Yesterday two separate events made me think to myself “GroupWise is broken!”  Of course GroupWise wasn’t broken either time, but it made me chuckle, because as administrators and consultants we’ve all heard this from users at one time or another, and just shook our heads when it was realized that it was “User Error” pure and simple.  While normally I don’t go bragging about how dumb I’ve been, one of the issues could probably be experienced by any iPhone user in a hurry, so I thought I’d best document it here (and get ready for the snickering to come!).

Yesterday morning, in a daze that was precipitated by it being first thing in the morning and no coffee yet, I reached for my iPhone to check the mail that had delivered overnight.  I had one particular message open and could not read the attachment.  Now, if you are an iPhone user, you know that some attachments received on the iPhone simply are not properly visible (like messages “forwarded as attachment” or other document types like WordPerfect or OpenOffice).  Since I could not read the attachment, my next step was to go to GW Mail and look at the message in WebAccess.  I punched the little round “Home” button at the bottom center of the iPhone to get back to the Springboard, opened GW Mail, and to my utter dismay, the message was not there!  Indeed, the next message in the list, which I had not read, was marked open, and the message I was looking for was just GONE.  So, my first inclination was that somehow GroupWise was “mixing up messages” and also and messing with my caffeine starved brain.

Those of you with an iPhone will be aware that when you are reading a message in portrait mode, the soft “Delete” button is right above the hard “Home” button on the iPhone.  After my shock of “GroupWise being broken” so early in the morning, I did a little bit of testing and found that it is actually not that difficult to delete a message that is open in the Mail app while pressing the Home button if you are in a hurry, have big fingers, or are just clumsy (all of the above describing me!).  I’ve had an iPhone for 2 years now, and my guess is that I’ve deleted more than one message in this manner.  Just not one that I was purposefully looking for that very next moment.  The way to actively prevent this of course is to click the “folder” button at the top left of the iPhone (labeled Inbox if that’s the folder you are in) to return to the message list before pressing that Home button.  Or just being a lot more careful about how you rush through your day.  Slowing down is probably good for all of us!

The second incident yesterday that had me wondering why GroupWise had eaten my message, was even more mysterious.  I received an email that I wanted to convert to an appointment.  I’ve used “change to” so many times I could do it in my sleep (or so I thought).  So, I right-clicked on the message in the list, chose “change to” and the message disappeared.  I scoured the trash.  I did a full text search for something I knew was in the message.  Nothing.  So I did a right-click on another message just to look, and “archive” was right above “change to”.  Guess where my message was??

So, the moral of the story here is that we’re all “users” at one time or another.  No matter how long we’ve used GroupWise, no matter how much we think we know about the program, stuff happens.  Actually it’s probably more likely that those of us who really “do know what we’re doing” on most days are more likely to assume that “GroupWise is broken” than your average user, because we never make mistakes

This week is bound to get better!

Happy GroupWising.

Danita

Occasionally I discuss some of my geeky iPhone/iPad apps that don’t necessarily have anything to do with GroupWise.  Yesterday NewsTap was updated with an iPad version that is just awesome!  For those of you who don’t know about NewsTap, it is an NNTP client that allows me to download the Novell Support Forums via NNTP right to my iPad.

If you have an iPhone or iPad (but especially an iPad!!!), and you have need of an NNTP client, this is IT!  Find out more about it here.  I’ve also updated some of the info on my geeky apps page, so go check it out if you have and iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch!

Danita

I’ve had a number of people ask me recently about the availability of hosted archving for GroupWise.  As luck would have it, Sonian is having a couple of Webinars next week that will highlight their hosted archiving solution for GroupWise.  As many of us prepare to move our GroupWise systems from NetWare to Linux, it’s a good time to find out about the various archiving options available to GroupWise systems.  Take the opportunity to find out more about Sonian and there solution next week.  The Webinar on Tuesday is geared towards technology executives pondering the merits of archiving, while the Webinar on Wednesday is directed towards technology professionals.  Topics to be discussed include:

• 100% data capture from the GroupWise Post Offices
• Satisfy all regulatory/compliance demands
• 24/7 Searchability/Availability for multiple users
• Unlimited storage without adding to already constrained IT resources
• Predictable lower cost model than on-premise alternatives

Click the links above to register.  Attendees will receive a 20% discount on The Caledonia Guide to Moving GroupWise.

Danita

Our good friend Howard Tayler has been nominated for the second year in a row for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Graphic Story for his Schlock Mercenary web comic.  Many of you will remember Howard as a former GroupWise Product Manager.  My very first memory of Howard was at WordPerfect Corporation in 1994, where he presented a class on WordPerfect Office to the then online sysops who moderated forums for WordPerfect Corporation on CompuServe and The Source.  (We all looked a bit different then.  Howard had a pony tail down to his waist and was a Mac geek, and I had never seen a Mac and had no grey in my hair yet!)

For a limited time, we have 8-1/2 x 11″ prints of Howard’s caricature of  “The GroupWise Goddess” available for free – you pay the shipping and handling fee only.  If you don’t have one of these terribly fun works by Howard, now’s the time to get it!

But more importantly, if you are a science fiction/satire fan (or just really want to thank Howard for all of the fond memories of the PM in the big black boots!), we encourage you to find out more about Howard’s work at Schlock Mercenary.  There you can purchase some of Howard’s other works, including books, posters and miniatures.  And for the iPhone/iPod Touch owners, Schlock Mercenary has it’s own iPhone or iPad app for online subscription to the comic strip.

And of course, I can only wish I looked so good as Howard managed to even make a caricature of me look!

