Whilst there are plans to allow native Mac apps to talk to GroupWise for email, contacts, calendar, etc. we still need a fully featured Mac desktop client to replace the one that hasn't been developed since GroupWise 8!
by: Simon F. | over a year ago | Other
Comments
Yes, we really need a full featured MAC Client.
And maybe an update to the Linux client while we're at it?
+1 for Mac and Linux clients. Using WebAccess is workable but is missing features. Having to use a Windows terminal server if you are using Linux is not ideal.
Using the CALDAV etc. functionality in OS X just gives us a lowest common denominator experience. We need a reason to use GroupWise specifically -- therefore we need functionality that only GroupWise possesses. The best way to do this on the Mac is with a new Mac client. Extend the SOAP API to support clients with changing IP addresses and base it on the SOAP-available functionality. Then improve the SOAP API and the Mac client in parallel.
Agree with Johnnie O. above. Using the OS X mail client provides a minimal experience. Our Mac Users operate in the same business environment as our windows Users- they need an identical feature set! Using the Mac email client/calendar/contacts doesn't provide for: proxy access, shared folders, calendars and address books etc. How can GroupWise be a "collaboration" platform without these features?
And, We need an arsenal of reasons to stay on GroupWise. There is constant peer [company to company] pressure to move to exchange- some valid and many not. There is a great opportunity here for GroupWise to move out of the shadows; I hope it doesn't end up a missed opportunity. Otherwise, they be sitting at the bar with the folks at RIM/Blackberry talking about the old days....
While reliability and scalability are great selling points for GW it isn't enough. You need an arsenal of user based reasons to get people to stay with or move to GW and to break their dependance on Outlook.
Having a different experience on the Mac/Linux desktop isn't helping the sales pitch IMHO.
A killer web access solution would go a long way but I can't see it fully replacing a native client.
Agree with Jim R! My Mac users are begging to go to Google.
+1 for real Mac and Linux clients.
Year 2015 and still I can't include an html signature in the Linux client.
Using Webaccess is not an real option.
Wouldn't Mono (http://www.mono-project.com/) be ideal for this? I'm not a developer but, one code base for all three, why not?
agree with the 'and Linux too' comments (as it hardly promotes SLED if your own collaboration product pretty much ignores it) however I'd guess there would be more 'decision influencers' bringing in their own apple products into the boardroom from home than there would be ones sitting at the back fighting over whether their Mint or Ubantu desktop was the best.
If you want to stop unneccesary moves to Exchange get behind the smug guys winning the 'my kit is cooler than yours' competition in the boardroom...
producing a linux client for the tiny, tiny group of people using linux desktops would be a waste of resources that could be spent on other more pressing projects.
Mike A.; I think you are missing the overall point of my comment. Think of it in terms of a quote from a movie "If you build it, they will come". Or: I'm not going to invest and switch to a different type of car if it is missing critical components that help it to function like other [contemporary] cars; it won't even be considered as an option.
Some of the "pressing projects", while nice to have, are akin to putting new artwork in the cabins of the Titanic. My point is: without appealing to a wider base and addressing multiple OS's, the ever shrinking User base will continue to do just that! Will Groupwise be a viable collaboration platform in 2-3 years......
Think the movie is "Field of Dreams" not sure.....................jr
JimR: I agree with you for an OSX client. That is an expanding market with a vendor that is on fire.
The linux desktop in the business market (which is where Groupwise lives) is ever shrinking and getting less and less relevant, regardless of the religious debates in its favor. A small slice of a really small pie is really, really small.
Point well taken!.......jr
The work done in GW2014 R2 for Mac (https://www.novell.com/communities/coolsolutions/groupwise-blog-native-mac-integration-groupwise-cornell/) does also benefit Linux as I remember. I've not tested this yet myself nor had Novell at the time it was discussed (last Brainshare) and they doubt it would be official supported @R2 release but these protocols added in R2 should work also with for example Evolution on Linux. This contributes to the idea, which is true for the device market, that a user does want to use the default applications on the device and not want to download another (groupwise) app to access its corporate mail/calerdar/tasks/etc. Well, everybody is more or less happy now we have the GW Mobility Pack. Mind if we would have kept alive the previous Mobile Server solution for GW we still would be stuck in the past.
That said, I feel a good basic support for cross platform standards and native clients is essential to get users (basic) access to the system. That means we need a GREAT WebAccess. Now the GW Admin part is finished, its now time to go back to the webacc part and make it on par with or (I prefer) even better than the Windows client! Here in the Netherlands are quite some schools are using iPads and Chromebooks. Those need a full featured WebAcc client. Maybe we could make a small app on those platforms that starts WebAcc in a frame so it looks and feels as a real device app. It should also be able to take care of the 'send to' like functions. Kind of how the Vibe App works.
Speaking of the Vibe App... I do not like that one:) As I said we like multiple easy apps with a limited set of functions. The main reason people tend to use those default device apps is they give the best experience managing mail, task, using calendar etc. We do not want apps on a device that do all in one app, cause it makes switching between those functions harder.
So, missing pieces of GW while using native applications on a platform could be solved by offering an 'app' that just perform that specific missing piece, but in a neat way. This allows us to give the best native experience without recreating another full featured client...
I doubt that a full featured client will ever happen. One of the problems I see if such a project would start is how that would look like; would it look like a Windows GW Client, something new, or platform dependent. I sure would opt for the last one, as I believe a general Windows user would love to see an Windows (read Office) like GroupWise experience. As a mac user I would love to see my GW client look like it was created by Steve Jobs himself (simple!), but on Linux should it use Gnome/KDE/... point is: Micro Focus would -never- be able to make everybody happy.
That brings me to what I would do: imo we could take two paths (near at the same time):
1) Make a GREAT WebAccess, that should the be easy part, and Support protocol standards.
2) I would opt to see if it makes sense if the GW Client could be split in an 'cross platform engine' (protocol, local database, authentication, security, integration) part and a 'client' (on Windows that would be the client front end as we know it) part. I would say then start an open source client project to build a cross platform Client/components/widgets and function components. On Windows these functional component fe could be an api allowing easy integration with GW using .NET/Mono and other Win applications.
As mentioned Mac is (still) on fire and Apple is not providing a (real) 'server' component for that world. Not only for GW, but also for like OES that is an opportunity. What -I- would do it try to make GW the default collaboration platform for Mac and Linux, but still supporting existing Windows. That would change the playing field where we would not have heavy Windows/Exchange competition. If that means open sourcing (part) of these solutions to get Red Hat and Canonical on GW (and OES) train so be it. I think once the Mac and Linux (desktop/device) world grows even bigger Microsoft will not hesitate to bring Exchange to Linux if they have to...
These is another reason I would like to see the the WebAcc development speed up: it would to awesome if we could integrate it with the upcoming LibreOffice Online Solution. This would mean hosting your own online document editor solution integrated with GroupWise WebAccess... on any platform and device. Would be hard to do if using native clients on all platforms today. I vision you could write a GroupWise mail in LOOL and send it off, or access a mail from the 'Open' action select and attachment for editing and reply the message. Well, who knows what the world would look like if we bring Filr, Vibe and OES in this mix...:)
Erm, all our Novell servers are Linux based. Yes you can run them on Windows, but not to have an up to date client for the server you are running GroupWise on is just silly.
