[Evolution] Re: [connector] After using Evolution/Connector for more than 5 months

[Christine McLellan <christine novell com>]

Thank you for taking the time to write up your observations! This is helpful both as a quality statement and as we plan our future feature set. And as Sarfraaz requested, please submit the crashes at bugzilla.ximian.com under the Connector product.  Some replies inline. .. .

On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 04:51 +0300, regatta wrote: 
> Hi
>
> I was using Outlook XP in my company for Exchange mail for along time
> and after GPLing the connector plugin I switched to Evolution &
> Connector (Actually I switched to Linux in everything)
>
> Anyway I want to to share my experience with you and with Evolution's
> developers to help them in developing Evolution (some of my experience
> has nothing to do with outlook) :
>
> 1- I faced many problem in the first time to make Connecter able to
> get the GAL Address book because Connector wasn't able to detect my
> GAL address (I don't know why) and also I didn't get a very clear from
> connector in what is the problem.
>
> 2- Evolution always crash when I type an email address in the To filed
> because it try to connect to LDAP to complete the address for me while
> I am trying to right the address, I hope if there is a button like in
> outlook to check the the To filed and replace the name with the user
> name
>
> 3- It's very hard to get some information (e.g. phone)  about any one
> from his email , I mean in outlook just double click in the email
> address or right click and you will get a lot of information (you will
> get even the next appointment for the user and the phone,fax and
> office number)
>
> 4- In Exchange there is a future that you can make a group address
> (This is what I call it :) ) (when someone send an email to this
> address many users will receive this email) and in outlook if you
> select one of these group address you can see who are in this group
> (by clicking in the Plus signal before the name when outlook replace
> the email by the name)  and in evolution you can't see who are in a
> group address.
>
> 5- You can't drag and drop an email to the task to make a new task
>
> 6- You can't drag and drop an email to the calender to make a new appointment.
Converting to a Task/Meeting has been a frequent rquest. Thanks to Rodrigo, the ability to right click on a mail and convert it to a task or meeting is already in Evolution 2.1. This does not include drag to folder to convert but it is something to consider in the future (if it make sense with our component UI -- I am not sure that it will.) 
> 7- The calender doesn't work very will (and it's very important
> component), it's always open a notification window but doesn't display
> the appointment title in the window (I think for the Exchange
> calender)
If you mean the "Evolution Alarm" dialog, this is redone in Evo 2.1 as well.  See Evo blog http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/archives/2004_11.html for mockups of that or install the Dev branch to see it in action.  
> 8- if I use the Threading mode in displaying the emails it's hard to
> know where I get a new message when I collapse a thread (I must expand
> each thread to know in where I got a new email)
What are you suggesting as an alternative?  

> 9- When I color a message (Important, Meeting, To DO Later....etc) and
> close Evolution I lose the colors
This was easy to reproduce, so submitted here: http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=71555

> 10- I have many Rules and when I close Evolution and run it again the
> problem Evolution with run the Rules in all the Exchange emails again.
>
> 11- I don't know if this a bug or not because I tried it only one
> time: one I send an HTML mail to many users They receive it as an HTML
> source code
>
> 12- There is not a "Recall" future in Evolution to get back a message
> you sent it by mistake
In Evo2.2 we are adding Read Receipt and Delivery Receipts requests which is admittedly not what you are asking :)

> 13- There is no way to Export/Import any emails from Outlook (many
> users don't migrate to Evolution for this problem).
While I've not looked at Peter Colijn's library (yet), it sounds promising.  Another option for you to test is Outport  http://outport.sourceforge.net/  which uses Outlook itself to extract the data into an Evolution readable format.  
> 14- There is now an easy way to backup all the emails or archive them.
> (I mean throw the Evolution's menu)
At some future point soon we do need to solve this in a general way for all server types.  You can create a Filter to move messages to a Local folder for archiving but I know what you mean.
> 15- You can't know how many MB used in your exchange account.
>
> 16- When you send an email to some full inbox you will get an email
> they your email can't be delivered but without telling you what is the
> reason.
>
> 17- If you right a RTL language (e.g Arabic, Hebrew) with Numbers you
> will not be able to read the email
>
> 18- You can't sort the messages by Date,Sender or Subject like in
> Outlook 2003 ( I mean Threading sort)
>
> 19- You can't move the email preview to the left side like Outlook 2003
>
> 20- In version 2 of Evolution you don't get how many new messages in
> your inbox in Evolution Window Title.
>
> 21- If you an HTML message with images you must go to the bottom and
> click in each image icon to open it in the message.
>
> 22- It's hard to setup multisync with Evolution2 to Sync with PDA (I
> don't know is this from Evolution or from MultiSync)
>
> 23- For the follow-up future, Why there is now reminder alarm ?
>
> This is what I remember and I if you have any question I will be happy
> to answer you.
>
> My Linux Box:
> Gentoo Linux (up to date)
> Gnome (up to date)
> MultiSync (up to date)
> Evolution (2.0.2)
>
>
> -- 
> Best Regards,
> --------------------
> -*- If Linux doesn't have the solution, you have the wrong problem -*-
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