The GroupWise Goddess by Howard Tayler

Danita

In case some of you haven’t seen Dean Lythgoe’s blog regarding the next version of GroupWise, code named Ascot, future versions of GroupWise will run on 64-bit servers only.  This includes SLES/OES2 for Linux, and Windows servers, with no support for NetWare.  The drop of NetWare should come as no surprise to most of us, since NetWare has moved to “self-support” at this point.  The 64-bit server requirement has taken some by surprise, and it’s an important change to note!

Many of you have purchased our Guide to Moving GroupWise and have already begun your plans to move to Linux.  If you have not finalized your move yet, and were planning on using a 32-bit server for your GroupWise system, you might wish to rethink this now.  [Side note: I rebuilt my own GroupWise server back in January, and of course didn't think that far ahead.  It's on 32-bit SLES11!!]

Now is the perfect time to get your servers running a 64-bit operating system as you make your move, so you will not be required to do the move again any time soon!

Danita

We are happy to announce that we are moving our online store to a new site. It will take a few days before all of our products are active in the new store and it is possible that you will need to go to two different sites to purchase items if some of the items you are looking for are not yet in the new site. We have been working this weekend to add our most popular products to the store. You can see the new store at http://www.caledonia.net/store.

If you are a previous customer, your customer information has already been entered into the new cart.  You will need to request a new password.  We have not yet figured out a way to enter all of the previous orders and give you new download links for those products, but we are working on that.  If, in the meantime, you need to download your old products and cannot find them in the account information for our new store, please let us know and we will get you a new link ASAP.

It’s a work in progress, but we are hopeful that it will be a painless shopping experience for you in the future.

Danita

On April 2, 2010, GroupWise 7 officially reached End of Life for Novell General Support. What this means for GroupWise 7 (and older!) customers, is that if you have not upgraded to GroupWise 8, you cannot open a Service Request directly with Novell, unless you have specifically purchased Extended Support.. Service Requests can only be opened with Novell for GroupWise 8 issues for customers on standard maintenance.  You can continue to receive support at the Novell Support Forums on an “as available basis” as well.

Now, we at Caledonia agree with Novell that you really should get upgraded to GroupWise 8, and we’ll even help you do that if you need assistance. We have the Caledonia Upgrade Guide for GroupWise 8 if you just  need some guidance to get you started, or if you need more assistance than that we can give you an estimate for a remote upgrade for your system.

In the meantime though, we realize that you need support for your system before you get it to GroupWise 8.  At Caledonia we offer a wide variety of support options from email to telephone to remote access.  It’s very easy to open up a support request.  Simply send an email to gwsupport at caledonia dot net (doncha love the way we have to try to trick spammers these days?) and we will get back to you as quickly as possible with our rates and availability.

Danita

When is the last time you had an independent health check of your GroupWise system? It is often easy to believe that things are running well, and are optimized for your system when no one is complaining about performance. However, we find that most times when we are called in for health checks, we can find a few ways to clean up your system and make recommendations for improving your system’s health.

April is Spring Cleaning month for Caledonia. Get 10% off of a standard health check if you book it by the end of April. Just contact us at info @ caledonia . net for more details!

Thanks.

Danita

Novell has announced their Technology Preview of the Novell Mobility Pack for GroupWise, which is their replacement for the GroupWise Mobility Server. You can find out more about the Technology Preview here.

Caledonia is hard at work on a comprehensive guide to the Novell Mobility Pack. We also recognize a need for documentation NOW that helps our customers get ready for the Mobility Pack. Thus we have made a portion of our upcoming guide available as a “Quickstart” version, that can assist you in getting up and running.

We offer this guide free of charge. We only ask that you “register” through our shopping cart process to receive the guide. As the Novell Mobility Pack gets closer to shipping version, we will release our full Novell Mobility Pack Guide. If you download this preview QuickStart Guide, we will be sure to not only let you know when the final version is ready, but we will also offer you a 20% discount on the final guide when it ships.

Just go to http://www.caledonia.net/gw-mobility.html to get the guide.

Good luck!

Danita

We’ve tested some new GroupWise WebAccess helper apps for the iPhone, and are pleased to say that these are very nice additions to the GroupWise arsenal of apps for the iPhone.  We discussed GW Web a few months ago as a front-end for GroupWise WebAccess.  Now the developer of GW Web has come up with two additional new apps that give GroupWise WebAccess a very “iPhone” look and feel.  GW Mail and GW Calendar .

Both GW Mail and GW Calendar use WebAccess as the back-end access to GroupWise, and thus are available for any iPhone user who has access to GroupWise WebAccess.

GW Calendar

As you can see from the screenshot below, GW Calendar brings a real iPhone look and feel to the GroupWise WebAccess calendar, and of great interest of course is the “Week View”, which is unavailable in the WebAccess simple templates.  Version 1.0 does not have the ability to add new appointments, so it will be a “read-only” view.  You will still need to go into the WebAccess application to add appointments for now.

GW Mail

GW Mail version 1.2 (due out in the App Store this week) not only gives users a real iPhone mail “look”, but adds the ability to access folders (version 1.1, currently available in the App Store does not have folder support, but the developer has it ready for approval).  GW Mail can access the GroupWise Frequent Contacts Book and System Address Book for address lookup as well.  We certainly have a few things on the wish list  - like swipe to delete, move to folder, and multiple item actions, but we know this developer will continue to improve and enhance the app as it moves forward.

The nice thing about having both GW Calendar and GW Mail on the iPhone is that you get a similar experience to using the native iPhone apps.  Click the GW Calendar icon to go directly to your calendar.  Click the GW Mail icon to get directly to your inbox.  No more loading up WebAccess, just to click more links to get to where you wish to go.

Have fun iPhoners!

Danita