I have to rely on Web Access to access GroupWise (Linux only PC's in our IT Dept), which is great but still lacks features of full client.
Our +250 OSX-users are urging for native GroupWise client on OSX.
It is ironic that the NetIQ|Micro Focus email "GroupWise Ideas: Post your Feedback Today" shows a picture of an Apple keyboard & Mouse yet a native GroupWise client is still not available.
I have appreciated the requests in the IDEAS forum and we do want to see them continue. As you have seen we have been implementing requests from IDEAS in all of our releases since the rollout of IDEAS. We have made a commitment to incorporate IDEAS and community driven requirements as a key factor in release planning. In regards to the Native Mac client, our current direction is to continue with CalDAV/CardDAV as a solution for Mac.
is this direction a stop gap due to a lack of resource or do you genuinely not see the benefit of a native client?
Just watched a replay of the GW 2014 R2 SP1 presentation. Mike presented a lot of great new features for PC users. Once again, Linux and Mac users are left behind. It's as if those users work differently in an office setting than PC users, they don't need nor use the same functionality??? Throughout the presentation Mike stressed the use of the ideas forum as a way to generate and vet enhancements with the client base. Inclusion into upcoming enhancements was based on voting [popularity?]. The Linux client topic is at the top of the voting with 128 votes and the Mac client topic is second with 118 votes yet, it's obvious they've been abandoned. This process appears to me like many corporate functions: lip service. I also wonder if Mike is caught between the corporate politics of upper management and the client base.....
The purpose of this submittal is not to slam Mike Bills, it's obvious that the GW team, led by Mike, has made great strides with the GW application. It's very frustrating to be abandoned based on your infrastructure [Mac or Linux] when you can clearly see there are votes indicating their popularity.
With some innovative marketing, Micro-Focus could make quite a dent in the "Exchange" base if they offered a cross platform client with the current feature set. And, lets face it, GroupWise as an email application is not in the drivers seat when it comes to client base size and shunning potential new customers.
what about making Win client "wine"able ?
Just to be clear, the biggest obstacle to creating a Mac client for GroupWise is the amount of work that the Windows client does that is considered part of the core GroupWise product. GroupWise is not a product where most of the functionality is implemented server-side, at least half of what seems to be server-side is actually client-side. The SOAP calls mitigate this a bit, but a lot of those are actually re-implementations of the Windows client functionality and not calls to the same server routines. Those of you who have been around since GroupWise 4 will remember that in the early days the server agents did not exist -- the clients actually operated on the raw files on (shared) disk. A lot of this methodology still remains in how GroupWise operates, even if the client no longer physically moves server bits around.
Due to the complexity of the Windows client, including some very longstanding Windows networking dependencies, I think it would be very hard to get it running in WINE (per the comment above).
However, given that Windows is in decline it still makes the most sense for ALL GroupWise functionality to be exposed via SOAP (or other platform-independent manner). This is the future of the product, and through it a good Mac client should be an order of magnitude easier to create.
Excuse me, but there is very little core functionality of GW in the client, much less than in *ANY* other competing product. It's merely a display and a configuration interface. It stores no data whatsoever, it only stores very very few cosmetic settings locally, and it doesn't process any data itself. That's why you can login the Groupwise from any machine you want, and your Groupwise experience basically stays the same whereever you are.
Caching mode is a different story, but in reality that's not even the client either, but in aching mode there's basically a local copy of the server code activated underneath the client.
The very obvious targets are Vibe integration, Skype integration, and Archiving--all of which are heavily dependent on the client. There are many others. I'm not saying that the data resides on the client, I am saying that the *logic* to manipulate the data is in the client. Which is why features come to the Windows client first and WebAccess later. If the programming logic resided primarily server-side then most features would land at the same time. Further evidence of the functionality gap is provided via the licensing model, whereby the major difference between the Full License and the Limited License ( https://www.novell.com/communities/coolsolutions/groupwise-2014-licensing-changes/ ). Another useful comparison is to compare what the SOAP API can do vs. what the Windows client actually does.
This is the wrong place to discuss this, but I respectfully, but wholeheartedly disagree. For example, *NOBODY* should still be using archiving, that functionality should have been removed latest with GW7. It serves no purpose in this century whatsoever other than to first multiply important data and then putting it at extreme risk of loss.
And vibe and skype "integration" are merely links to external products and are only used by a miniscule percentage of customers, even if they own the products.
What customers *do* care about is rules, shared folder, calendars, addressbooks, proper integrated security and encryption, notification, proper UI functions everywhere like real system integrated drag&drop, offline availablity and so on and so on. All these are reasons why there should be a feature-parity client for macs (and linux). And no, Webaccess can never provide that, nor "standard" clients of the respective OS. They may be good enough for some, but good eneough doesnt cut it to bring forward the product. Nobody needs expensive Groupwise to then use Mac Mail and lose 80% of the functionality that makes Groupwise an expensive product compared to countless free options that also provide the same basics of emailing.
@Massimo fully agree with that. Archiving as we have that today just does not cut it - get rid of it.
Vibe IMO is also pretty dead: just following on Filr developments lately and nothing on radar. All Vibe integrations that were there (DataSynchronizer) with GW are abandoned already as is Skype integration. Nice that you have a GW Client-Vibe connector but you cannot even save a mail properly in Vibe... what value does that have? Vibe -could- have been that online 'archive' where you hold your communication on a per-project base (or even in your own workspace) and which would be accessible from a desktop client as well as from webaccess... it's just not going to happen. This was all low hanging fruit we've (my customers) have been asking for from the beginning, just not there and not planned in the near future. For me Vibe is just again a silo locking in my files, as is the GW DMS for that matter.
What -is- on the GW2017+ roadmap is integration with Filr, so long live Filr. Building (social) collaboration around Filr add's a host of opportunities as it add's immidiate value to existing environments and without locking in your files.
The Mac Mail and Outlook solutions for the Mac are very flakey. There was an issue with Macs and the WebAcc where they would drop connections and an FTF after 2014 R2 SP1 was required to get a decent sonnection,
A new client like the GW8 Mac client would help keep GroupWise in our environment, otherwise our high power Mac users will demand another mail solution.
1. We saw a large shift with the BYOD where people simply used the built-in mail client and were happy with the basic functionality i.e. didn't care about the advanced features in the host platform. Now however, those users have realized that the basic functionality isn't enough and other email/collaboration vendors have been quick to add dedicated email clients for these BYOD devices e.g. Outlook client for iOS/Android and likewise for Gmail. Novell/MF bet the farm on the basic mobility need but haven't reacted to the shift back to true email clients on these devices. Thankfully there is Ghostpattern.
2. The current Mac solution seems to be in keeping with the "basic access is good enough" mentality for non-Windows platforms, yet we're seeing the same shift on the desktop where users need email platform features that aren't supported in the minimal approach. Since GW 5.x, the product managers have continued to believe that Webaccess was good enough for Mac users, but it's never reached parity with the windows client. Users also expect tight integration with the host OS e.g. Siri, notification center, etc. which does not exist in a web application.
Given the response above by Mike Bills, I think the message is clear. Going forward, the Mac continues to not be strategic to MF's GroupWise plan. It's a windows-only product (full functionality) with basic features for everything else.
The Mac client situation was so bad for EDUs, that colleges such as mine had no choice but to move on.
i do not like this "basic access is good enough" mentality for non-Windows platforms.
