Thunderbird

Thunderbird

October 18, 2006

Jon Atherton, Dan BartholomewCIT/IS

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Agenda• Background

• Migration Tools

• Migration Experience

• Training Survey

• Roadmap

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Background

Ownership of e-mail: CIT: S&O: Messaging

Client Support (backline): CIT: IS: P&D

E-mail back-office meetings

ITMC Committee

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• E-mail back-office members include:– Jim Howell, S&O– Jon Atherton, I&D– Dan Bartholomew, I&D– Lee Brink, I&D– Tom Parker, IdM– Jeff Truelsen, ATSUS– JP Brannan, ATSUS– Others

• The objectives of the group included:– Discuss current issues with E-Mail service.– Plan for upgrades to servers and Software– Plan changes to Clients (including WebMail)– New features like Alternate E-mail Identity (COEA)– (Other stuff)

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• E-Mail working group was created in April; the members include:

– Rob Bandler, Univ. Registrar– Thomas Crook, Human Ecology– Debra Howell, Facilities– Don Sevey, Campus Life– Steve Staiger, ILR– CIT: Jon Atherton, Dan Bartholomew, Leslie Intemann, Diane Sempler,

Jeff Truelsen

• The objectives of the group included:– Discuss current issues with Eudora.– Is Thunderbird the right E-Mail client? Discuss CIT’s discovery and

evaluation process.– If Thunderbird is the right client, discuss next steps and develop a

migration plan.

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Migration Tools• EudoraRescue – Maintains Status, Label and Priority. Pre-

processor for Thunderbird’s import facility. [Win]

• EmailChemy – Single step import tool but does not appear to maintain Status, Label or Priority information. [Mac/Win]

• Transend – Similar features/limitations to EmailChemy [Win]

• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner – Single step import tool. Maintains Status and Labels. Puts output mailboxes in fixed location. [Mac]

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Migration Efforts

• College of Human Ecology

• Facilities

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Facilities• Migration of users One on One• Made training sessions available

– Show & tell format– Offered before the migration and some follow-up after migration– Included instructions on Searching LDAP– Address book manipulation

• Cleaning up old mail was optional• 80% of usage was POP• Eudora Rescue was used• They use Roaming Profiles• Extra configuration for all users:

– Automatic compression– Set master passwords– Forward messages inline– Reply at top of E-mail– Configured to send HTML

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Steps used for migration1. Initial E-mail or Phone call to the person 2. Scheduled a time to perform the move 3. Pushed TB via active directory using the MSI installer4. Created Account settings (did not import accounts from Eudora)5. Ran Eudora Rescue6. Imported Eudora mail into Local Mailboxes (Tools->Import)7. Set preferred settings (over and above our defaults)8. Verified the installation / migration9. Left old Eudora folders intact for a while in case they were needed10. Deleted Eudora folders (Inactive TSM copy remained for up to 6 months)11. Merge Migrated mail into account mailboxes from Local.

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Issues1. They had difficulties with the LDAP searching (may be result of Eudora

and Thunderbird sending slightly different search requests) 2. They leave the attachment as part of the mail file rather than splitting it

off. Indicated some problems with using Detach attachment. (Need to do further testing to see if we can reproduce this).

3. They had problems with Deleting items from the Junk mailbox blocking deleting from other mailboxes until Thunderbird is restarted.  (Need to do further testing to see if we can reproduce this)

4. Not sure if Thunderbird is more or less problematic since there are always more problems when you first start using a new application.  Time will tell.

5. Lots of Nit Picking by the users.  Again, may be the result of having to change from Eudora rather than defects in Thunderbird itself.

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Recommended Practices

• Pre-migration

• Migration Steps

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Pre-Migration

1. Thunderbird is NOT Eudora. Although both applications process mail, they behave similar to each other and their feature sets are different.

2. Thunderbird uses accounts whereas Eudora uses Personalities.3. Thunderbird keeps the attachment as part of the mail file. Deleting the mail

file deletes the attachment. You need to “detach” the attachment before deleting the mail file if you wish to keep it.

4. Because of number 3, when you view an attachment, you are looking at a temporary copy. Changes made to it are NOT re-written to the mail file and are stored in a temporary file. If you need to change an attachment, either use “Save As” to save a copy or detach the attachment and make changes.

