Meldware End User Guide v 1.0M8
From Buni.org
Overview
Purpose
The purpose of this guide is to help end users set up their clients for use with Meldware Communication Suite 1.0 M8. In order to be successful an administrator should give you at least the following information:
- account/password
- POP or IMAP server address, port number (if not default) and SSL or TLS setting.
- SMTP server address. port number and SSL or TLS setting
- WCAP server URL
- Webmail server URL
Features
Meldware Communication Suite (MCS) allows you to send/receive email. You can either store your email on the server and access it with your favorite mail client IMAP and Webmail or you can download your email with POP. MCS also allows you to schedule appointments for yourself or other users via Mozilla Thunderbird using the Lightning/WCAP plugin or via our Webmail GUI.
Note
Although this guide is covered by [Buni.org:Copyrights Buni's wiki copyright policy], a specific exemption is given to allow developers and contributors to Mozilla Thunderbird to take excerpts and screenshots for generating documentation here or on other Mozilla.org/.com sites under Mozilla's licensing policies provided attribution is given per the licensing guidelines.
Webmail
Requirements
Our Webmail uses a plugin called Flash version 9 (or later) which is free of charge from Adobe. Windows, Linux and Mac users can go to the Adobe site and download it. Linux users may also be able to install it with apt-get, up2date, or yum. Consult your documentation, for example, Ubuntu users can generally find the latest advice here.
Note for administrator: By default admin page would be available at url http://localhost:8080/webadmin/webadminflex.swf on the localbox. While creating user account, user need to be granted roles mailuser,calendaruser
Accessing Webmail
Your administrator should have given you a username and password as well as a URL to access webmail. Sometimes you may only have the hostname. The URL should be something like http://mymailhost.myorganization.com/webmail/webmail.html. You should see a screen similar to the one below (if not then you may not have the Flash plugin installed). Log in with your username and password.
Sending an email
Click "compose". You'll see a From: combo box. You may have only one address. However some organizations have two or more for a given user (example: buni.org vs bunisoft.com). Select the address you wish to send mail FROM. This will also appear as the "Reply-To" address.
Under the From combo, you should see a To: box, enter the email address or addresses of the person/persons you wish to send to separated by a comma. You may also want to CC, etc.
Under this you'll find a large text area. Type your email in this area. Click send when you are finished or click the large X on the right hand side or the cancel button to cancel. You may also save a draft copy of your email in the drafts folder.
Reading your email
From the primary screen you should see a list of folders on the upper right hand side and a list of email subjects down the top of the center. Clicking on a topic causes the mail to be displayed at the bottom part of the center. There are multiple folders INBOX, Sent, Drafts and Trash. When an email is deleted it is sent to the trash. When you send an email it appears in the Sent folder. When you save a draft it appears in the Drafts folder. This version does not render HTML mail. If a text version is available then it is displayed. Otherwise the HTML is displayed in source form. In truth, HTML mail is not safe and can be used by unscrupulous individuals to perform identity theft, confirm email addresses for sniffing and other unsavory uses.
Scheduling an event
Scheduling an event is simple. Click on the Calendar tab.
On the right hand side you should see a small calendar. Click on the day you wish to view your events for or schedule an event. In the center you should see the day view.
Click on the hour at which you wish to schedule your event and drag the mouse while holding the left mouse button to the time you wish the event to end at. Release the mouse button.
On the lower right hand side you should see the event details. Set the subject, location, time, date and details for your meeting. Add individuals to invite. This version does not have an addressbook (the next version will) so you will need to remember their email addresses or store them elsewhere (sorry). As you add addresses, individuals on the server are polled for freebusy data. If the server does not know them or their data is unavailable then they appear free. You can tweak the time using the controls at the top of the meeting details. Click save when you are satisfied.
Note: In M8 the meeting notifications to outside recipients is disabled (in part because of the addressbook refactoring).
