Synacor purchased Zimbra. That shows me that the attitude of Synacor is to ignore these forums in the hope they'll eventually fade away.

[DualBoot]

In addition, and for many years, moderators were given an NE licence (for 10-20 users, I can't remember the exact number)

You're lucky, no one at Zimbra offer me a free of charge license as I am the moderator of the french Zimbra Forum here https://zimbrafr.org since 2009 ...

[rleiker]

You may be surprised to hear it, but there are many Zimbra service providers (BSPs) running the NE version of Zimbra that feel similarly to the comments you have both posted here. It has been a topic discussed on quite a few of our Zeta Alliance calls lately, and there have been additional private discussions between BSPs about how to approach this ongoing concern with Synacor, among other Zimbra product issues.

One area that we are starting to see some progress on is the involvement of Synacor employees on these forums. Barry de Graaff, who is both a Synacor employee and co-founder of the Zeta Alliance, recently announced during one of our April calls that he will be more active on the forums very soon, perhaps as early as this month. You may also have noticed in the April call summary forum topic that John Eastman, another Synacor employee who normally works with Zimbra partners, expressed his willingness to listen to anyone with Zimbra product concerns. From what has been shared on the calls, there are internal political pressures within Synacor that apparently prevent employees from more freely engaging in discussions on the forums.

[phoenix]

From what has been shared on the calls, there are internal political pressures within Synacor that apparently prevent employees from more freely engaging in discussions on the forums.

My questions to that comment is why is there 'political pressure' and what are they frightened of? Obviously that's not directed at you but for me I cannot for one moment see where the downside is in Synacor engaging in these forums or allowing their employees to participate here. As far as I can see it would be a win-win situation and they might even get more customers for the NE edition and certainly a lot of Brownie points for helping to promote a great OS product.

The irony of their stance is that they're all too willing to use (free) Open Source software to make money but not willing to engage with a community that's willing to help them promote their product by being their unpaid advocates. Don't get me wrong, I think Zimbra is a great product and I'll continue to use it as my mail server but a lack of clarity and insight to the bug reporting system just cripples us from helping in improving their products.