RE: [Evolution] Advice

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

On 19 Jan 2001 15:16:15 -0500, Dan  B. Mann wrote:
>   I'd like to give some advice:  where I work, everyone uses Outlook.  One
> of the biggest complaints is that outlook is "not responding" or "really
> slow".  You don't know what pissed is until you have someone call you
> because they need to find the email they spent 20 minutes typing that got
> lost and you have to tell them "It's gone.".  Another HUGE thing, and
> everyone here is gonna want to nail me to a cross because of it, is that
> almost all of my users want to user WORD as their email editor.  I know,
> it's funny to have outlook use 13MB of ram and then have WORD use 8MB just
> to type a short message, but that's how they want it and they have a fit if
> we change it (even though there is a relationship between crashes and using
> them both at the same time.).  You see, even though the native email editor
> in outlook has a spell check function, it doens't "Catch the errors while
> you type."  Most of my users want to see the red and green sqiggley lines as
> soon as they make a mistake.  Then we could get into the email.dot problems
> that users have ("Everything is in a small font, and when I change it and
> reopen outlook it is small again." or "My outlook printer settings are not
> right.")  And how about 2 of our users that have outlook.ost files that are
> well OVER 600MB? That doesn't include their local archive.pst, which is at
> least as big (some of my users have never deleted an email, and in my
> organization, it's not our policy to tell them too.).  I heard a bit about
> Outlook 10, and I think it will work better than 97 and 2000, but I don't
> know if it'll stop this phone call induced headache I have.
>
> So, here it is:
>
> No matter what happens to the network connection between client and server,
> DO NOT Let EVO HANG FOR anything(this give people a chance to save their
> work, even if they end up having to restart EVO)

working on this now... we have a stop button if people are impatient.

> Figure out how to implement an advanced editor that administrative &
> administrative support people will like (yes, with squiggley lines and perty
> letterhead.  Remeber Fellas: what is the ratio of men to women who use email
> at work?)

Out default editor already does the squiggly line thing.

> It's gotta have some really cool features for mobile computing devices to
> make the IT manager happy

dan is working on disconnected IMAP.

> It's gotta work 100% all of the time to make the tech support people happy
> (or at least more than outlook :-)
>
> Make the rules/filters import/exportable for those of us who have to support
> large rollouts

Filter rules are saved in a filters.xml file, as ar vfolder rules. You
can copy them anywhere.

> Don't allow any nasty VB code to kill our data (seriously, think security)

we don't allow this, was a pretty easy task actuall :-)

> Consider things like global address books, even though they are server
> based.  Large organizations will need them.

been there, done that. it's all about the LDAB baby.

> Oh yeah, you better be able to type in a partial name in the to: and cc:
> fields and have EVO pop up the name for the users (you can't imagine how
> many calls I get from people offsite that are using web access, and can't
> figure out why the email address isn't automagically getting filled out for
> them)

Yeah, this is in our bug database...we will get to this.

Jeff