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5/Later
Mozilla Thunderbird is our preferred client for the M8 release as it allows use of the full functionality of the MCS server platform. This is not to say that MCS does not work with other email clients, it is just we have done the most testing and work to ensure full integration with Thunderbird. You can download Mozilla Thunderbird from their site. The Meldware 1.0 M8 release has been tested most vigorously with Thunderbird 1.5 as 2.0 was only recently released.
This guide gives specific information regarding setting up Mozilla Thunderbird for use with Buni Meldware Communication Suite. It covers many features of Thunderbird but may not delve into various advanced features or features that have nothing to do with Meldware. Consult the Thunderbird documentation on creating an account for more specific or general information.
Types of accounts
There are five types of accounts that may require setup in MCS 1.0M8.
- SMTP aka ESMTP. STMP is the protocol that allows your Thunderbird to send email.
- POP aka POP3. POP is a protocol for downloading your mail to your local computer, generally deleting them from the server. Your administrator may or may not enable this service.
- IMAP aka IMAPv4rev1. IMAP is a service that allows you to read your mail on your mail client but leave the mail on the server. Although IMAP is preferred by many organizations and allows you to access your mail from multiple clients, it puts heavier requirements on the server than Webmail or POP. Primarily because it requires the server to parse the emails. Some administrators may disable IMAP and prefer POP for this reason. That being said MCS is designed to do IMAP efficiently.
- WCAP aka Web Calendar Access Protocol is a protocol for accessing remote calendar and schedule information. You use it with the Thunderbird Lightning plugin.
Setting up Email with the Account Wizard
When you launch Thunderbird for the first time, or go to File->New->Account, you have the opportunity to use a wizard which sets up email with the most common settings. Select Email Account from the first window.
The second window asks for your name and email address. Your parents, commune, village elder(s) or the pack of wolves that raised you when you were abandoned in the wild should have given you a name. Enter it as you would like it to appear. Your system administrator should have given you a (primary) email address. Enter that here. Note that some users will have multiple email addresses which they can send mail from using the same account. You can set that up later from the Account Settings menu.
The next screen forces you to pick between POP and IMAP. It is possible to use both with the same account albeit you loose the main advantage of IMAP which is storing all your mail on the server. If you wish to set up a POP account then leave POP selected. If you wish to set up an IMAP account then select IMAP. The second option is whether you wish the emails to go in the INBOX/Sent folders under "Local Folders" or under the folders for this individual account. If you have multiple accounts then we recommend unchecking this. If not, do whatever you prefer.
pop version
imap version
The next screen allows you to select the account name to use for the SMTP server (that is for sending mail). Generally, with Meldware, this is the same as your POP or IMAP account name. Unfortunately, the account wizard does not always allow you to specify your SMTP server if you've set one up before (this may or may not be the same as your POP or IMAP server but generally is).
The next screen allows you to call this account something. Call it anything you like. I call mine "My Buni Email Account" or something cool like that.
The final screen asks you to trust it that everything is right -- then verify. If you have made no typos hit finish, otherwise go BACK and correct it. Give yourselves 10 lashes for your mistake.
pop version
imap version
Setting up an account for sending mail (SMTP)
When you use the wizard, a set of defaults are used to set up your connectivity to Meldware's SMTP service. These "defaults" are not necessarily the best choices for security or a number of other reasons. Click on the name you gave your account (I called mine "andy @ ...") from the left-hand tree menu.
From there click on "Account Settings". Then scroll to the bottom and click on "Outgoing Server (SMTP)". A list of SMTP servers comes up.
If you have more than one SMTP server you may find more than one SMTP server setting. If you just ran through the account wizard for the first time you should find only one. Click on that setting and click "edit".
Here you'll find the description that appeared in the previous screen and identifies this SMTP setup elsewhere. You'll also find the TCP/IP port used to connect to the SMTP server (this should be supplied by your administrator but is usually 25 for clear/TLS smtp and 465 for dedicated encrypted STMP+SSL aka SMTPS). There are also authentication and encryption options. Meldware always requires authentication but does not force encryption unless your administrator has configured it to do so. You should be warned that a plain text transfer can enable a relatively unsophisticated user to sniff your password or send bogus email as you. Ideally you should run with TLS or SSL. However, your administrator may have disabled these. Ask your administrator what settings are available and use the most security available on your setup. The Username should be the same as your account name for receiving mail. When you're done click "OK" until you get back to the main screen.
