OpenChange 2.0 QUADRANT Released!

Mon Jan 28 18:12:48 MST 2013

The OpenChange project team is proud to announce the release of
OpenChange 2.0 QUADRANT. 

OpenChange is free software, and is the only drop-in replacement for
Microsoft Exchange.

1. Drop-in Compatibility for Microsoft Exchange
===============================================
The OpenChange team has created the first and only compatible Free
Software implementation of Microsoft's Exchange protocols used by
Microsoft Outlook and compatible clients.

OpenChange runs as a service on top of Samba 4.0 Active Directory
compatible server and provides Exchange connectivity to all MAPI
compatible clients. The immediate benefit of OpenChange server is:

"No plugin required for Microsoft Outlook"

Another key feature of OpenChange lies in its capability to plug into
existing infrastructure and makes use of existing reliable services.
OpenChange makes use of your existing messaging server to transmit
(Postfix, Exim4) and deliver (Cyrus SASL or Dovecot) emails. Regarding
common groupware objects such as tasks, appointments and notes, they are
stored in your database server (PostgreSQL, MySQL).

OpenChange server also provides support for Outlook Anywhere, formely
known as RPC over HTTP. This service allows clients using Microsoft
Outlook to connect to their Exchange servers from outside the corporate
network.

2. Perfect software combination
===============================
The best of OpenChange server and its SOGo backend can be obtained using
the following set of softwares:

* openchange 2.0 QUADRANT
* Samba 4.0.1
* SOGo 2.0.4

3.1. New Features
=================
- Outlook AnyWhere (RPC over HTTP) support in OpenChange server
- NTLM automatic negotiation for RoH clients
- AutoDiscovery service implementation "AutoDiscovery Publishing Lookup
Protocol Specification"
- Ability to provision user accounts on Samba servers that are domain
members
- Ability to deprovision openchange schema from Samba4
- Auto provisioning of mailboxes upon first authenticated client
connection
- Auto provisioning of FreeBusy data for the user

3.2. Improvements
=================
- IDL structure renamed to match MS specifications more closely
- support for double type
- move/copy folder support
- cached mode support improvement (FXICS)

3.3. Bug Fixes
==============
314: Fix LZX compression
327: PtypDouble support
352: Update to use real double for PT_DOUBLE in SPropValue_CTR
365: openchange aborts connections with core dump when sending more than
500 connections
381: Can't get a message's PR_ENTRYID from Exchange 2010, works with
2007
389: Fix property count in call to set_SPropTagArray
393: Openchange to SOGo fails
394: Calendar accept fails OUTLOOK
397: Crash under MAPIUninitialize in emsmdb_disconnect_dtor()
398: load_interfaces() clashes with samba's public symbol
407: Segmentation fault in exchange2ical
408: Crash in openchangeclient --sendmail
409: mapitest crashed

4. Known Issues with SOGo backend
=================================
- If you can't see any email's content with Microsoft Outlook 2007,
install the latest Service Pack available from Microsoft's website for
this specific version. Microsoft Outlook 2007 (12.0.6423.100) SP2 MSO
(12.0.6425.1000) is known to work.

- When you create a new Microsoft Outlook profile, not all folders might
be synchronized during the first start. Simply select the appropriate
folder and click “Send and Receive”. Synchronizing a folder may take
some time. For example, a folder with 1000 email messages might take
around 5 minutes based on the underlying hardware.

- Errors when synchronizing the Offline Address Book are normal and can
be ignored for now. This feature is currently not supported.

- If you face strange issues from Microsoft Outlook, you might want to
remove any data associated with the user from the SOGo server and
recreate a Microsoft Outlook profile. To remove any data associated to a
user, use the openchange_cleanup.py script distributed with sogo. The
script can be found in /usr/share/doc/sogo/ (/usr/share/sogo-VERSION/ on
RHEL). To reset a user, run the script as root: python
openchange_cleanup.py username. See the usage output for additional
options.

- The Out of Office Assistant will not currently work. This feature has
not been implemented.

- Creating folders below INBOX (when not normally permitted by the IMAP
server), below the Personal Calendar or Personal Address Book will work
in Outlook cached mode but the server- side operation will fail and
these folders will never be created. Potentially data loss can occur if
the Outlook profile is destroyed. If you wan to create additional
top-level mail folders, calendars or address books, open Outlook's
folder list, select the top level node (usually, email at example.com) and
choose New Folder... from the contextual menu. Choose the relevent item
types.

- Sharing mail folders is not supported

- Labels will not work in Calendar

- Tasks with start/due dates created from Outlook might not appear
correctly in SOGo due to a timezone issue.

- Task Reminders are not yet supported.

- Assigning tasks will not work.

- Categories will not work.

- Distribution lists will not work.

- Under Microsoft Outlook 2010, the special folder Suggested Contacts
will not work.

- The Offline Address Book will not work. This feature is not yet
supported.

- Notes are not synchronized in any ways with SOGo. The current version
of SOGo lacks support for notes.

5. Benefits of SOGo collaboration
==================================
OpenChange server and SOGo ( http://www.sogo.nu ) are both groupware
servers sharing mutual interest in collaborating for the greatest
benefits of end users. The cement of this cooperation lies in a backend
developed by Inverse Inc on top of OpenChange API that plugs SOGo
storage to OpenChange server through SOGo libraries. From a general
perspective, it can be described as:

OpenChange uses SOGo libraries to store Outlook data
SOGo uses OpenChange to serve Outlook clients
In practice, it means that users primarily interested in an Exchange
compatible server interoparable with Microsoft Outlook clients don't
need anything but Samba4 and OpenChange. There is no need to run SOGo
server.

In the meanwhile, as soon as users are looking for Webmail access,
synchronization with Mozilla Thunderbird/Lighning, Apple iPhone or
Blackberry, then SOGo server is needed.

6. Opening Linux Desktop to Exchange World
==========================================
OpenChange is also providing client libraries and series of tools
allowing users to connect to Microsoft Exchange and Compatible servers
such as OpenChange from Linux Desktop. A quick introduction to usual
openchange tools is available from the Web site in the documentation
section.

7. Contributors
===============
The team would like to thank everyone who helped in making this release,
including (in alphabetical order):

- Olly Betts
- Alexander Bokovoy
- Milan Crha
- Shaheed Haque
- Alois Schloegl

We would like to address special credits to Wolfgang Sourdeau who
invested a lot of time and energy in OpenChange for the last couple of
years.

We'd also like to acknowledge the continued support of the Microsoft
"Dochelp" team - much appreciated.

Julien, for the OpenChange team.

-- 
Julien Kerihuel
j.kerihuel at openchange.org
OpenChange Project Founder

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jkerihuel
GPG Fingerprint: 0B55 783D A781 6329 108A  B609 7EF6 FE11 A35F 1F79