It was a crazy first week at the new Telligent + Zimbra. I spent the week in Japan talking with some of our largest partners and customers. As we talked through our vision for a unified social collaboration suite (for which there is no Japanese translation), several questions came up. One we consistently heard was, “what about Zimbra.Next?”
The Zimbra.Next release train has been rolling and there’s no stopping it now. We’ve made a commitment to our customers and partners and we have no intention on going back on that. Zimbra.Next is bringing some significant improvements to the product and some great innovations to market. We’re really excited about this and future releases to come.
The transition and integration between Telligent and Zimbra is having very little impact on the release. We are still planning to ship the release in the first half of 2014 and all the major features that we’ve discussed in our Roadmap are still being delivered. Some of the main highlights include:
HTML5 Touch Client. We have rewritten our mobile client from the ground up using the Sencha Touch HTML5 Mobile App Framework. It’s a full Zimbra experience with our tags, flags, search, and much more. It’s also optimized for todays smartphones and tablet devices with touch and swipe gestures.
HTML5 Offline Client. We announced when Zimbra 8.0 launched that this would be the last release of Zimbra Desktop. We are replacing Zimbra Desktop using the HTML5 offline capability in today’s modern browsers. There’s no installation or configuration. The browser is the client and you can access the Zimbra Web App using the same URL whether you are online or offline. The offline client will also improve web app performance even over high latency connections. We can perform user operations on locally cached data and synchronize the changes in the background.
Always ON Architecture. Simply put, Email should never go down. It should be Always ON. We’re making several architectural changes to build resiliency and serviceability without downtime into our application. To reduce infrastructure costs, enabling customers to leverage commodity hardware is also a top priority of our Always ON architecture.
This is just the beginning. If you want to see Zimbra.Next first hand as well as some of the innovations that we are working on with the future of Collaboration and Social, come to The Big Social September 23-25 in Dallas, TX.
Cheers!
Can HTML5 Offline Client sync more than one zimbra account? If not will it be possible to send email with external accounts linked to zimbra account?
The HTML5 offline client is linked to the Zimbra system you attach to. You can connect to multiple Zimbra systems on the same machine and cache the web app and mailbox data in the browser for each system. The mail is not aggregated into a single offline mailbox. Users can still link external IMAP/POP (even Zimbra) to there account just like they can today with Zimbra 8.
My user still need zimbra desktop to move old mail to local harddisk. (using open source version and limit to 500mb per account)
Is this for a local archive? It’s an interesting use case. The HTML5 offline client is more like a mobile sync experience where you have your current working set of data, up to 30 days, available to you offline. The trend towards always being connected is really driving our thinking behind an HTML5 offline experience but we will continue to evaluate expanding the use cases and thinking based on your feedback. For now, users that need to maintain a large offline dataset, we would recommend using one of the popular native desktop clients that we support like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook, or any other IMAP/POP client.
Any beta program available for the next version?
Absolutely! We’ll announce the beta when we get closer, but it will be available to the public.
Hi, I’de like to have more info about the offline zimbra desktop replacement. I’de like to know if:
– it can handle multiple zimbra accounts with zimbra technology (not only imap/pop)
– it can sync the full mailbox and not only portion
– will support Firefox, Chrome and IE
Thanks a lot
Hi @Marco. Check through some of the other comments for answers to your first two questions. As far as browser support, we are planning to support Firefox, Chrome, and IE in the initial release.
We paid dearly for the Mobile Client extension back in 2008. Is it now offered included in all editions or just NE Pro still?
Yes, Zimbra Mobile for ActiveSync devices is an NE Pro feature.
Is Judas Priest aka Zimbra.Next also Zimbra 9? I have found some bugs which are resolved in Zimbra 9, but Judas Priest does not show up here: http://pm.zimbra.com/
An example is this fixed bug:
https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=41872
All sorts of basic bugs that have been around for years need to get ironed out as well.
As well as features that have been on the top of the list for years such as assigning a task to another user.
I like the direction it is headed by going HTML5 but please take care of some house keeping, a lot of this neglect has actually stopped me from purchasing the NE and sticking to the open source version.
In the Judas Priest NE release is the briefcase functionality going to be preserved, replaced or removed. I have read several conflicting comments on this. This feature is extremely useful in our implementation but I have held back from fully implementing it in fear that it will be removed.
Regarding the “Always ON Architecture” Will support for external clustering solution be back again ? like Red Hat Cluster Suite ?
I’m really hopeful that Tasks management is not getting left behind, and three of the most popular enhancements (in the top ten) for some time are relatively easy to implement, and crucial for workflow, will be roadmapped for Zimbra.Next (9):
Option to add recurring tasks: http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2345
Ability to assign tasks: http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15832
Integration of tasks into calendar: http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=27613
What about extension compatibility (frontend- as well as backend side) ?
Will we have to rewrite our extensions again, as it was the case w/ Ironmaiden ?
Hi Jon,
what about extension deployment in Z9 ?
The current methods (zimlets as well as skins) are really incomplete and error-prone – as soon as java code comes in, you can easily run into conflicts and have no way for completely removing them. And for mailboxd extensions, there even isn’t any builtin deployment mechanism.
Therefore, I’ve invented ZMPKG:
http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/extra/zcs-package-management-system-0
You know, we already offered to integrate our ZMPKG back in Helix times. It’s working pretty well in several hi-profile installations (eg. banking) for several years now.
(http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/extra/zcs-package-management-system-0)
Will Z9 still have the restriction on the length of email signatures ? [The current limit in Zimbra Desktop is the main reason I haven’t migrated most of my clients to Zimbra Desktop]
Cheers.
Hi,
What about copy-paste fidelity? Copy-paste should be the same level with Outlook client.
What about tables? It’s pretty painful right now to work with tables (e.g. format, resize, etc).
Thanks from Singapore
e1
With ZD, I can put my company Exchange, my personal Zimbra account and my Gmail account all on one client. Can you do that with the HTML5 client?
Will the html5 “client” support mailto and mapi under Windows OS’s? FYI Desktop does this and ZWC doesn’t.
PLEASE give ISP/VSP/etc the possibility to a) Autoconfigure (and lock) certain aspects of the application configuration and b) Brand with logo, etc.
why “Exchange Web Services” is missing here?
It was mentioned in April post.
ZCO is a nightmare because of frequent local failures.
EWS is a must in Zimbra 9
I think with mobile version we should use Jquery mobile. why don’t we use it?
Will we ever see Zimbra 9? EWS is a must here as well – if it isn’t there soon, we will be switching our solution.
Anyone have any info on the release of Zimbra 9?
The first half of 2014 has gone and nothing about release 9.