Setting up an account for viewing mail stored on the server (POP/IMAP)
When you use the wizard, a set of defaults are used to set up your connectivity to Meldware's IMAP or POP service. These "defaults" are not necessarily the best choices for security or a number of other reasons. Click on the name you gave your account (I called mine "andy @ ...") from the left-hand tree menu.
Account Settings
From there click on "Account Settings". You'll find the name of the account as you described it (for example andy @ localhost in the screenshot below). The "Name" is your name as you would like it to appear. Ideally this is your fullname.
Your email address that you'd like the mails to appear "from". Meldware accounts can have multiple aliases. Administrators will generally select to "verify identity" and prohibit you from coming up with your own "ad-hoc" aliases. For instance: acoliver@buni.org and andy@buni.org both reach me at the same email account. I can also send mail as either of them. However, if I put "ralph@buni.org" or "ralph@somehwere.com" and attempt to send a mail as them...the server will reject them as my server requires that my identity be an alias assigned to me on the Meldware server. You can have multiple aliases for this (or any other) account. The email address referred to on this screen is your default. If you wish to have others you can assign them by clicking "Manage Identities" at the bottom of this screen.
Ideally your reply-to address is blank or equal to your email address. In some cases this is not true. This adds a "header" to your email that tells the recipient how to get in touch with you. When they click "reply" this will generally reply to this address if present and your regular email address if it is not present.
Organization nearly never appears, but can identify what company or whatever organization you are from in emails if your email address doesn't make that clear. Don't worry about it.
A signature is a footer that appears at the bottom of emails that you send. This signature is usually created via a text file with an editor such as gedit or Windows Notepad (although your Meldware developers are more vi guys). You can find out more about signatures in this Thunderbird tutorial.
A vCard is like a virtual business card that can identify you and provide details about how to contact you in a uniform way. It is based on Internet standards. When you enable this and create a vCard, it is added as an attachment to emails you send. This tutorial covers it in more detail.
The Outgoing server refers to the SMTP server you set up during the account wizard or above. When you send mail from this account, it will use the outgoing (SMTP) mail service you select here. Additional settings are available if you select "Server Settings" from the left-hand tree (under the tree-node you selected above).
Server Settings
Shared Settings (IMAP/POP)
On the Server Settings screen, the "Server Type" (IMAP or POP) was selected during the account wizard. The "Server name" should be supplied by your administrator (localhost is only good if you are running the Meldware server on your actual local machine).
Your Username should be the same between your SMTP, POP and IMAP accounts and was set up with the wizard and probably supplied by your administrator.
Connection security defines whether your IMAP or POP connection is encrypted with SSL or not. SSL is the same technology that protects your web traffic when connecting to online banking or making purchases from sites like Amazon, Paypal or Ebay. The four settings represent both "if" and "when" the connection is encrypted:
- Never - pass emails, user names, passwords in clear text over the net. With freely available tools it is likely that anyone who wants to can steal your password. You may wish to lecture your administrator on the need for security if this is the only setting available to you.
- TLS, if available - Connect first over a non-encrypted stream on the same port as non-encrypted traffic (generally 143). Then before passing credentials (username/pw), try asking the server to encrypt the stream. If it succeeds, pass the credentials and use encryption for receiving email. It if fails, fall-back to "Never".
- TLS - Connect to the server first over a non-encrypted stream on the same port as encrypted traffic (generally 143). Then before passing credentials (username/pw), try asking the server to encrypt the stream. If it succeeds, pass the credentials and use encryption for receiving email. It if fails, then disconnect and tell the user.
- SSL - Connect to the server over a dedicated encrypted stream on a dedicated port (generally 993). All data will be passed over a secure stream.
Meldware supports all of these options including options that allow the server to refuse authentication (and hence relaying email) unless TLS is used. Provided that TLS or SSL are always used, emails between users with accounts on the same Meldware server will never be passed across the network in the clear. However, mails to outside servers are always passed in the clear. This is a limitation of SMTP/EMail generally.
