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.
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.