Well, I have a new tool in my referral arsenal. Zimbra officially launched their Zimbra Desktop 1.0 client. Although I prefer the Zimbra web interface, I am frequently asked about desktop email applications. Because the Zimbra desktop client has support for multiple email accounts across multiple providers, and provides an integrated calendar and contact solution, it has become my favorite recommendation. It works especially well for daily use or off-line use while traveling. I also recommend Zimbra to clients as an Outlook replacement – it has a similar look and feel, but it’s free!

Finding the download is pretty easy:

Direct from Zimbra: Zimbra Desktop 1.0

If you have business Email Hosting from XMission you can find it by logging into your Zimbra webmail on XMission.

• Look in the upper right hand corner and there you will see “Offline version”.
  This link takes you direclty to the Zimbra Desktop download website.

• Install and you are on your way.

Just a friendly reminder, IMAP is the best setting to use on most mail accounts.

Also of note, if you currently use the Base version of Email Hosting, then Zimbra Desktop will not integrate your contacts and calendar into your webmail interface on XMission. Unless you are using a Standard or Premium version of Zimbra, your contacts and calendar will just live on your desktop within the application.

Happy emailing!

Back in the days of old, POP3 was the best way to handle your email with your desktop mail application. The problem with POP (Post Office Protocol) is that it downloads email to whichever machine you are using at the time. This means that unless you access all your email from one machine, you can end up with some messages on your desktop, others on your laptop, and even others on your phone or PDA. Talk about a productivity and convenience killer! Ouch!

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) keeps everything—even your sent mail and other mail folders—in sync with the copy on XMission’s servers, which avoids the problem of messages being scattered across your machines. IMAP gives you email portability via your mobile phone’s email application,  your favorite desktop email app at home and at the office, or the web interface.

For me, portability is crucial. I use several devices to access email: the office desktop, my phone, my laptop, and sometimes a random computer on the road. This need for access, no matter where I go, is why IMAP is so fantastic. IMAP keeps my email synced on every access device no matter where I am. It just makes life easier.

Putting this to work for you is simple. See the XMission support wiki for easy to follow configuration instructions on setting your favorite mail client for use with our IMAP service. There is no extra charge and all XMission email services support IMAP.

One last suggestion, if you want your email world to be even easier, use webmail. Most XMission accounts use https://webmail.xmission.com and our business Zimbra users access email, calendars, and collaboration tools through https://zimbra.xmission.com. All computers (and most mobile devices) have a compatible browser that supports webmail. The convenience is fantastic and you will never be stuck without your email again.

If you have questions about any of the XMission business email solutions please give us a call, 877-964-7746, or drop an email to sales@xmission.com. We are happy to help you out.

Now go be productive!

Viewing Contacts in Address book

To access Contacts, click on the Address Book pane in the web interface or Zimbra Desktop client.

You can view your contacts either as a list or as contact cards. To change the view click on the View button and select either List or Cards. Personally, I prefer the List view.

Adding a new Contact to your Address Book

To add contacts just click the New button, then enter information in the appropriate fields.

Click "New" to create Address Book entry.

You can also add a contact directly from email by using right+click (Windows) or option+click (Mac) on the senders name, select Add to Contacts in the pop-up menu. Complete the information in the fields provided and Save.

Importing your Contacts

If you are using another contact manager program, you can import your existing contacts by saving them in “Comma-Separated Values” (.csv) format. See the program’s Help file for instructions on doing this. Note: For Apple Address Book, there is a useful utility by Antonio Lore called ab2csv.  XMission does not support this app but Mac users find it simple to use.

To import your contacts into Zimbra, click on the Preferences pane and then select the Address Book pane. Browse for the CSV File and then click the Import .CSV File button. You will be able to name the contact list and assign the folder a color of your choice. That is it, you are done.

Import .CSV File, found in Preferences pane.

Adding Emailed Contacts to your Address Book automatically

Zimbra can automatically add names and email addresses to your Emailed Contacts list from the email addresses you send to. To enable this feature, click the Preferences pane and check the “Add new contacts to ‘Emailed Contacts’” box. I find that every now and then I have to go through and delete temporary addresses, such as those used by craigslist.org and other services.

Creating a new Address Book

The ability to have multiple address books is a very useful Zimbra feature. To create a new address book, first go to the Address Book pane and click New Address Book above your list of contacts. Name your new address book and select a color for it. Click OK and the new address book will appear in your list of address books. Easily move contacts from one Address Book to another by clicking and dragging Contact(s) from one Address Book to another.

Simply click on New Address Book to create a new one.

Sharing your Address Book

To share an address book, click on the address book you would like to share and select “Share Address Book” from the pop-up menu.

