I just did a test install of Imail
2006 as an upgrade of an 8.22 server. I use ODBC to SQL server for my
user database as I have Imail integrated with my portal. I made a
second copy of my database on a test server, copied all the Imail 8.22
files and data to a test server and got it running, then installed 2006
over it essentially upgrading it. It all went very smooth and worked
without problems.
My immediate comment is "Wow". It
is so much better than the 8.x webmail I can't even describe. It adds
much better folder management, an HTML message composer, spell check
that actually works, and a nice modern looking interface. In Imail 8.x
the webmail would mess up long URLs by linking only half of the URL,
and it would screw up display of HTML messages more often than not (and
forget forwarding HTML messages). Now that is all resolved. I love that
the version 8.x mailbox files work in 2006.
Here are the things I noted to be
problems for me:
- There is no PDA mail. There
wasn't before but I had written one using the old template system. I
hope there is one coming as the new templates do not seem to change
friendly.
- Webmail does not have a page
title. It simply says the
http://myip.com/IClient/default.aspx.
The default.aspx page is generated via .net code and I could not find a
way to add a simple title tag to it.
- There is no way for users to see
how much of their disk quota they have used. What is the point of
setting a quota and not showing users how they are doing?Screenshots of
my mail templates are here:
- There is no way to show how many
unread messages there are from outside the mail program. (Similar to
the You've Got Imail addin). I want to have an envelope icon in my
portal and have it indicate if there are unread messages in their
mailbox. I can do this now in 8.x using something like You've Got Imail
did. This is not possible in the 2006. I may have to resort to a 3rd
party asp based imap component.
- There is a user preference to
change the "reply to" address. This actually changes the persons email
address in the Imail database. Problem is if you change your reply to
address you LOSE all of your contacts. Change it, log out, log in and
see for your self.
- Certain features in Web Admin pop
an authentication box. Probably for good reason but it seems like it is
a broken product when it does that from a clean install.
- Contacts are saved in an Access
database. Just seems stupid since my user database is in an SQL Server.
One more thing to get corrupt :)
Anyone using this in production for
>1000 users and having success? Once I find a way to deal with the
above issues I would love to upgrade.
Eric