5. Directory searches are performed a little differently so results may not match 100%.

6. Other differences

Before you start the migration process you may wish to meet with your staff and review some of the difference between Eudora and Thunderbird. A few of the differences are listed below

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Migration Steps1. Schedule a time that is convenient to perform the migration. Depending on the size of the users mailboxes,

it could take an hour or more.2. Install Thunderbird from Bear Access or the MSI.3. Cleanup existing mailboxes and compress them.

• Mailboxes & folders with non-standard characters in Windows will not import and should be renamed first4. Run a full virus scan on the Eudora mailbox folder including the attachment folder. This is critical since

the import process may fail if Symantec quarantines either the mailbox or the attachment during the migration process.

5. If the user wishes to retain Flags, Labels and status information, you will need to use one of the migration utilities to pre-process the mailboxes.

• Thunderbird and none of the migration tools will import filters6. Verify disk space needs and availability to duplicate the user’s mailboxes.7. Launch Thunderbird and select Don’t import anything. You can then use either Tools->Account settings

to manually create accounts or use Tools->Import to import the settings from Eudora then tweak them as necessary.

8. Import Address book using Tools->Import9. Import Eudora Mailboxes (Tools->Import)10. Verify the mailboxes and address book migrated successfully.11. If you are sure everything migrated properly you may wish to move the imported mail to the local folders. 12. You may wish to archive a copy of the user’s Qualcomm\Eudora folder in case you need to refer to it.13. Make changes to preferences such as whether to have access to IMAP mail while offline, where to place

replies

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Training Survey results• 65 responses received from members of Net-Admin-

L, CCDs, and ITMC—this data represents a low return rate

• Top e-mail clients currently in use: Eudora, WebMail, Thunderbird, and Outlook

• 40% of respondents have officially started migrating users to Thunderbird; 43% have not; 17% do not plan to migrate

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More Training Survey results• Responses to our questions about specific training (user

migration, user how-to, IT migration, and IT how-to) were similar across the board. Approximately 50% gave a positive response, 25% were neutral, and 25% were not interested.

• Of the people who were interested, 66% prefer web-based materials; 33% prefer classroom-based materials.

• When to hold Thunderbird training: 33% prefer between now and the end of 2006, whereas 44% prefer between January and March 2007.

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Roadmap• Summer, 2006: Begin support for Thunderbird• Summer/Fall ’06: End user training available• Summer, 2007: Move Eudora to Updates & Extras• Summer, 2009: End support for Eudora

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Qualcomm Announcement• Qualcomm has announced the end of Eudora as a

commercial product– Open source built on Mozilla/Thunderbird

– Preserve Eudora user experience

– Maintain compatability

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Penelope roadmap• Release 0.1

– Importers for your mail store and contacts – Remapping of accelerator keys – Basic settings and personalities

• Release 0.5– Filter importing – Major UI Elements – Unique Eudora message handling operations

• Release 1.0– Stationery – Import for all Settings – Minor UI elements

Source: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope

Questions?

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3rd Party Extensions• Extensions are written by third-parties, which means anyone from Google

to some guy living in his mom's basement. Naturally the quality of extensions varies greatly. Your best bet is to read the user comments before installing an extension.

• Each time a new version of Thunderbird is released, each extension's author needs to update their extension. As you might expect, some authors are better at this than others. Until the extension has been updated, it is disabled.

• For the above reasons, we have chosen to not support extensions at this time. Discussions about potential future support of extensions are on-going.

http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/email/thunderbird/extensions.html

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Extension Skill RequirementsYou will almost certainly need to use the following technologies, although it is not necessary to be an expert in them. You may be able to pick up much of what you need just by examining the source code for other extensions.

• XUL (XML User-Interface Language). Used to define the onscreen layout of the UI and to attach scripts and style to the interface.

• JavaScript. The primary scripting language in Mozilla and the language in which most extensions are written. • DOM (Document Object Model). Used to manipulate XUL in real-time as well as any HTML documents loaded. • XPCOM/XPConnect. Mozilla packages together useful functions into XPCOM (Cross-Platform Component Object Model)

components, which may then be accessed from external code, including JavaScript via XPConnect. This allows the extension developers access to the preferences database, the file system, and many other pieces of Mozilla technology (Extensions can be written in JavaScript, C++, or even Python with PyXPCOM).

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Used to style the interface and to attach XBL bindings to XUL documents.

More advanced extensions may require the following technologies.

• XBL (XML Binding Language). Used to extend XUL, allowing the creation of new types of widgets and associated behaviors.

• RDF (Resource Description Framework). Used as a data-storage format in some parts of Mozilla and in some extensions.

Source: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dev_:_Extensions