Sharing with Internal users

You can share with individuals or groups on your XMission Zimbra domain. This is very similar to the process used to share calendars with other Zimbra users as covered in a previous post about Calendar sharing.  Set the access controls and Zimbra will send email Share Request to the user(s) you selected. Upon accepting the share, the Address Book will appear in their list of Address Books. Any changes you make to this address book with appear in their share. Note: If you grant other users Manager status, any changes they make will show up in your contacts folder. Always be certain how much access you want others to have before sharing folders.

Sharing with External guests

To share with external guests, simply provide their email address and set a password for them. XMission’s Zimbra server will email them with their login information and a URL allowing them to download a .CSV file of your shared Contacts folder.  Note: When you use external guest or public settings on an address book it is always read-only.

Public sharing

You can also make an address book publicly available. Follow the process to share your Contacts folder of choice, set to Public. This will show a custom URL you can provide to anyone. Copy this URL for future reference. Next, click the OK button to complete setting Public permission for this Contacts folder. Email your sharing URL and the end user can download the .CSV file.

Creating a Distribution List (Mailing List)

All XMission Zimbra accounts support distribution lists. To create lists, select New Contact Group from the New pop-up menu. Enter a name for your distribution list and then enter email addresses in the “Add Members to this Group” box. You can search your Contacts folder, the Global Address List, and your Personal and Shared Contacts folders for email addresses to add to your list or enter them manually in the box below. This is very slick. I use this to create custom invite lists for events and my other email list needs. Distribution Lists may have limitations on the number of addresses allowed as large lists can unduly tax the mail server. Note: It is a courtesy to always use BCC when sending to large email lists, simply enter your email address in the To: field so they know it is from you.

Searching for Contacts

Quickly find a contact by using the Search tool in the Zimbra web interface or Zimbra Desktop client. Type part of the name you are searching for in the box and then click the Search button (or hit return) to find your contact.

Use the Search field to find Contacts in your Address Book.

Need additional help?

For more help click the Zimbra Help button or visit the XMission Zimbra Support pages and the Zimbra forums.

Those are the basics of sharing your Contacts using the XMission Zimbra Suites. It is pretty simple and intuitive.

Thanks for reading and should you need our help just give us a call! Together we can find the best solution for your needs with one of the 3 distinct levels of XMission Zimbra hosting.

XMission’s Zimbra Suite makes it easy to share your calendar: simply right click on the calendar you want to share and click on “Share Calendar”.

Right click on the calendar of your choice, click on Share Calendar.

The “Share Properties” pane, show below, is where you can share your calendar with internal users on your domain, external users, and/or grant access to your public calendar. In addition you can grant access as view-only, or allow complete (Manager/Admin) access. Manager and Admin status allows others to make changes on your calendar.

The Zimbra Share Properties pane is very easy to use.

Enter the email address of the individual(s) you want to share your calendar with. Set share recipient “Role” appropriately. You can even send a note with the calendar share which can be very useful. Important: setting a calendar to “Public” means it is wide open to the world and anyone with the URL can download your calendar .ics file or view it in .html format.

Once shared, emails are automatically sent to those you granted calendar access. Here is what the email looks like:

Example of the Zimbra "Share Created" email.

The recipient can “Accept” or “Decline” the calendar share. You will not be notified of their receipt unless they sent an email back to you. Most calendar programs allow them to name your calendar as they see fit. In this case the calendar was named “XM John Webster’s Calendar” which was also set to Blue for easier identification in the Calendar view:

Accept and name the calendar share.

You also have the ability to grant access to your specific calendar’s .ics file through a direct URL (pictured above in the “Share Properties” window), or to html calendar by adding .html to the calendar name. This example shows Joe The Plumber’s html calendar for Public viewing (image shows week view). The html calendar allows the viewer to select Day, Work Week, Week, Month, or Today just by clicking on the icon:

HTML view of your public calendar.

There is another quick way to get the web address of your calendar, simply right click and choose “Launch in a separate window” (see image below). Your selected calendar will pop up in a new browser window. Copy, paste, and share that URL as needed. Use this URL to embed your calendar in websites. Calendars set to “Public” view also offer RSS subscriptions; viewers simply click on the RSS icon in the browser navigation window to subscribe.

Launch the HTML view of your calendar in a separate window.

Those are the basics of sharing your calendars using the XMission Standard and Premium Zimbra Suites. It is pretty simple and intuitive.

Keep watching this blog! Future posts will cover Contacts sharing, Documents sharing and management, using the Sync Connectors on your Mac & PCs, and much more.

Thanks for reading and should you need our help just give us a call! Together we can find the best solution for your needs with one of the 3 distinct levels of XMission Zimbra hosting.