I really need shared folders, all my projects have a GroupWise shared folder.
I cannot handle that directly on the Mac, i always need a VM with Windows and GroupWise Windows client for that.
Even a updated GroupWise Java client would be better then the current situation.
It seems as if the general consensus of the community, regardless of what Mike says and the decisions of Microfocus, is that a full-featured MAC client is still needed. The absolute obstinance of Microfocus to ignore this request is only going to result in one thing: continued loss of customers as people leave Groupwise for more funtional email platforms. I know that the absolute nightmare we had upgrading from 2012 to 2014R2 and the continued total disregard for the Mac community are the reasons why our next email upgrade will very likely be away from Groupwise. I have been a Novell/Groupwise evangelist since back in the v5.2 days and even I have thrown up my hands and given up on Groupwise -- not the product but the leadership. When I have to tell executives that our current email platform has no plans to provide the non-Windows users (and yes, that includes Linux as well) the same functionality as the Windows users and I have nothing to offer them in the way of solution (and they are the ones who write the checks), why should I beg them to stay with a crippled solution. If Groupwise continues to lose customers and eventually become a niche market or even cease to exist, the reason will be placed squarely on the shoulders of the leadership/development decisions made over the past few years.
Thanks for the excellent comment Jim. It looks like I am finding myself in that situation where for too long I have had to make apologies to our Mac users for the inadequate support for GroupWise on the Apple platform. Now I am looking at a forced decision from above to move to Gmail or Exchange/Office 365. It's disappointing and frustrating that something that is so clear to the users doesn't seem to be getting through to the decision-makers at Novell/Micro Focus. It's been a great 20 years but it looks like it will finally be good-bye.
Same boat here. Just a few months we were examining other options with our school district. Why pay for something when you can get similar features (for the mac) by using gmail? Without a full client update I don't think we will continue the use of Groupwise, and we will have to even re-examine our server installs to see if they are worth wild in keeping. Shame as I have been using Novell since the 4.11 days.
Microfocus, are you listening to this?
Same here, since Netware 2.11 and Groupwise 1.1. Have recently began either loosing clients due to inadequate support for Groupwise or for Groupwise not being on MAC and Linux platforms. Have had to recently move totally away from Novell/MicroFocus on some clients as they are not supporting nor planning forward thinking... an old Novell/GM mind trip... Oh, we sell alot of them... They will wait for when we think they need something... Such a product disaster!!! MicroFocus said they want to keep Groupwise moving... Looks like a very fast pace towards the Google/Microsoft zone for the rest of us... Come on MICROFOCUS, WAKE UP and get with the program!!
totally agree with Jim!
Agree with last posts! On several costumers we are moving SLED 11 into windows 7/10, to have the most recent groupwise client! Novell/Suse/Microfocus... lost the contracts on SLEDs on this costumers!
Deltabyte / Paulo J Sousa / Portugal
While I would love to see a Mac client and it would help in my environment, but with only 3% of the workstations. I will also say that Macs have less than 5% of the market (https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0) or as much as almost 7% (https://netmarketshare.com/). So where are all these Macs? I have to ask if those who are abandoning GroupWise really have that many Macs in place or are just looking for an excuse.
In Micro Focus' defense, why spend limited resources for 5-7% of the market. If it were you would you spend the resources on the lesser percentage or on the 90% of PC's running Windows. Think about it. Of course this isn't the only time stupid things have been done in the name of "being hip".
At the same time, the 2014 R2 upgrade was a disaster for us that will take years to regain confidence back form users. I haven't decided if this was death throes of GroupWise or Micro Focus wanting to get rid of it by releasing something so bad or if Micro Focus rushed something that wasn't ready.
I fought for years with GW product development about the need for a Mac client, but the bottom line is that they are focused on holding on to their full-pay customers and the demand for the Mac client was coming from sectors like EDU that pay little to nothing for GW. They need to protect their revenue.
I gave up and migrated out college 16 months ago from GW to O365. Twenty years on GW, but my voice in EDU was too small to have any impact. It was the best and right move and was put off longer then it should have been only because of my blind faith that MF would wake up and do the right thing with the product.
Don't be scared of the prospects of moving. O365 was a clean/easy replacement for GW and there are plenty of tools to automate the process. In many cases MS will provide help (money) to pay for the tools or training necessary to move.
Oh well, the old market share argument. First,following this we all need to ditch Groupwise now, as it surely has a smaller market share than macs have. Seconds, while it's less machines, very often it's the higher ups that run macs. No need to explain what that means. Last but not least.. Why does everybody else in the collaboration market have a more or less full featured Mac solution then?
@Daniel. In my EDU environment, over the last seven plus years, between 75-80% on my incoming students arrived with Mac workstations/laptops. 45% of my faculty are now Mac. This continues to tick upward even though we make no recommendations about platform. The iPhone halo coupled with the popular EDU applications being available for Mac makes it an easy decision. On the staff side, as many of our applications go SaaS and web-based (no longer tied to Windows), we're seeing more of our staff moving toward Mac.
@DanielW - The problem isn't that Macs are a huge market share, it's that the people using Macs are deans, presidents and provosts. They don't care about market share. They care about their device and they don't like being told no.
And the people who are heading up our education system don't have the foresight to look beyond what is hip and cool. Sad.... Also sad that we can't grow a backbone and start saying "No". Note I say "we" cause I'm in the group too. I did however set expectation to the president and company principals about what would happen with Macs. Our main tools are Windows only as is our accounting system, so as long as that remains true, Macs cannot be productive here. Of the initial number that came in, only two remain and I can't say they are really part of firm production.
I realize that I am not in Education, but we design building for school systems and universities all the time and we see the nightmares Macs cause outside of simple email.
@DanielW - It's not about hip and cool it's about what makes you most productive. Ten years ago, there was a penalty to pay for having a Mac in that the mainstream software including ERPs where decidedly windows-focused. The advent of cloud computing and SaaS has pretty much put an end to that stranglehold with your top ERP, accounting, payroll/timekeeping (HCM), fundraising, and other products moving toward HTM5 and browser-based.
The tool in the last few years that has kept me on a PC was GroupWise. I couldn't get my job done on a Mac using the Mac GW client, and with sr. leadership in the same boat along with students/faculty/staff, it was a given that we had to replace the now ineffective email platform.
As for saying "No", sure there are times when that's the answer of last resort, but too often, "No" is an excuse for not wanting to look toward the future. Instead of saying "No", it would be better to say, "Here is where we are, here are the challenges, and this is how we can get there." For example, if the accounting system is windows-only, start looking for one that isn't and/or see if the one you have can be upgraded. Work toward eliminating the barriers vs being a barrier.
Both the Mac and "PC" are personal computers with different operating systems. One is not better than another. They both use the same hardware base, as evidenced by the ability to load Windows on to a Mac and have it run just fine.
Just because something is browser based does not men that all browsers will work on it. Our entrenched accounting system
What is bad is having the tail wag the dog and cause the underlying infrastructure to change because someone wants the hip tool. And yes, it is about hip and cool.
I can see no advantage of one over the other. To get real work done on both you often resort to command line operations, and I'm a GUI person, who will go through extra steps to do it where I can see.
As afar as saying "no", by not saying "no" we enable them and empower those who ask for us to change the infrastructure so their new "toy" can work.