Use [Secure Authentication is a less secure method of securing only your username and password using a "shared secret". Generally this shared secret is guessable and various "man-in-the-middle" attacks can violate this form of "security". We recommend leaving this off and using an encrypted stream if it is available. Consult your administrator for how this is set up on your email server. (Technical note, for POP Thunderbird calls "APOP" secure authentication and for IMAP this box means "SASL". MCS 1.0M8 supports APOP but not SASL.)
The additional "Server Settings" are primarily for when mails should be checked and when/how to delete it. "Check messages at startup" means that whenever Thunderbird is started it will immediately connect to your mail server for new mail. The "Check for messages every" setting causes Thunderbird to connect as often as the period defined in the textbox (in minutes) and check for mail. If there is new mail detected as a result of either of these options then the user is informed. With IMAP, however, mails are generally not downloaded unless a user selects the mail and often only in part, meaning attachments are not downloaded unless they are small or the user explicitly saves them. Additional settings for off-line mail are available. With POP the behavior is a bit different, the server actually downloads the mail before a user can read it. Usually with POP all of the available emails are downloaded at once.
"When I delete" defines how mails are deleted. Options are:
- "Move it to the trash folder" - mails are physically moved to your Trash folder and expunged when you tell it to empty the trash.
- "Mark it as deleted" - mails are "marked" as deleted in the folder. You can use a "custom view" to filter them out. They may be deleted depending on your "expunge" setting. Meldware tends to expunge them when your connection is over.
- "Remove it immediately" both marks deleted and expunges the mail.
IMAP Specifics
"Clean up..." causes the server to issue an "expunge" on the folder deleting any messages that you marked deleted to be physically removed. Note that corporate email servers are often archived due to various legal (SARBOX/etc) and liability issues (sexual harassment suits). You're best committing fraud face to face and sexual harassment over email isn't very empowering anyhow.
"Empty Trash On Exit" means that whatever you moved to the trash folder is going "bye bye" once your email session is finished.
POP Specifics
"Fetch Header Only" uses Meldware's TOP extension to download the message headers and possibly a few lines of the message. This gives IMAP-like characteristics to POP, allowing you to store your mails on the server and download them at will to the client. However, it isn't a full replacement for IMAP in that there is no provision in pop for sharing "read" flags between clients or really sharing message between multiple clients at all.
"Leave messages on server" tells Thunderbird not to delete messages downloaded with POP. It can also be told to only delete them when the local copy is deleted or to delete them after a period of days.
Additional Shared Settings (IMAP & POP)
Leave the advanced settings alone. If you have to ask...then they should stay at he default.
Thunderbird caches copies of your mails (even with IMAP) in a local file, with POP those messages are downloaded in their entirety and then deleted from the server. The path locates this file. It is possible to move it, import them, etc. For instance if you're running out of space on your hard drive you might move this to another hard drive and go from there. If you delete this file then Thunderbird will recreate it but it may take longer to redownload the headers of your mails than it would have otherwise. More settings are available by selecting the "Copies & Folders" node from the left-side tree.
Copies and Folders
With IAMP, when you send a mail Thunderbird's default settings cause the mail to be sent over SMTP and then "appended" to the Sent folder via an IMAP "append". This results in the email actually being copied across the network twice. Future versions of Meldware will make this redundant. Right now it is possible to use the BCC setting and set up a "server side filter" to achieve the same thing without this copying step, but it is laborious for users to set up. With POP these folders are always local as POP has no provision for a server-side copy.
If you do not want any copy of the emails you sent then uncheck "Place a copy in". You may also change the destination (combo box) to "Local folders" to keep a copy only on your computer (rather than the server) -- although this makes the mail unavailable to webmail. If you select "Other" you can choose a folder other than "Sent". This is particularly useful for interoperability with mail clients that call the sent folder by another name. Finally you can BCC and the server will relay the email to another recipient (for instance you can BCC yourself and then set up a server-side or client-side filter that moves messages from your own email address to the sent folder).
