Atmail Calendaring and Sync direction

July 27, 2009

In regards to the new direction of Atmail and sync services, the Atmail development team would like to share our vision and roadmap.

Open Protocols

We believe the future of Calendaring and Groupware will come down to embracing open-protocols, with the current landscape more clients and servers are moving from proprietary formats to open standards such as CalDAV for Calendaring, WebDAV for storage, and the soon to be supported CardDAV protocol for sharing addressbook data.

In Atmail 5.X we developed the calendaring component to use our own data-format, which used MySQL as the data backend and PHP for the business logic. While this served the purpose for the Webmail interface, it was difficult to connect external clients, as we had to create plugins for Outlook to exchange data between the two formats.

The direction we have taken with Atmail 6 is to create a client + server using CalDAV for calendaring data which uses the following open RFC standards:

  • WebDAV RFC 2518
  • WebDAV Access Control RFC 3744
  • CalDAV RFC 4791
  • iCalendar RFC 2445

More clients are beginning to support CalDAV for calendaring data ( Mozilla Thunderbird, iCal, Iphone and more ) which can connect to the Atmail Calendar server. If users add or remove appointments in another client, these instantly reflect in the Webmail Calendaring interface and vice-versa.

If you are a business or organization looking to implement Atmail, you have a wider range of client support, not locked into a proprietary format, and the freedom to switch between solutions.

If your organization or school already uses a CalDAV server, Atmail can act as a client to your existing server via the webmail interface.

Outlook Sync Plugin

The development team have been refactoring the Outlook Plugin from Atmail-5 to use CalDAV. This will enable Outlook clients to exchange Calendaring data, sync contacts, tasks and shared events. All using a native MAPI plugin which communicates to the Atmail server using CalDAV and HTTP/S.

The new plugin will offer complete support for Outlook clients with the new Atmail 6 version.
Availability will be late August 09 - Beta versions will be released earlier, please contact us should you wish to be part of the program.

ActiveSync licensing

Atmail 5.6 supported ActiveSync via a GPL library to support push mail and addressbook data. Due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the Activesync server protocol is trademarked within the US. Microsoft is suggesting 3rd party vendors to cease support for Activesync without a direct IP license from Microsoft.

From Atmail 5.62 and onwards we no longer support Activesync for push data, however we have other alternatives around the corner.

SyncML

The next milestone for Atmail6 is to use the SyncML format to exchange Calendaring and contact data. Several major companies such as Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, IBM and Siemens AG support SyncML in their mobile phones and PDAs.

Our greater roadmap vision is to include full support for SyncML late 2009, or sooner given demand from end-users and clients.

CardDAV

For addressbook data, CardDAV is an upcoming open-protocol for sharing and distributing contacts. CardDAV is a IETF draft spec that combines WebDAV and ACLs to create a vCard server, much in the way they are combined to create CalDAV.

Apple is one of the first vendors to announce CardDAV support in their products ( Snow leopard and iPhone ) , with more vendors adding support once the protocol matures.

We aim to implement the CardDAV protocol for all address-book data and sharing in Atmail Q4 2009.

Blackberry support

In May, RIM announced Blackberry PUSH support via an open API. The Atmail development team are in the process to add support for Blackberry PUSH in Atmail 6.

Our roadmap is to include SyncML support for the majority of mobile-phones first, then offer native push using a Blackberry to the Atmail server.

Conclusion

With the announcement of the new Atmail 6 the software implements full CalDAV support. By late August the Outlook Sync plugin will be available for end-users using Atmail 6, with further sync features offered in Atmail by late 2009.

We welcome any feedback from customers on the roadmap direction for Atmail’s Calendaring and Sync features, please feel free to discuss with a comment below.


Filed under: Product News, Frontpage, Atmail 6 — Ben Duncan @ 7:54 am

11 Comments »

  1. Thanks for the info. So there will be blackberry support via Funambol and SyncML once you get SyncML working, correct?

    Comment by Steven Craig — July 27, 2009 @ 1:44 pm

  2. SyncML is OK. Good support on microsoft based phones and nokia but on android and apple only contacts can be synced.

    Also can you think of releasing the activesync code as GPL without selling it. We had promised activesync support, and would hate to rewrite the code based on the same libraries that you used

    Comment by Ehab — July 27, 2009 @ 6:02 pm

  3. I would love to see a fast implementation of SyncML.
    Since you where using a GPL library why not release the GPL integration code independantly of your company in a sourceforge project.

    Comment by Nabuse — July 28, 2009 @ 7:08 am

  4. Hi Steven - For blackberry support, we can bypass Funambol now that RIM have released a more open API for the Blackberry. This will be released after SyncML is added to Atmail.

    Comment by Ben Duncan — July 30, 2009 @ 4:44 am

  5. Hi Ehab - For using Push with a GPL library, we are investigating options. The community is welcome to create a Push plugin on sourceforge, however users must be aware of the IP licensing issues from Microsoft.

    Comment by Ben Duncan — July 30, 2009 @ 4:49 am

  6. Hi Ben,
    So basically until SyncML comes out we’re out of luck in providing mobile sync of calendar and contacts? And according to Ehab, SnycML will only sync contacts and not calendar for mobile devices????

    Not having calendar and contact wireless sync for mobile devices has really killed our deployment of atmail, along with no outlook plugin :-(

    Comment by artie chang — August 7, 2009 @ 2:02 pm

  7. We\\\’d like more information on the beta version of the sync utility for Outlook. While I have found the demo Atmail I installed works great with the Thunderbird plugin…its almost a deal breaker not to have the Outlook sync feature. We\\\’re looking to migrate a few thousand domains and email accounts to atmail but we need the calendaring.

    Comment by Paul Cahill — September 2, 2009 @ 9:03 am

  8. Hi there,

    I love your Webmail Product. In terms of Design and usability it’s the best one worldwide :)
    Whats about CardDAV Support?
    Any improvements? I’m using OSX Snow Leoaprd Server, and I really can’t wait to use this feature in Webmail

    Thank you very much in advance!

    Cheers from Zurich, Switzerland
    Bojan

    Comment by Bojanski — October 29, 2009 @ 6:39 am

  9. Unless I am missing something, it appears that its been 8 months and their still is no mobile sync support for v6. Am I missing something or is development really that slow?

    Comment by Mark — March 21, 2010 @ 2:39 pm

  10. @Mark - Development is anything but slow; we are releasing new versions of Atmail every 2-3 weeks

    http://atmail.com/blog/category/atmail-6/

    For Sync development, we are planning to license Activesync from Microsoft and offer this as a complete Push solution. Watch the blog for news!

    Comment by Ben Duncan — March 21, 2010 @ 5:09 pm

  11. is Atmail Push still available for 5.7 since it was available for 5.6.

    Comment by Jai — April 30, 2010 @ 3:56 pm

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