Exchange / Outlook slicker look, but Exchange Server can’t begin to compete with Groupwise for uptime or reliability. Exchange Server has had numerous problems including ‘losing’ e-mail when it is greylisted.

Lotus Notes – All I can say is YUK, too costly doesn’t display HTML well, especially is CSS is used.

Groupwise, I have NEVER had a Groupwise Client infect a workstation with a virus. I can’t say that about Outlook. Groupwise is not quite as intuitive as Outlook, but over all the Server Side is much more stable and secure, and the Client side is more stable and a much ‘cleaner’ interface even if it is less intuitive.

No one system is perfect, but overall for stability and security I have to go with Novell and Groupwise.

Try the following:
View -> Display Settings -> Discussion Threads

Latest rant about GroupWise – The ability to send recurring meeting invites. What a great way to flood an inbox, thanks GroupWise.

The only thing I see missing from GW (and maybe it’s in 8; I don’t know) is the conversation function. Outlook can return all of the replies/forwards in logical order.

“7. I have 90 emails in my trash folder. When I try and empty the folder, the emails disappear. When I click on the trash folder again, VOILA! 90 emails in my trash folder.”

talk to your IT staff. They likely have smart purge enabled

Making a vacation rule isn’t hard even in GW7.

As for the Find function, I’ve never had a speed issue with it, but it does have frequent issues not finding email that definitely fits the search criteria

Silent retraction? Makes non-tech admins feel all warm and fuzzy, but in all reality, it’s not trustable. If someone has already read the email, and you retract it…you’ll think everything is fine, but it’s really not. The message is still out there.

And another defense of GW is that ‘your organization needs to invest in more hardware’ — or something to that effect. Umm…why? What is the overwhelming benefit of keeping an email system in house that continues to grow, continues to suck more resources and more funding each year…..why wouldn’t you go with a cost-effective model like outsourcing, where you pay the same flat rate every single year, and get all the features you need without having to worry about all the extra things GW requires.

A little case study off the top of my head (not exhaustive):

GW == Server hardware, backup hardware, proprietary non-standards based messaging (IMAP for example), requires extra hardware and software to provide archiving/retention, requires in-house expertise to maintain the system

Google == no required hardware, no required backup hardware, standards based messaging, requires no extra hardware to add archiving or retention ability, requires no in-house expertise to maintain the system. All you need is people feeding google the data (LDAP), and then…well…that’s about it…if you want to compare apples to apples.

I can’t see any reason why any place still runs an in house system, let alone Groupwise. It just doesnt make sense in the long term from a cost-benefit analysis.

For a start GroupWise is NOT an email ‘Program’. It is an entire System. Like Exchange + Outlook. Except it is less resource hungry, consumes less disk space per message. The messages are kept more securely (IE Encrypted AND compressed) PLUS all the things Ben says in his Article. The best thing about GroupWise is that every time there is a new mail worm or virus out, the administrators don’t start sweating bullets like the M$ guys do. I’d rather “put the effort into making the transition to another client” so I knew my data was safe and secure!! You can run Outlook against the Groupwise backend if you really wanted to but that is unfortunately where MOST odf the vulnerabilities are in M$ mail systems. That hopelessly insecure piece of code they call Outlook.

#3, I work in the IT dept at a medium sized medical center, and from what I’ve seen, probably 70-80% of the organization’s email communication is internal. Maybe different environments have a different mix (Sales, maybe?), but I’m sure there are still a lot of organizations that would consider features like the silent retract to be very useful.

As a GroupWise administrator for the last 12 years or so, I must say that from an administrative point of view, I can’t imagine an email system being much easier. We have 3,500 users in 15 post offices on about a dozen servers, and I share admin duties with one other FTE. I probably spend about 5% of my time on GW admin tasks, and he probably spends 20-30%. Even when I was the only admin, I doubt I spent more than 30-40% of my time on GW, if that much. We researched migrating to Exchange a while back, and the initial hardware/sofware/conversion costs alone would have been roughly $1million, and it would have required us adding at least one, and probably 2 FTEs to administer it – so from a business standpoint, GroupWise has a lot going for it.

In response to Item #1, I believe the major issue with the software is that it was designed to assume there is no “lag” in the workplace. I’ve never worked at a company where the email connection is instantaneous. There is usually a substantial loading time when you try and do anything on the email software (whatever it may be).

That being said, when Groupwise begins to filter, and you make one typing mistake, you sit there for 20 seconds before your second chance to search. This might not seem like a lot of time, but in the workplace the little things cause the biggest annoyances. I personally feel that if a Groupwise tester was to try the software in a “live” environment, they would obviously see that this is a lackluster feature.

I agree with #2 however, the ability for a user to send an email as a “Follow-up” item (making the font orange) when I actually use the follow-up feature for organization is extremely aggravating. This is another issue I believe looks good on paper, but when it is actually put to use, does not work well for the common office employee.

Item #3, understandable but how often do you send interoffice email? That’s why we have phones and with the number of Blackberry’s these days, the percent chance of that silent retraction is very slim.

Item #4, good to know. Painful that a user would have to constantly manage their contact list but good points all around.

Item #7, I’ll put in the call.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson here this week… don’t joke about Groupwise, it’s fans come out of the wood works to defend it.

-Reply All

1) Why does Google search try to fill in your search term after you’ve only typed a few characters? All software in an effort to be more “efficient” tries to predict what you are doing. Is it a good thing? Dunno, but it seems to be the trend. Is the software always right? Nope. But at least in the case of GW it starts filtering immediately which at least starts narrowing down the contents of the current folder, which typically isn’t a bad thing.

2) It may be dumb, but some people just want to do it. If it didn’t allow a bold subject, people would complain saying why doesn’t it let you do it.

3) The silent retraction serves its purpose for internal e-mails.

4) The “auto-fill” feature is based on the display name. So take a look at your contacts… if it only has an e-mail address and nothing else, then the display name is the e-mail. This would happen if you just compose a new message to someone you’ve never e-mailed. If you are replying, it will grab the sender’s name (assuming it’s in the headers of what you received) and add that into the contact’s info, setting the name as the display name. One option if you don’t like it… disable FC altogether.

7) The administrator has turned on either the smart purge feature or retention feature. The first one doesn’t allow you to empty the trash until the message has been backed up. The second doesn’t allow you to empty the trash until the time has been archived by a third-party message retention application. In either case, some third-party app isn’t working properly which means it’s not updating the timestamps within GW that allows the system to know the messages have been backed up or archived. Or, worse yet, the third-party app isn’t working at all which means the messages haven’t been backed up at all or haven’t been archived at all. In either case, it’s up to your admin to fix this. Definitely not a GW bug.

Joe