In places where those who dictate have no concern for the cost of the change in infrastructure, of course they are going to say "do it". It makes you wonder why the cost of getting a college education is increasing faster than healthcare costs.
@Daniel - They are different (Mac/Windows), and just as people are different, they tool they use fits how they work. I've used both and I can easily see the advantages of one over the other - maybe you're just not a power-user or both?
It's not about toys. It's not about hip and cool. If the infrastructure isn't capable of BYOD, including supporting Macs, then there is a problem with the infrastructure. If it's evolving with the trends then supporting multiple tools shouldn't be an issue. It's an issue
I don't understand your rub about education. I have all sorts of data in support of what we're done here, from cost savings, increased productivity, and how those decisions allowed us to properly support Macs and all the other BYOD devices we see today in EDU (we tend to see trends first). If your not moving the organization forward then what are you doing?
We are getting too far afield.
I voted for this, I want to see a Mac client.
An agnostic network has been a goal here predating BYOD.
I make it possible for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android to gain access to as much information as I can, the only limits are not imposed by me or my staff, but by the software our companies industry dictates. The "standard" for our industry is software that is Windows only. Hence the drop from 11% Mac population to 3%.
Now I'm being asked by management to simplify because it costs too much to have that BYOD accepting network and infrastructure So I have to go through each service so they understand what they would have to give up to reduce the cost.
I do hate seeing the tail wag the dog. And unfortunately it is about appearances, you cant tell me the furor over the Apple products is for any other reason. The people here who wanted Apple products to begin with admitted as much and I don't think it is different elsewhere.
@Daniel You're not wrong about appearance being the deciding factor. We have had faculty demand they need a Mac only to admit later that they've never used one.
I voted for this a long time ago, while hoping we could continue to use GroupWise. We've long since moved to O365 because our Dean and half of the Dean's cabinet use Macs and they hated having an inferior experience in the mail client just because they were on a Mac. Now they still have an inferior experience with Outlook just because they're on a Mac..but it's a much, much closer parity than the GW windows vs multi-platform clients ever were.
I'm using Outlook 2016 on the Mac I'm typing this on and it's anything but an inferior experience. MS has been adding features at a pretty rapid pace, based on their version of the ideas portal. I use Outlook 2016 on Windows too and the Mac version does not feel inferior to the windows version.
Let's face it folks! If Groupwise is to succeed, a Mac / iPad / iPhone full featured client is absolutely required. It makes the Groupwise platform, uniquely qualified and suitable to support the Apple environment in an exclusive way! GW is already behind the market, the time is now! A Linux client would be icing on the cake. More reason to expand the serviceability of the GW platform. If not, it maybe time to release the product to the open source community.
This is s long thread and shows Micro Focus is NOT listening just like Novell - pity !
One can safely say Micro Focus is where good software goes to die !
here is why ...
There is NO Cloud Push - "come on man" as Obama would say!
Document Management system - the main reason most clients have stuck with GW has not be updated for 10 years. In fact no longer actively supported.
NO real improvements to GW - moving away from just eDir /ConsoleOne is NOT a MAJOR improvement. A necessary move but NOT a "Feature"
NO Mac Client
Mobility - this needs to be an "Agent" not a separate VM
GW 2017 - major improvement is Messenger admin !! - "come on man" !
RIP !
oh forgot - no GW client for iPad, iPhone or Android
Using built-in mail client is NOT good experience or BRAND building !
+1 for a full featured Mac Client!
+1 At least an updated Mac Client should be available.
Maintaining minimum client version for security reasons is putting more and more pressure to completely kick out the old version 8 Mac client!
+1 Please provide an updated Mac GW client! It should offer the same features as the Windows client. GW 8 requires an old, insecure, Java runtime to work on the latest Mac OS's. Cannot insert signature images in Mac client. End users do not like using WebAccess. Imap, carddav, and caldav are not acceptable solutions.
I've noticed several new requests for a mac client over the past few days. I have been begging Novell/Microfocus for this for the past 3 years but they REFUSE to listen. Their answer is "use native tools or webmail". What they don't seem to realize is that the native tools are not fully functional (I've been working with support for 2 months to try to get them functional) and the mac community absolutely rejects webmail as a solution. We have over 100 mac users now. And they absolutely HATE Groupwise. Sadly, Novell/Microfocus and their leadership seem to be oblivious to their customers needs. I have resorted to trying to "fix" the GW8 mac client by tweaking java settings to coax some more responsiveness out of it.
I am working with Danita Zanre to try and get the GroupWise Calendar Server working correctly using a non-standard Port 8443. We have had no success... apparently its a bug in the latest code that TAC is looking into.
A native GW client would be VERY helpful- especially since all our administrators are MAC users now and getting frustrated with the GW8 client. They make the $$$ decisions to continue with GW or not. With the current frustration I may be forced to pull the plug and move to something else- against my wishes.
Please listen to your customers MicroFocus and invest the resources into an updated MAC GW Client. Your customers keep you in business- please do not turn a deaf ear.
I appreciate all the comments and passion - although it seems we have gotten off topic from what is supposed to be an enhancement request forum and not a discussion forum. It is not true that Micro Focus does not use GroupWise and is not committed to GroupWise. I have one email client, GroupWise along with other departments, divisions etc... in Micro Focus. GroupWise is not going away and not being phased out. It is true the at Micro Focus with its many divisions, mergers, acquisitions etc... operates in a state of co-existence. I also believe the recent acquisition of GWAVA demonstrates the Micro Focus commitment to GroupWise and its customers. We continue to improve GroupWise, support GroupWise and release new versions. In 2017 we will release the "Wasatch" version of GroupWise which will be a major release that restarts the lifecycle on GroupWise. Our current policy is to support versions for 5 years from a major release.
Thanks -
How about running the native GroupWise "Wasatch" Windows client via CrossOver on the Mac OS and Linux OS?
See https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/groupwise-2014
Micro Focus can leverage the Porting Process that is offered at
https://www.codeweavers.com/porting/process
Dear Mike, not really wanting to be facetious, but if your one email client ran on a macbook air for a few months maybe you'd be encouraged to do more than just appreciate all the comments and passion about what is obviously a very important product enhancement, from your core supporters (your front line admins), that will not go away... until all the users have.
I feel the same as some others. Not having a Mac client is starting to hurt us, more and more management want a Mac, but using V8 of the client is rubbish
Not having an updated Native Mac Client in our K-12 environment has had a negative impact on our administration (all MAC users). My new Superintendent has started asking why we don't switch to MicroSoft 365. We are holding on for now but may be forced to convert if nothing changes. Will "Wasatch" have native clients or is it WebAccess only?
It's the same here in Germany. We have a lot of deciders who want a Mac Client. So is the Mac market really so small as Micro Focus suggests? I guess the market could be even bigger if Micro Focus would address it.
@Eric K - Do yourself a favor and start planning the switch to Office365 or Google Apps. Both provide many, many more benefits (With the other pieces, not email/calendaring) to the K-12 space than GroupWise can. Anyone who does a lot of calendaring isn't going to be happy with the Google/Exchange calendaring, and anyone who utilizes any "complex" rules for mail management isn't going to be happy with Exchange's mail rules... but the overall experience, especially for Mac users, is going to be much better. And then it allows you to leverage GSuite or O365 for so many curriculum related functions.
