Friday, June 01, 2007

Meeting Maker to Zimbra Migration

So given the fact that Zimbra is an open source calendaring system and Meeting Maker is the definition of legacy proprietary -- what can come over and what cannot?

Let's deal with the limitations first of all.


Meeting Maker calendar attributes that we do not transfer to Zimbra:

  • Private activities: We're taking this attribute along so that when Zimbra supports Private appointments (This is coming in their next version 5.0) it will be there -- but the current version has no way of (not) displaying them.

  • "Weekend move": Zimbra does not have this functionality so affected meetings will not move.

  • Comments: We've been dropping these for five years in Exchange migrations and there's been no complaints.

  • Colors / Labels: The Zimbra palette is very different from the primary colors of Meeting Maker so we don't even try to match colors.

  • Proxies: We extract them from Meeting Maker we'll look at what we can do to insert the same proxy rights (thank you to KevinH who with amazing speed pointed out Zimbra DOES have the ability to Share calendars - I just wasn't looking hard enough)

  • To-Dos: Zimbra has capability for to-dos in the user interface after version 5.0. So only supported for 5.0.

  • Optional / CC / BCC guests: Zimbra hdoes not have this functionality so we make all guests Required guests except for BCC (which would defeat the original purpose of a BCC) and respond appropriately. BCC guests get the meeting put in their calendar separately from the rest of the distribution list.

Meeting Maker calendar attributes that transfer to Zimbra:


  • Recurrence patterns (we even think we have a chance of solving the infamous "Refrigerator Bug" we always warn you about)
  • Meeting Agendas
  • Guest lists
  • Guest responses
  • Meeting Exceptions
  • Guest exceptions
  • Contacts
  • To-Dos in Version 5.0.
  • Banners
  • Holidays (we can insert into each calendar separately since Zimbra does not have server-wide holidays)
  • Conference Rooms
  • Resources
  • Time Zones

Please keep in mind this is a fluid list and we're likely to change a few things over time as new functions are added, as we get more clever in our migration implementation, or as we discover "gotchas" that are currently hidden to us.

Keep in mind we're doing all this server-side with no end user intervention.

The one functionality we're striving to add is the one that many of you have found so useful for testing in the past: UNDO.

We'll keep you informed as this migration technology develops.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Zimbra currently has no proxy / delegate capability"

Zyg - Zimbra has the ability to share calendars and the folder/calendar level. This gives users the ability to delegate either view and/or manager access to their calendar.

BTW: ToDo's (aka Tasks) are fully support in both the server and UI as part of 5.0. In 4.5.x they are supported only in the server and with Outlook clients.

zyg said...

January 2016: Why the heck is this post suddenly so popular??? Nobody still in Meeting Maker should seriously be considering Zimbra. Zimbra's hot potato ownership trail rivals Meeting Maker's. Look at Exchange. Look at Google. Then look back at Exchange.