[Chandler-dev] Mail in Preview

[Brian Kirsch]

Hello,
Yesterday I checked in fundamental changes to mail in Chandler which  
I would like to detail for you.


Overview:
===================
In our discussions we acknowledged that for Preview,  Chandler would  
not be a full out of the box replacement for traditional mail clients  
such as Thunderbird and Outlook. Thus we needed a way for users to  
take advantage of the great collaboration features Chandler offers  
without forcing them to choose between their current mail client and  
Chandler. With yesterday's check in, I believe we have achieved this  
goal.

Although the check in includes many cool new features and  
improvements the fundamental change is that Chandler no longer  
downloads all email from an IMAP Inbox or a POP Server.

Instead, Chandler scans the IMAP Inbox and POP Server for Chandler  
communications and downloads them. These are emails which were sent  
from another Chandler user and contain specific mail headers that the  
Mail Service uses to identify the communication. Chandler emails can  
be plain text or contain ICal and EIML attachments to support the  
Edit / Update workflow's and Event sharing.

While this solution works great for Chandler collaboration there are  
times when a user receives an email from a non-Chandler client that  
contains information he or she wants to bring in to Chandler such as  
an invitation or task.

No problem, we have got this covered too!

This brings us to the concept of Chandler IMAP Folders. These are  
folders, which on the users request Chandler, will create and  
configure on the IMAP server.

The folders are as follows:

1. Chandler Mail - placing mail messages in this folder results in  
Chandler downloading them and creating Items stamped as a MailStamp.

2. Chandler Tasks - placing mail messages in this folder results in  
Chandler downloading them and creating items stamped as a MailStamp  
and a TaskStamp.

3. Chandler Events  - placing mail messages in this folder results in  
Chandler downloading them, parsing in a locale aware manner the  
subject and body for any date time information, and creating items  
stamped as a MailStamp and an EventStamp.

I've been using the Chandler IMAP Folders for some time now and they  
are an easy and productive way to get data in to Chandler.


IMAP
=========
As I detailed in the overview, the Chandler IMAP code now supports  
Chandler to Chandler communications and Chandler IMAP folders.

Although we do not yet have UI the Chandler IMAP code actually  
supports complete IMAP foldering. And for each IMAP folder can  
contain the following configurations:

1. Only Download Chandler to Chandler messages
2. Download all Mail
3. Download all Mail and stamp as Events
4. Download all Mail and stamp as Tasks
5. Delete messages from the IMAP server that have been downloaded to  
Chandler
6. Limit the number of messages downloaded to a specific number. i.e.  
only download up to 300 messages from the folder




POP
========
POP works similar to IMAP and out of the box will only download  
Chandler to Chandler communications.

However, it also has some advanced configuration features that we  
don't yet have UI to support:

1. Only Download Chandler to Chandler messages
2. Download all Mail
3. Delete messages from the POP server that have been downloaded to  
Chandler
4. Limit the number of messages downloaded to a specific number. i.e.  
only download up to 300 messages


Putting it all together
===================
Much work has been done around making Sharing and Mail set up and  
configuration easy for the user.

The number of new or improved features is large and is best  
demonstrated in an Thursday OSAF All Hands demo.

I encourage everyone to play around with Account Preferences Dialog  
and provide feedback on its ease of use.

New features include:

1. Folding of POP and IMAP in to an Incoming Account type
2. Auto Discovery
3. Chandler IMAP folder creation and removal
4. Improved account testing dialogs
5. Better interaction with SSL cert dialog
6. Save and Restore improvements including support for foldering and  
restoring default accounts
7. Better form validation



Thanks,
-Brian