I work in Higher Ed/Healthcare, but my children's school utilizes Chromebooks and GSuite. Almost all assignments are turned in using GSuite. (They still have some teachers who insist on using paper - most have moved with the times)
Mike - first, is it policy here to censor comments? I noticed many comments have been purged that were part of this important conversation, especially for MF management (above and beyond you).
GW use in MF - I've been told, and can confirm from email headers from MF people, that there were a number of divisions formally using GW that have been moved to exchange. Is that accurate or not? I no doubt expect the GW product manager to still be using GW, but is NetIQ for example?
Your post also failed to acknowledge the point of this idea. Combined with the similar Linux client, account for a large majority of the votes. If the purpose of the ideas portal is to focus resources on what your GW customers need, in what way is Wasatch aligned with these ideas? One would expect, at a minimum, a new Mac Client.
I could go on, but I'm sure this will be deleted again.
@Eric K - As someone who has moved from GW to O365, I've found no downsides. I did an extensive comparison after using O365 for a few months and could find no feature where GW was clearly superior. Even for something like rules, O365/Outlook has eclipsed GW's once untouchable feature set. The rules wizard alone makes the process super easy.
If you follow the GW updates in the last few years, what does get added appears to be copies of features o365 or Google implemented years before i.e. GW is no longer an innovator, it's playing constant catchup.
As a Mac user, the Outlook client is fantastic. MS just released a 64-bit native version, and it seems like new features are being released weekly/monthly - mostly based on their version of the ideas portal.
@Jeff S - I wish they would imitate O365 features that way I could get my users off my back!
We have been on GW for many years (GW 5 onward) but we are really lacking in third party integration for GW. The GW 2014 R2 release has been the least stable release of GW that I have ever seen, so I would much rather have a stable GW email system over a shiny new mac client. Maybe someone at MF/GW could give an update on the state of GW and MF? A news webinar maybe? That may calm the tensions for those posting here.
@All: This should be a place of sharing ideas and pressing the urgency of getting things done. Therefore there is no point (in a constructive sense) in telling everyone how wonderful a competitor is doing – get this into THEIR portals. Do not spill you poison here. So please don’t waste the chance of the company listening to us by being Mr. Busybody, feeling the urge to comment on everything – not even using the product any more.
If you are so content with another solution, please stick to their website – and do not waste this space.
HELP how do i accept a new shared calendar on a MAC Native Client? ... Maybe i need a full client... Just bite the bullet and please create a full client. I get staff saying you don't have this problem with office365......
Has anyone said also how the heck do i archive emails using the native mac client? It's unworkable.... We need a proper modern full GroupWise Client
@Stephanie
I would say the best way to archive and accesss archived messages would be by leveraging Retain. Sure not free (at least not at this point [@MG: hint]), but it allows access from desktop (browser) and mobile device (App).
Now that Retain is part of the MF collaboration family hope there will be even better integration soon.
If it wasn't so sad it would be funny to note that the long standing -number one- request for GW is still not honored:)
This week again had a heated discussion with a Mac user (customer has several) which was struggling with the old GW8 client for obvious reasons. Nonetheless good arguments for still using it, as he cannot perform what he needs/wants with the web client or the native Mac apps. Learned to work around the bugs; not happy with the stability, I won't mention the looks here nor the security perspective. All is said in this tread, just adding this FTR to keep the debate going. Obvious too is the direction where these users suggest to move... these directions are also suggested here already.
The imo is 'we' seems to think adding Messager capabilities to GW is more important instead of having great working and looking clients which our users actually need to do their jobs. FTR I know nobody that uses Messager anymore today and nobody that wants to, nor one customer that would start moving to GW cause of it. Those who did use Messager stopped using it years ago due to the lack of developments in that area. A good question to ask is would it more likely that Micro Focus as a company move to GW cause of Messages vs having a functional cross platform client? The only positive thing is that Messager has a real Mac and Mobile client... go figure... maybe we should ask for groupware capabilities in the Messager and Mobile client:>
Micro Focus should get GroupWise "Wasatch" to run under "Wine" at CrossOver
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/groupwise-2014
Microsoft is also focusing a lot of the design changes on Outlook for Mac. The software maker admits “MacBooks are popular amongst key influencers and decision makers,” and that the company “needs to win these users by delivering the best Outlook has to offer.”
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/16/16481190/microsoft-outlook-windows-mac-redesign-features
At the "technical solutions summit" it was noted that the Micro Focus representatives said that development of the Mac client would be longer than the 15 months they use for a development cycle. They would not state what the official position is, even though this idea has the highest vote count. It would be nice to have a position form Micro Focus on are they or are they not going to develop a full featured Mac client for GroupWise. If the above mention by Mike Bill that the native Mac applications are the way they want to go and is really their official response..?
Think the official position is they keep sticking their heads in the sand, neglecting the fact customers keep walking away (for various reasons). Even (the new) Microsoft has admitted there's not only just Windows out there [remember Linux once was the cancer to be removed] and MS has to play nice to keep being relevant. At least they act on a changing world.
It's true GroupWise is being invested in as GWAVA has been moved into the product group and a new GW version is planned to be released shortly. But it'll take a lot longer cycle then 15 months to make a consistent suite out of that. So, again a bogus answer on a relevant question... it's almost 10 years back GW8 with a Mac client was released and a lot of new Mac clients could have been developed since. A good question that comes to mind is will Micro Focus move to GroupWise now there is the suite? Or will the decision makers (running macOS?) postpone that? I doubt the suite will attract new customers as long as there are no consistent cross platform clients. Finally growth is needed to stay relevant.
Having just over two years of perspective since our move from GW to O365, it's critical to divorce your feeling about the company and history of the product from where it is today. If you don't, you'll be forever hopeful that change is right around the corner. Treat it as a business decision - plain and simple - evaluate the facts. My campus spent too many years (including myself) campaigning for GroupWise, both inside as well as with Novell/MF product management, to the detriment of our community.
For years I tracked GW usage in EDU's on the various "Best Schools" lists. I tracked Google searches of "GW migration site:EDU" and in both cases, it was clear GW was disappearing from education. It says something when the customer spotlighted in the last GW EDU focused marketing white paper, "Free isn't free" has since moved to O365.
It's also important to consider ecosystem. Email is just a small part of the collaboration ecosystem, and while MF seems to be trying to build that ecosystem e.g. vibe, messaging, filr, and so one, it's not very well integrated, and you have competitors that already have the these baseline covered and are iterating on other more interesting technologies.
While the Mac client is the most visible problem for GW customers, and likely the major catalyst in EDUs moving away, it is but one part of a much larger issue for MF and GW.
More evidence of shift from Windows to Mac ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/19/ge_apple_move_impact_microsoft_analysis/
Nice link @Simon F, I'll add that in the ZCM4mac support section too
If having Mac functionality beyond what IMAP, CALDAV, and CARDAV give you is a priority, then GroupWise/Micro Focus Enterprise Collaboration is not a solution for you. That is the official message. Absorb it and take action appropriately.
So ironically "Micro Focus Enterprise Collaboration" if not for Enterprises then, since (I guess) most of those use a mix of platforms?
We have a increasing number of MAC Users and I voted for this idea, however more than anything an upgrade of webaccess feature wise along with a facelift to bring it into the same area as Outlook or even notes would go a long way. An increasing number of our users just access through the web, this would benefit all users mac/linux or windows.