This blog post will cover how you can use your Zimbra directory for limited storage needs. Here is how:

Enter the following (replacing the bold section, of course) in the webdav-enabled utility of your choice.

https://zimbra.xmission.com/dav/your full email address here/Briefcase

Upon connecting it will likely prompt you to enter your username and password.  If you prefer to mount your primary Zimbra directory, simply leave off “/Briefcase”

For Mac OS X, in Finder, use the “Go” menu, and choose “Connect to Server” and enter in the above URL.

In Windows XP, the internal webdav implementation is buggy, particularly with ssl (security protocol), so we recommend you use Novell’s Netdrive. Novell has allowed free redistribution of Netdrive. Click Here to download Novell Netdrive.Then, add a new server using the above url. By default, Netdrive doesn’t use any form of authentication, so be sure to turn “Anonymous” off and enter your Zimbra username and password.

A note about the Windows Vista environment. Netdrive doesn’t work with Vista, and it’s webdav implementation suffers from similar problems as XP, we recommend Webdrive for WebDAV on Vista. A trial demo is available at http://www.webdrive.com, and it can be purchased on-line for $59.95.

As usual with linux, there are a number of solutions, from KDE’s Konqueror to dedicated filesystem drivers. Pick the solution that’s right for your environment and follow the instructions.

I use this to transfer files directly into my Zimbra Briefcase. I could simply use the “upload +” navigation button from within the Briefcase pane;  however, I like the mounted drive option as I can simply drag and drop my files and allow them to load in the background while I go about my normal business in my Zimbra web interface.

Quota: Our system provides Premium accounts with 6G and Standard account with 3G of storage for all your Zimbra suite needs. Make sure you leave plenty of room in there for work requirements. XMission allows you to increase storage on any of the Zimbra account levels up to 12G of storage ($1 per GB/month). If you get close to filling your allotted quota it is likely to cause problems so watch the progress bar in the top left corner of your browser.

The web interface has a progress bar indicating how much of your quota is in use. It is very handy.

WWW Interface - Quota Indicator

This drive mapping option it is a very handy feature for small to medium storage needs.

Apple OS X appearance:

OS X (Mac) - Your Zimbra Storage as Remote Drive

Windows appearance:

Windows XP - Your Zimbra Storage as Remote Drive

Linux appearance:

Linux - Your Zimbra Storage as Remote Drive

XMission provides 3 distinct levels of Zimbra groupware services for our business clients, all of which are a substantial upgrade from our previous business level email-only services. No matter how large or small your company is, XMission has a solution for you.

XMission’s Zimbra suite is so flexible and dynamic. If you spend just a little time with it, something new will amaze you every week. I regularly discover something new and useful and I’ve been on the system for 6 months now.

I hope this post helps familiarize you with the powerful Zimbra interface and how to use it to your benefit. We have some great Zimbra screencasts posted in our Hosted Email support wiki.

Should you have any questions about implementing the Zimbra Collaboration Suite for your business please drop me a line – I’ll be happy to chat with you.

Go XMission!

Special thanks to Joaquin, XMission’s Email Systems Administrator, for his input on this article.

Obviously, we find emails like this incredibly frustrating. Spam has cost us tremendously in time, money, and network resources, and forces our customers to feel increasingly suspicious of anything in their inbox. Like you, we have all received spam from companies claiming to be eBay, PayPal, our credit union, or even the IRS. Even though XMission successfully filters out the majority of phishing spam, be aware that some still does squeak through.

Many of these emails ask the user to enter information using a fake web address, while others request information via email directly. Spammers send out large numbers of emails betting on the odds that someone with a legitimate account will respond. Usually these emails have an urgent tone or even threaten penalty, suspension, or account closure.

Because of the volume and persistence of this threat, we wanted to share a few reminders from the Federal Trade Commission:

1. Simply do not reply. If you have concerns about an account, pick up the phone and call the business, or bring up a fresh browser and contact them directly using their website. No legitimate business will ask you for personal information over email.
2. Scammers can fake anything including “from” addresses, logos, websites, and phone numbers. Even if an email includes a local phone, donít take it at face value. Call the company using a legitimate number from a trusted source.
3. Update anti-virus and anti-spyware software regularly. Always use a firewall if you have a high-speed Internet connection.
4. Do not use insecure websites. Always confirm the security certificates of secure websites.
5. Review credit card and bank statements as soon as you receive them.
6. Even if you receive an email from a trusted source, be cautious about opening attachments or downloading files.
7. Report phishing emails to XMission (abuse@xmission.com), the FTC (spam@uce.gov), and to the legitimate company being spoofed.
8. If you have had your information compromised, report it immediately to the FTC, and then visit the identity theft website at: http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft.