GroupWise 7 Beta Impressions

I’ve got a working GroupWise 7 Beta server running in Engineering. I have an OES Linux server configured in VMWare to host the server, and then I have one NLD 9 client and one Windows 2000 client in VMWare sessions for the client side.

I’ve played with several components including the Linux server agents for the MTA, the POA, GWIA, WebAccess and Messenger, all of which we currently use in Version 6.5 on NetWare 6.5. I’ve also installed and used ConsoleOne with the GroupWise snapins on Linux and Windows. I’ve tested the GroupWise and Messenger clients on both Windows and Linux desktops.

First, the Linux agents are dead easy to setup if you have any GroupWise experience and a little Linux knowhow. I expect the NetWare agents would be similar in the installation process as previous versions. I have no experience with GroupWise server components on Windows servers so I can’t comment on them. The server stuff requires that you have ConsoleOne installed for Linux in order to set up GroupWise if you want to run the Linux agents. You can run the agents in interactive mode, so that they have a user interface like they do on NetWare if you want, but the default execution mode for the Linux agents is as headless daemon processes started by the Linux init mechanism. You should enable the web management consoles of the server pieces if you want to be able to know what’s going on with them while running as daemons.

The client on Windows has been modified to look more “Outlook-ish”, which I don’t particularly care for. You can fairly easily get it to look like version 6.5 though, which simplfies a transition for users of previous verions. You can even push this default appearance setting from the server side if you wish. There are a few nice new features of the client besides the silly appearance changes. If you use Novell Messenger, the GroupWise client has Messenger integration including presence detection in GroupWise. You can open a received email and on the From field, there is a little icon that shows you if the other person is online in Messenger. The client now also respects mailbox size limitations in caching mode, which is a welcome change. Previously it only supported size limits in online mode and in WebAccess. A third useful change is that the administrator can configure distribution lists to be managed by end users right in the GroupWise client for Windows. That will make it much simpler for us to manage our engineering discipline distribution lists.

The Linux client looks much the same as in version 6.5 and doesn’t have the silly colourful “Playskool” type interface that the Windows client has. It does get spell checking and rules editing, so Linux users will be happy with that. The Linux client can’t modify system distribution list memberships even if the user has been granted the privileges necessary.

The WebAccess client gets the biggest makeover, with a totally new interface that is much more visually appealing and simpler to use. Following the trend of Google in adding rich client functionality in web applications, Novell has added a lot of functionality in the WebAccess client, including drag-and-drop message filing.

One shortcoming popped up that I noticed: You can’t edit the administrators of a distribution list in ConsoleOne under Linux. That tab of the properties book of distribution lists is missing in Linux. You can do this in Windows in ConsoleOne, so I expect the plugins with that functionality for ConsoleOne in Linux just aren’t ready yet. Also, if you are planning to take any of the GroupWise 7 components for a spin, note that as with previous upgrades of GroupWise, the new client (version 7) can’t talk to previous versions of the server’s post office agent (version 6.5 or older). You must have a version 7 post office to use the version 7 client.

I have a custom tool called MailSaver, which is a snap-in to the Windows version of the GroupWise client that lets users save messages as text files along with attachments in bulk all at once. It’s written with the GroupWise Object API and the C3PO API to integrate directly into the client. I haven’t written anything for Linux to do this because the Object API, which has always been necessary to talk directly to the message store on a GroupWise server, was part of the Windows client. This new version of GroupWise has another access method for third-party software: A SOAP interface in the POA. Using the SOAP interface, you can write software that talks directly to the GroupWise message store without needing custom libraries to be installed locally. That means that I will be able to write a stand-alone version of MailSaver that will run under Mono in both Widows and Linux, with matching functionality for both platforms. I’ve been looking forward to being able to do that since I heard about it in 2004 at Brainshare.

I for one am looking forward to deploying this once it is stable. I expect to be installing it when service pack 1 comes out, just because we are paranoid about stability.