There are also settings for where "drafts" are kept when you select the "save draft" button when composing and email. The settings operate in the same way as the options for setting although there is no "bcc" options.
TODO: mail templates...dunno what they are or how to use them.
The "show confirmation dialog" pops up to ask if you're sure that you want to save things. It is generally kind of annoying since these actions are not generally destructive or hard to undo. If you are very indecisive and need to be asked multiple times "are you sure" then enable it... Additional settings are available by selecting the "Composition & Addressing" node from the left-hand tree menu.
Composition & Addressing
Composition settings define the behavior of the "compose" dialog for sending mails in Thunderbird. "Compose in HTML" means that the HTML email editor in Thunderbird is used as opposed to the simple text editor. This does not mean that the mail will be sent in HTML format (which many users find annoying and and many spam filters consider a warning sign), only that you'll compose it with the HTML version of the mail editor.
When you reply to a mail if the "Automatically quote.." box is checked then the entire contents of the mail are automatically added to your own mail prefaced by ">" signs. The combo box defines whether your actual reply begins after or before the quote (default) or if the entire quote is selected (allowing you to decide each time quickly). The "and place my signature" combo is only enabled if you have a signature and you select "start my reply above the quote". It defines whether your signature (set up on the account settings screen) is above or below the quote. Many mail clients will think the entire quote is part of your signature and some software filters annoyingly large signatures (there was a time when making gregarious ASCII art was a fad).
"Addressing" defines how directories are used. Thunderbird has a built in local addressbook. You can also use an LDAP server on the network (your administrator may supply connection information for this if you have a corporate LDAP server in your organization. "Use global settings" refers to another settings screen which you can find from the main menu bar->Edit->Preferences->Composition->Addressing. A future version of Meldware will contain a built in directory server. For now unless your administrator has supplied an ldap server...leave this to the default setting. There are additional settings available by selecting "Offline and Disk Space" from the left-hand tree menu.
Offline and Disk Space
IMAP Specifics
Offline settings allow you to tell Thunderbird to store your IMAP messages on the server. You can use IMAP nearly the same way as you can [POP] by turning on "Make the messagaes in my Inbox available when I am working offline". However, this only works for the INBOX folder. The "When I create new folders, select them for offline use" setting will automatically make that folder download upon connection to the IMAP server. You can make other folders on your Meldware IMAP account offline by clicking "Select folders for offline use".
Shared (POP & IMAP
The Disk Space options allow you to tell the IMAP/POP service not to download large messages. You can also ask it to delete messages beyond the last few, older than a specified number of days, or that you've already read. Your administrator may ask you to set this to a specific number of days.
Additional settings are available on the "Return Receipts" screen, selectable from the left-hand navigational tree.
Return Receipts
This screen allows you to override global preferences available for Thunderbird from the Main Menubar by selecting Edit->Preferences->Composition->General->Return Receipts. Note that many users find return receipt requests a bit presumptuous or aggressive, you may want to consider this before enabling it them globally for this account by selecting "Customize.." and "When sending messages, always request a return receipt". This next question is how to handle return receipts that you've received. You can leave them in your inbox or have them automatically moved to your sent folder (associated with the message that you sent). Finally, the default behavior of Thunderbird is to pop up a dialog when a return receipt is received asking you how it should be handled. You can perform any combination of categorically ignoring them; enable them only when you're on the To or CC of the message (as opposed to messages you receive as a member of a mail list or in a blind carbon copy which can be used by spammers to fish valid email addresses); or eable them only for users in your domain. You can then specify whether you want the default behavior of the potentially intrusive popup dialog asking whether to send it, to blindly send it or ignore it entirely for each of those categories. Additional settings are available by selecting the Security node of the left-hand tree menu.