If you want an enhancement to webaccess, please create or vote on an idea for that, but don't calim here that webaccess would be more important or good enough pls. The reason why Novell/Attachemate/Microfocus is ignoring this request for almost a decade now, is because they claim Webaccess would be the way to go and good eneough. It will *NEVER* be for the majority of users, even if for some it might be.
I agree with Massimo here, webaccess, as good as it is, is no substitute for a parity featured Mac client. The staff bringing in Mac's are power/powerful users and aren't going to be embarrassed with something less than everyone else (or their staff) have.
Stop messing about now, it's been long enough, no more fingers in the ears going "LA LA LA" build a Mac client - IT'S IMPORTANT
totally agree... MF Do it!
Today is a sad day. Today the hammer has fallen. The same things as described in the above posts have happened to us, a very few executives with Mac laptops have pushed GroupWise out.
Not having a proper GroupWise Mac client caused its demise.
We were able to get away with using the GroupWise 8 client for Mac for a while until it wasn't compatible with the new Macs. The CalDAV/CardDAV as a solution which Micro Focus proposes just doesn't cut it on many levels for us, not full featured, complexity of setup, let alone trying to have the Mac users swallow that as the GroupWise client.
I've been with this product line since NetWare 3.11, got my certs, got onto GroupWise, got onto SLES, did countless installations, upgrades and support, basically made a career out of this. I've been a fan and a proponent of these products for practically a lifetime but now it's over. I'll continue my career but I have no choice but to use a different product path, and all that for just one thing, just one... no proper GroupWise Mac client. It's been a wild ride, thanks Novell, thanks Micro Focus for the good years but you've left me with no choice but to move on.
Eric
I would recommend sending Mike Bills (Collaboration Product Manager) a notification that your organization has stopped using GroupWise. Note that Mac client support was a very big issue and also the amount of money that this is going to cost Micro Focus. It won't help with your organization but it may give Micro Focus some more material feedback for the future.
Shouldn't Mike Bills and his team be monitoring these forums? otherwise this is 1 more drawback for GW team.
Mike Bills has commented a few times on this board. It is inconceivable that he doesn’t get copied on each of these messages as they come in. It is abundantly clear and has been for some time that, in realit,y the recent clients 2012, 14 R etc, are not notably better or different from 8, and that a MAC client has not been in the cards, for the simple reason that this product, in spite of our love and commitment to it like many others, is on its way down. That’s down - fewer users not more. Google and MS are the winners. Rail all you will. They won, Novell lost. Hoping against Hope is a sad feeling for the committed who knew that the product was for years rock solid and low maintenance.
Now we sit with unclear paths for "heavy" clients. If I were MF and GW; I’d Probably just say, yeah use Mobility. It works. It ain’t perfect, but hey. As for thé growing number of Mac users - just use a different client - yah know? Like Outlook.. our IT Director uses it on his Mac. He knows I am committed to GW - so doesn’t argue for Exchange cause, yeah, we have invested in Linux, SLES etc all the upgrades, Yada Yada Yada, but still -
Some of speed issues and search crap in the recent versions is building user pressure for a way better client. When one’s ipad mail client can find "it" faster than the native GW client.. u gotta wonder.. plus with all the old Novell GW personnel defections over the past few years, you know some of the brains got pushed out or just couldn’t resign them selves to what was obviously going to be as less than rigorous product.
Just my 2 cents here.
What are we going to do? Good question, but surely the question is coming more front and centered. Maintaining one’s own email data in house seems worth the money, when figuring that at some point the connection may be broken etc, but by the same token, maybe riding with the big guys makes more sense, let them worry about the technical issues and we’ll just send our mail..
Would be great if we could see some further development of a mac client.
Marko - Think about it, no-one has commented here in 9 months until you !
It gets very old when Micro focus does not seem to care about an updated Mac client and will not do anything. Everyone that would like a new Mac client please post
Since I know GW - and in historacally this goes back to "WordPerfect Library 1" (pre-decessor),
this is in multiple forms a "windless debate".
Overtime I learned a few words : TCPO, Soap,Mapi, CardDav, Webmail,...Cloud
Can it be ? Can it be Novell/Avangate/Microfocus lost track.
Can it be it is urgently needed to look from a different angel an re-think the purpose and workings of GW client ?
Microsoft is spreading out dull client wich I, nor me users fully understand. They get away with it ! Open source is bringing solutions more open than solutions ?
I realise any client rebuild will be an overrhauld. I believe it is wordt to go to drawing tables and start the process. And first go to "board" and get a solid commitment and annd a cleardbudget !
In fact Groupwise Client is the BillBoard for Grouwise. Iw what 'users' see.
By the way : I love the GW Clent for Windows
Danny S
I want a mac client but they have made it clear they don’t care and we have to use the native Mac client or I guess GMS and outlook. My mac users complain if I try changing them over to the native client. They would rather have calendars not working that put up with it. It’s soooo frustrating.
Despide the challenges to '(re)build a Mac(Linux ?) client, Microfocus SHOULD take this very serious.?? They are cutting in their own skin.
I'am afraid they take the HPE takeover a little bit too serious?
Danny
Due to archiving, shared calenders our users still prefer the old gw 8 mac client instead of the native mac client.
A full featured up to date client for Mac would be very welcome
Hiri could be a good start as a new GroupWise cross platform client
https://www.hiri.com/
RE- QUOTE - toward Mike Bols - Take all this valuabe thougts up to the top level managemeny !
Just watched a replay of the GW 2014 R2 SP1 presentation. Mike presented a lot of great new features for PC users. Once again, Linux and Mac users are left behind. It's as if those users work differently in an office setting than PC users, they don't need nor use the same functionality??? Throughout the presentation Mike stressed the use of the ideas forum as a way to generate and vet enhancements with the client base. Inclusion into upcoming enhancements was based on voting [popularity?]. The Linux client topic is at the top of the voting with 128 votes and the Mac client topic is second with 118 votes yet, it's obvious they've been abandoned. This process appears to me like many corporate functions: lip service. I also wonder if Mike is caught between the corporate politics of upper management and the client base.....
The purpose of this submittal is not to slam Mike Bills, it's obvious that the GW team, led by Mike, has made great strides with the GW application. It's very frustrating to be abandoned based on your infrastructure [Mac or Linux] when you can clearly see there are votes indicating their popularity.
With some innovative marketing, Micro-Focus could make quite a dent in the "Exchange" base if they offered a cross platform client with the current feature set. And, lets face it, GroupWise as an email application is not in the drivers seat when it comes to client base size and shunning potential new customers.
by: Jim R. | over a year ago
It might be worthwhile for people who want a Mac client to indicate how many users they have on the thier platforms.
Bottom line is - if we invest in a MAC client - Will there be enough users to get a positive return in 5 years?
Groupwise management should be able to poll all their users to get an idea of just how big that market is.
One would have to assume the market is growing. But can Groupwise grow with it?
Based on their apparen silence - the results of that question is an unambiguous NO?
So Mr. Bills - say it ain’t so!
