In final installment of this series we recently had a chance to sit down with Frances Atkinson, the Director of Institutional & Academic Technologies, IT Services at Simon Fraser University, one of the over 500 educational organizations that have deployed the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Network Edition worldwide. Not too long ago, SFU decided to upgrade their collaboration system and investigated several options. No surprise, Zimbra won out! Now, two and a half years later, SFU is seeing how Zimbra is benefiting all of their campus systems. Highlights from our discussion with Frances are below: How are SFU’s staff, faculty, and students using Zimbra Collaboration Suite? Zimbra has become more than just an email and calendaring solution at Simon Fraser – it has evolved into the campus communications “hub” used by all faculty, staff and students. With Zimbra, calendaring and document sharing are available to everyone for the first time, and fewer users are forwarding to external sites like Gmail.… Read more »

Lot of times you need to make a quick note about something in an email or a little reminder for yourself like "I need to confirm those dates" or "add John's phone number” or "attach the PPT" etc.  But there is no easy way to capture that thought instantly.  Sticky Notes Zimlet helps solve that problem by allowing you to attach a note to a particular email. The Sticky Notes Zimlet is really easy to use…all you do is make a quick note and attach it to your email. Once you attach your Sticky Note, it will automatically pop up the next time you re-open your email. How to create your own Sticky Notes: Simply select an email and click on the "StickyNotes" toolbar button or drag and drop your email onto the Zimlet to add your notes. StickyNotes in Contacts (v1.… Read more »

Every day, when you first login, this Zimlet scans your calendar and sends out a summary email about the current day’s events. This Zimlet helps both frequent and lite calendaring users in different ways: 1. For power-users, this is like having a personal assistant; who summarizes appointments for the day, providing a concrete idea as to how many meetings you have. 2. For general-users, the Zimlet helps in reminding you that there is a meeting to prepare for (in case you've forgotten) To make it easier to read, the appointments are sorted and divided along two simple categories:  Those that need your immediate attention (e.… Read more »

Have you ever found yourself scrambling to find a WebEx meeting invite minutes before the meeting is set to begin? Or if you are scheduling a meeting, you are constantly switching between WebEx and your calendar to create the meeting & calendar invite? Well, those days are gone with the new WebEx Zimlet. The WebEx Zimlet now brings the power of WebEx right into your Zimbra calendar. To see the WebEx Zimlet in action, checkout this video. Or to experience first hand, download the WebEx Zimlet at the Zimbra Gallery at http://gallery.… Read more »

As you may have noticed, we have just posted the recording of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6-to-7 and VMware Overview webinar. This was hugely popular -- hundreds of customers, partners and community members attended -- because it covered three critical areas of Zimbra's future: What's in ZCS 6.0 (powerful new admin features, Enterprise support and usability improvements) as well as near-term additions (such as support for Android, BES 5.0, BES Express, and Outlook 2010). The roadmap of ZCS 7.0 and beyond: a fascinating discussion of calendar wizards, powerful distribution lists, workspaces, and IM changes.… Read more »

With over 55 million commercial Zimbra mailboxes deployed worldwide, and millions more on open source, there are many users reaping the benefits of our next-generation collaboration experience. Many factors contributed to our rapid adoption -- such as integrated conversation views, tagging, sharing, powerful search, and mobility -- but one of the most important is the ability to customize and extend Zimbra. To promote extensibility, the Zimbra platform exposes powerful Theme, Data and Zimlet APIs. With these APIs, you can customize everything from branding and interface stylesto integrating external applications & servicesto implementing new features. And with a vibrant Community continually using these technologies to enhance Zimbra, the customization you are looking for might already be available. To that end, we have been busy at work leveraging new resources from our friends at VMware and are pleased to announce the new Zimbra Gallery as the destination for sharing Zimbra product extensions. The new Gallery includes improved navigation and search capabilities so it is easier than ever to find extensions for Zimbra.… Read more »