Tuesday, March 22, 2011

GroupWise client vs. Outlook 2010

Let me qualify this by saying, I've worked in a variety of email clients and email systems over the years.  I've used cc:Mail, GroupWise, Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Evolution, and custom in-house systems to name just a few.  So, it's not with any malice that I'm making this particular post, instead it's out of utter frustration.

Email clients should not be so convoluted as to be counter-intuitive and cause an end-user hours of wasted effort that should be intuitively simple.  So why did the Microsoft programmers decide that users of the Outlook client really only need 1 address book?  Seriously?  Have you kids never worked in or with an administrative support position before?  What Executive Assistant doesn't have more than one address book?

In GroupWise, it's a piece of cake to add an additional address book.  No special contortions to go through to find out how to do it, simply open your address book, click File | New Book and give it a name, viola, all done! And if you're looking for a particular contact, GroupWise (at least in version 8) searches all of your address books, not just one.

Outlook on the other hand has you doing mental gyrations that rival my cat's physical contortions while sleeping.  (Maine Coon kitties are large and manage to get themselves into the weirdest pretzel-y sleeping positions).  The Microsoft documentation isn't much help, instead if you need to create another book in Outlook check out the blog postings that come up in an internet search...they're much more helpful.

It makes me wonder if Microsoft ever consults their non-technical user base.  Those users for whom Office and Outlook were supposedly written. Because, from my viewpoint anyway, it sure doesn't seem like it.  The ribbons features in Office 2010 have generated more support calls than I remember for any previous releases and the complaints I've been hearing from non-technical (i.e. not IT staff) users make it clear that no one consulted them on the changes.

Reader Warning: A bit of a Rant follows

Which may be the big driver behind the moves to OpenOffice and LibreOffice.  There simply aren't that many users that need all of the extra "bulk" that's been added to Microsoft Office lately.  Maybe Microsoft should rethink the various versions of Office...have a "Lite" version for basic users of word processing and spreadsheets, a "Standard" version for office workers who need a bit more graphical capabilities, a "Pro" to be the Standard + Database functionality, and then an "Expert" for the heft that is the current version of Office Pro.  And price it accordingly, because these days it's really hard to beat free licensing.

Monday, March 21, 2011

GroupWise IMAP error of NO LOGIN - fixed!

I was called in to help a customer who's environment is all new to me.  They were having issues with migrating email via IMAP from GroupWise to Google Apps.  They kept getting an authentication error whenever they tried for two sites.  The rest of their post offices went fine, it was just these two (with different admins) having the issue.

After digging around in their system for awhile and not seeing anything that jumped out at me, I was given access to an email account that I could use to test with.  I reset the GroupWise password and tried to telnet in.  (The story about telnetting from XP is another story...).  Each time I could telnet to port 143 okay, but received the following error:

NO LOGIN GroupWise Login Failed
and on occassion I'd get this:
BAD LOGIN

No error number and nothing more descriptive than that message in the GWIA either.  I scratched my head a bit, did much Google and Knowledgebase searching to no avail.  I checked the post office links and found they were using UNC, changed that to IP and still no go.  I unchecked LDAP and checked eDirectory and still no go, so I tried POP3.   Back to the Post Office Links and finally something popped at me, the GWIA was set to being Direct only.  I set it to C/S and Direct and tried POP3 again.  This time POP3 errored out, but with a more useful error that led me to trying out WebAccess.  WebAccess popped a similar error which was quickly resolved by change the eDirectory password for the user and then both POP3 and WebAccess worked.  IMAP however, still refused to work. 

I verified that GWIA didn't have LDAP service enabled, because the POA already had it enabled.  IMAP and POP3 were both enabled on GWIA and not on the POA - just as they should be.  No help there.  The Security Tab in the POA had the "Source" of the password set to LDAP, I toggled it to eDirectory and still no go, so I set it back to LDAP.

Then I ran across a very old TID about Default Class of Service, only it was referring to POP3 not IMAP.  I figured it couldn't hurt to check it out, and there was the final piece of the puzzle.  IMAP had been set to Prevent access.  I switched that to Allow access and tried again.  Happy, happy, joy, joy!  It worked!  I went back through all the previous changes setting them to their original configuration - except for Default Class of Service and now I received that dreaded NO LOGIN erro, but this time it was delayed, as if it was trying to authenticate.  I changed the Post Office Links back from Direct Only to C/S and Direct and things worked again.

So final changes were this:
  1. Change Default Class of Service to Allow Access for IMAP4
  2. Change Post Office Links to C/S and Direct
Hope this helps someone!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

GroupWise Ascot on YouTube

Alex Evans and his crew have been busy posting videos demoing some of the changes being made to GroupWise Ascot (next rev of GroupWise).  I strongly recommend you take a look at them.  Lots of positive changes are being proposed and there are several changes that I know I've been waiting for.

If you've got a few minutes, drop in, take a look, and leave a comment on the videos.  I know Alex and the team would like some more input from heavy GroupWise users and I know any comments would be much appreciated.  I'm really liking what I'm seeing so far and it makes me hopeful that perhaps I can get my new job to switch back to GroupWise...or at least let me make a GroupWise system for me to use.  :)

For those of you in the MidWest that can/could make it, Open Horizons is having it's first event in Indiana.  I'm hoping to bring a similar event with Open Horizons to Michigan before Summer is out.  Stayed tuned as I need to coordinate with Norm, who's busy planning a wedding, starting a business, being a dad, heading up Open Horizons MidWest, and providing support to the Novell community at large.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Looking for a job? New lead!

I have another job lead for West Michigan in case anyone's looking for a Sr. Systems Engineer spot.  Needs Microsoft, HP and Cisco skills.  Drop me a note at wmnug at yahoo dot com if you're interested and I'll pass on the recruiter info to you.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

OpenHorizons US/MidWest is on the move!

Open Horizons, once a bastion of the EU, has arrived in the US thanks to Norm O'Neal.  A "beefed up" from of NUI (at least that's my description), OpenHorizons focuses on the important topics for today's IT shops that have an investment in Novell technologies.  And as most Novell customers know, that means a shop where there's a bit of just about everything.

OpenHorizons is hosting an IT in Action event in Indianapolis on March 17th.  The cost is minimal, a paltry $149 (okay, so maybe West Michiganders have been spoiled by having The Big EveNt be free, but not everyone can mooch like me), and you get to hear presentations by industry experts like Erno de Korte and Sander van Vugt.

Take a minute to look at the session offerings at http://www.open-horizons.net/us/march-17.



Eventually we'll be brining an OpenHorizons even to West Michigan as well.  I just need to get my bearings again and my feet under me after the recent job acquisition.
I hate to admit it, but after looking at the speaker bios I'm feeling really old.  Tim Toepp's been involved with Novell products since NetWare 3.12 and NetWare Personal....I'm older than that.  Anyone else remember ELS I and ELS II, OfficeAutomation?  NetWare 86? 

Good thing I paid attention to my profs and keep on learning new stuff - thank you again Drs. Medley, Pidgeon, Teague (RIP), and Mason.  You taught us Cal Poly kids well.