For the last decade many of my customers have moved to other solutions Simply Cause there was No Mac or Linux client, so I believe the thing is simply not will GroupWise grow if an Mac or Linux client is ”invested” in but instead how much more it will shrink if such is not done. Figure that. And I on purpose say Invest as my customers that once ran the crap 2008 Mac and Linux client payed the last decade as much maintenace as their Windows users did so I think they would deserve a native client. Buying GWAVA or investing in Teamworks won’t change a bit as this means customers have to invest in a product which they have no faith in as it does not fully support the platforms they use. We’ve been listening to all talks about the new web client design that would be so much easier to make an on par web client an see where we are today... is does no much more then was possible at the time there was still a webacc agent. There is some stuff planned for this, but much too late for a lot of customers and so will it be if ever someone realized it was a real bad idea to not have a Mac and Linux client... even Microsoft realized after decades of ranting agains competition was just not going to work and today they Love even Linux having clients for all platforms. MF has such a bar of steel in front of their heads they just ignore all of this. Its just nonsense they have no resources an such, its a matter of making decisions. There seem to be enough money to invest in Teamworks, a product that nobody wanted or needed and in the meantime customers of Vibe and Filr which have the same code base have run away.... real smart.
To add to my previous post: Mac users do forward their messages to Outlook.com or Gmail.com at some of the sites so they do not have to use Groupwise. Go figure; they are the biggest pushers to go to another platform. All development time spend to better Windows client is not going to change their minds.
Also the lack of proxy access on the native mac client forces our users from going back to the old gw 8 client. At the moment we have 80 mac devices in the company. But more and more people bring their own device and want mails on their mac.
For me MF Marketing and Product Management are not interessted in the future of GroupWise. We all waiting for years for solving this problem, yes problem! In the past, one big reason to use groupwise was the cross-plattform compatibility! No user wants to know about the techniques in the backend (runs it on Windows-Server or Linux? Pfffff). The users only know the problems in front of their nose! The sysadmins are not the decision-makers, the CEOs and their users decide what they want to use! Without cross-plattform-compatibilty, we all will have no chance to guarantee the future of GroupWise, and that's no joke! In the past, there was the vision of pervasive computing (yes, years before cloud-rumors). Get your information, anywhere, anytime on any system!
I have lost two customers this year due to old and weary look with no future for GW as these owners and directors saw GW by using their macs with an old client. Other organization was very pleased with Windoes-client but due to old Mac client and decision makers this was possible to happen. I really don't understand this stategy of only using native Mac client to GW as then all the good staff of GW will be lost.
Who in earth anyways uses still POP and IMAP protocols to use a corporate collaboration system.
I really think my next renewal will be our last due to this. We will just have to move to 365 and then I will be unable to justify the cost of MF for file servers.
It's quite interesting reading all these comments. I'm a Linux desktop user personally. It would be very nice to have a feature equal client for Linux. However, I think the larger issue is that there isn't a cloud based platform for GroupWise. Most of our customers that have migrated away from GroupWise wasn't because there wasn't a client for Mac/Linux. It was because their users demanded Outlook or they wanted a cloud hosted solution.
Just use webmail for proxy access grows old very quickly, so does mapping x amount of accounts for the one user. It’s such a waste of our admin time.
In the past the GWAVA,... eco-system was a strong eco-system. This eco-system served as a sales and community channel.
In 2018 cloud and flexible (device)clients should be premium quality and an approach to distinguish from the odd office.365 Outlook (which is a nightmare).
I hope this help ?
People have stayed quiet because the majority have just given up in disgust... 3 years ago 1% of our users had macs. Now it’s 10%
Yeah, even Micro Focus employees run Windows VMs on their Macs to have the latest GW client. We all would like to see Mac and Linux clients, but it's doubtful it will ever happen. Your best bet would be to try and run it virtually, it doesn't look like MF has either the resources or the expertise to develop proper clients for these platforms.
That's encouraging...!!! Why did they buy the product?
If one looks at the numbers here -
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market-share-held-by-operating-systems-since-2009/
It is fairly clear that 75% of the space is taken by Windows and the remaining 25% - 15% by Apple - 10 by Android.
Upcoming macOS Mojave will be the last release to support 32-bit apps. The old GroupWise 8 Client won't work sometime in the fall of 2019 on updated Macs anymore, taking away features like proxy access.
Numbers :
Statistics is one element.
Reputation another.
The question indeed is how dedicated MicroFocus is/will be.
On the server side GW strentht was adatibtility with legacy systems through gateways.
I still hope for the best?
Those 15 percent mac users in my expiriece are more vocal having a high vote or are upper management. As @jeremy L states there are sure other reasons customers moved on (we migrated a bunch this year ourselves) but most stay with an on premise solution (mostly local gov) and a few go to cloud (mostly educational environments). Those Mac users In my expiriece want Outlook cause that is available on a Mac, and cause they have Office with it which looks the “same”. This Idea of course is only about why we need a Mac client but sure you cannot see the one seperate from the other. It is all about providing an ecosystem of connected services. MS had done such done verry well with Windows-Office-Outlook-Exchange-O365 etc. For sure a Mac client alone is not going to save GroupWise, the problem is (IMO) the ecosystem MF has allowed to grow with GroupWise-TeamWorks-Vibe-Filr-OES etc (mixing Microsoft counterparts where supported) which do not work nor look as a solution but being just a bunch of products which at the same time duplicate funtionality. A binding factor here is missing: an office solution (wasn’t that MS’s biggest cash cow?) Binding ideas are all scattered trough the different idea portals.
Wow ... what a discussion ... and it goes way beyond the topic.
Over the last decade since Apple incorportated Intel processors, Mac's have been booming business and many many many people go to Mac's for their daily business.
So, yes, we would like a new Mac client. And, yes, we would like a better Windows client. And, yes, we would like a better WebAccess. Should I go on ... ?
The situation; many customers move to other solutions and away from Groupwise.
Why? Obviously the client and web based side of the product.
The solution? Create a better client and webbased experience.
When I read a lott of comments (not all of them ... way to many) above, MF doesn't work on that part enough. So ... they keep losing customers as a result. Makes no sence to me ... MF ... wake up!!
When I look at the many votes this Idea has received and I read the comments I'm a bit surprised that my own Idea "More intuitive GUI for desktop and webaccess clients based on UX design guidelines" has only received 15 votes yet.
Basically, I'm asking in this Idea for the same thing anyone wants; an intuitive product that is able to compete with other solutions on the current day and age.
Having sayd that, I'm the administrator for GW for many years. As time passes by I get more and more the idea I'm trying to guard a dinosaur.
Like also stated in my own Idea, the backend is really good, but the complains are always about the frontend. That's the part users see and work with and most of them hate it.
I can't change that with all the technical talk in the world. My collegues don't care about that ... and I think they are right in a lott of ways. I don't agree with everything they say about the product, but they are totally right about the intuitive part.
I personally like GW, but I can really see the reasons others don't.
I'm more and more looking for other solutions out there so I can give my collegues a better satisfaction. Let's face it, that's also a part of our jobs as administrators ... end user satisfaction adn workflow!
In all honesty, if Exchange was a more AD independent product and we didn't have to migrate the whole environment away from OES, we would consider the change.
Does this mean that Exchange is the howly grale? No, absolutly not! It also has many flaws. However, I can see Microsoft taking a lott of things from users very serious and they incorporated the UX rules years ago to evolve their product. MF simply doesn't do that.
And in the end; defendeing GW should not be our goal ... give the end users a good product should be the goal.
And MF's goal should be to make a better product we as administrators shouldn't have to defend!
Lastly, I have to agree with Sebastiaan. A lott of ideas for GW are scattered around on this portal ... but most of it comes down to a better solution. So, bind them and evolve the product, MF. We urge you to do this, before you loose us!!