Security
You should understand that email sent between you and Meldware and possibly other Meldware users can be encrypted by using SSL or TLS for the transport. However, that email is stored in a manner that is trivial to read in the database backing Meldware (some databases can automatically encrypt/decrypt this data but a person with access to the database it can still circumvent it). In order to properly secure email you need to use a Public Key. You get a key from a certificate authority such as Thawte or Experian or the free CACert provider. Using this key you can "sign" messages (the digital version of a pen stroke) and decrypt messages. Other users will encrypt mails using your public key and you decrypt them usin your private key and vice versa. This is entirely client-driven and beyond the scope of this documentation. You can read more about setting it up on this tutorial or about public keys generally. CACert has Thunderbird-specific instructions on their wiki.
Setting up Calendar Access (Lightning+WCAP 0.3)
Mozilla Thunderbird itself does not come with calendar access. Calendar access is enabled with the "Lightning extension". There are two versions of this, one which supports the Web Calendar Access Protocol (WCAP), and the other which does not. The Meldware Calendar Service uses WCAP protocol to communicate with Thunderbird. WCAP was created originally for Netcape's proprietary calendar product which Sun acquired. Because of this Thunderbird refers to it as "Sun Java System Calendar Server (WCAP)".
When used with Meldware, Lightning+WCAP allows you to:
- view your calendar in a daily/weekly/monthly view
- Schedule meetings
- for yourself
- with other users
- View "freebusy" information for other users
The information is kept on the server and is then available -- even from other computers. Additionally, you can view this same data using Meldware Communication Suite Webmail client's calendar.
Installing Lightning WCAP (Calendar)
The Meldware Communication Suite 1.0 Milestone 8 release works with Lightning WCAP version 0.3.1 (specifically it does not work with 0.5 although this is supported in the HEAD and possibly a build by the time you read this).
Install Lightning+WCAP from Mozilla's site. Save it to disk (do not let the browser try to install it) and from Thunderbird's "Tools" menu, select Extensions. Click Install from the dialog that pops up and locate the lightning-wcap-BLA.xpi file that you downloaded (BLA = platform/version). After restarting Thunderbird, you will see a new submenu on the left hand side under folders with a calendar and a set of tabs: Agenda, Todo, Calendars.
Setting up the Calendar
Click on the Calendars tab on the lower left-hand quadrant. Then click "new". A dialog should pop up. Select "On the Network" and click "Next".
The next screen asks for the type of calendar server. Select "Sun Java System Calendar Server (WCAP)". Enter the URL supplied by the administrator. It should look something like "http://yourorganizationname.com/wcap/". Be sure not to drop the trailing slash. Click next.
The next screen asks you to name the calendar and what color should be used to differentiate events from it versus any other calendars you may have. Give it a unique name that is meaningful for you and select your favorite color by clicking on the color and picking from the palette which pops up. Click next.
If everything was successful you may be asked for your username and password. Enter them, they should be the same as your email username/password (but not email address). You may be warned about "HTTPS" or "encryption". If this happens hit your administrator with a clue stick for not installing HTTPS and giving you an encypted URL. This means that some folks may be able to read your calendar data off of the net. Because this data is not always considered to be extraordinarily sensistive, many organizations leave these systems only lightly protected. We'll try not to moralize other than say "brush your teeth" and "secure your data". After you click finish your calendar should be set up!
Scheduling an Event
Scheduling an event is simple. Click on a date on your calendar in the lower left-hand quadrant. This should take you to a monthly, weekly or day view of the calendar.
You can right click in any day or hour and click "New Event". A dialog will appear. Fill out a "title", "location" and description for the meeting. This release of Lightning has a minor bug that prevents freebusy information from coming back properly if you select the time for from/to before going to the "Attendees" tab. Ensure that "Calendar" is your Meldware calendar (it should be listed under the name you chose above when setting it up). Click on the "Attendees" tab.
You should add yourself to the list of attendees (the server will do it for you on save if not but it is easier to schedule the event this way) by clicking in the first box in the left-side list. You can add attendees either by email address or id. There is a minor issue with this version of lightning where it is not completely possible to stop auto-completion of addresses. As you enter the addresses the server returns with their free/busy information in the form of red boxes (blue == unknown, green == free, red == busy). You can change the time of the meeting by clicking "next slot" or "next hour". You can also "eyeball" it and then go back to the meeting and set the from/to. Click save when you are done.