Honestly, I was curious to see where this thread had gone, and it's just the same circles. MF has no interest here, and if you look at the new features they do add to their windows client, they are rather simple windows client enhancements that other have had for years. Likely a full-pay windows client says, "Outlook has this, add it or we're moving away."
My campus moved to O365 and it's been fantastic. No longer the victim in the long saga of GroupWise, and we're seeing amazing new features at lightning speed in the o365 platform. The consequence for MF, as predicted by others, is that GW was the glue that held us together on the other MF products such as OES, ZCM, iPrint, NetIQ, etc. Over the last couple of years, those other MF products have been (or are planned to be) sunset, and I expect we'll say goodbye to everything MF soon.
The other products are good in their own respects, but the integration within O365 means ZCM gets replaced with InTune, OES with OneDrive, NetIQ with ADFS, etc. If you're a EDU, the new tiers give this stuff to you, so it makes using MF products less compelling.
The best thing you can do for your respective organizations is to chart a course away.
Dear Mike Blitz, Dear MicroFocus,
The former is a very strong statement. It bears a lot of truth.
Groupwise is the "easiest" product in MicroFocus offering. The one with the best TCO. However one need to understand (at MF, at channel and at client level). In my view O365 and Azure are nightmares. But everybody embraces them as they believe they understand the value off the cloud. I repeately notices Outlook users to clean up their mailboxes as they became too big, too slow, too ineffective,... Groupwise could cope with all of this. It need to be explained. My personal Groupwise boxe holds messages way back befor 2000, that is no issue. I can copy & paste the whole infrastructure. However setting up archiving is a challenge. Once it's done it should be fine. Personnaly I hate mails coming from Apple Mail, but Apple guys love them. So both uplifting a Windows client AND an Apple Client should be top-priority. I do understand Micro Focus has to sort out a impressive heritage of good Novell products. The moment they acquired the HPE software portfolio, I fear they shifted their attention towards (in my believe) an illusion.
I'am in no way a CEO. But it is my believe their shouls be at least stronger communication ties between MicroFocus and NetIQ and keeping them both a good eye on SUSE. That should we almost an entire EDUCATION LEVEL inside MF. I try to be present at some coming MF events. But it eats up time and more important financial resources. For what? MicroFocus is not in the "Apples Augmented Reality" business. It could "augment' reality by using FOCUS not only in their brandname, but in their approach. I believe it can be done !!!
Best regards,
The plea to deaf ears...
Amazing that no-one from MF even bothers to speak up in these forums..
Hehe Mike Blitz, nice catch. Mike Bills is quick as a blitz with his responses. With tear in my eye I very miss Dean Lythgoe.
Statisa.com shows MacOSX now has 12.5 percent of market as of July 2018
Higher education is typically higher. IBM is adding 1300 Macs per week and claims it saves $273 to $543 per user in TCO.
We had one or two devices and are now up to at least 10% OS X. Also Migration because of this is hell. Users have created shared calendars on Groupwise that say 20 users post to..... Now in the native client they see all the calendars but if they don't own it struggle to send appointments to it.... Using webmail defeats the object of having a native client.... Which doesn't work .... Each year it's getting harder and harder to justify not spending a fortune and going for Office 365 instead. This really doesn't help as it's senior management that are all wanting Macs.
Now that we own the first few High-Sierra-Devices, something very disturbing happens with the old client:
Groupwise-client for Mac doesn't get the correct time zone from the system. Therefore every posted appointment during german summertime is 1 hour too late. Unusable for business use.
If I don't find the reason in time, it will be the last nail in the coffin for the mac-client.
... and ... no, editing the date_time.properties in the user's home directory doesn't help.
... and ... second: establishing an alternate time-zone either, because there is no more button to swap timezones to be found in the user-interface.
Really, really bad!
Stefan, we also have the first High-Sierra devices and we noticed this issue too with the appointments being one hour too late. If you find a solution let me now. But indeed it makes it unusable.
Hi Joeri,
I hesitate a little bit to post our temporary solution, because it tastes like surrendering ...
We changed the startup-options for the client to "-notify" (just edit the Info.plist inside the Groupwise.app, Key: "Arguments"->"string"->"-notify").
... and use the web-client for daily use with the help of notify, because there is no web-notify solution (Idea!!!)
It also means, that Multi-User-Calendars are no more available to mac users. Very bad!
BTW: Years ago I used an IMAP-Notifier for Mac to emulate a missing Groupwise-Notify ... same same but different :-)
So, hold on, let's wait for the miracle together...
Any Mac OS for GroupWise is dead or no longer support?
Very upset for this situation.
The basic issue seem be ignore and skip.
I've just emailed our MF account manager sending him the link to this and saying as a customer this is the most important thing I want from MF. Maybe more of us should do this and feed it back to them via our Account Managers?
Customers have been begging for the return of a full featured MAC Client for years, and the demand is increasing. We need this to maintain and even possibly increase Market Share for GroupWise / Enterprise Messaging.
For the first time ever we now have Macs in our company and this is an issue. We have to give the users windows PCs as well just so they can have a full featured client, web access simply does not cut it.
Just make sure that everyone know that there is not feature parity between Outlook on a PC vs. Mac either. See "https://support.office.com/en-us/article/compare-outlook-for-mac-with-outlook-for-windows-bd54cb79-d367-4c2f-89c7-3e5d16618f87?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US"
Users have the ability to choose their actions (to use a Mac or PC) but must accept they cannot choose the consequences. In this case choosing a Mac means less functionality.
The real problem is that those at the top of the org chart are clueless to this, educating them doesn't always work either.
Think most of us are aware of the fact Outlook on Mac is also not fully featured compared to the Windows version but that it also has much improved over time, feature wise, compared to past Outlook for MacOS versions. Microsoft will always keep playing the works-better-with card, which makes sense as they have something to gain from users using Windows instead of other platforms.
This is the point of a Mac Client for GroupWise as "we" have something to gain from a GroupWise that is supported on any platform. That way one can play the we-are-independant, cheaper-to-operate, pro-choise and support-open-standards cards.
We can play neither today as "we" are dependant (primarily on a Windows desktop using customer base), lack choise (works best with Windows, no Mac client [not mentioning Linux here], there is no Mobile Client [ZENworks Mobile Workspace comes to mind... just wondering nobody tought it was a good idea to re-use what is already available in the MF stable]). If you support most (de facto) Microsoft standards (like OOXML) isn't it better to use those from them anyway, so a push for real open standards (ODF) would be a much better long term goal and would give customers something real to choose. Mind OOXML is not an ISO open standard used in the wild, it's just used as a marketing checkbox to pretend being an open standard. For example supporting LibreOffice and LibreOffice Online deeply in the products closes the Office+Outlook gap there is today, a gap which forces customers in a direction thay one may not want to but are forced to take due to lack of choise. My point here is it is not just limited to Outlook for Mac but also Office for Mac. One there is a Mac client one will face the Office for Mac discussion as an excuse. So, you have to create an ecosystem for customers to be able to work with, not just a bunch of products.
Almost all my users are using Macbook. Using iMail, contact and calendar from MACos does not replace the genuine Groupwise client. All my users would love having a new groupwise client for MAC. More secure, reliable, faster and featured. For us it's not an "niceto" but a MUST. I don't want my users to choose Outlook for MAC solution in future. Please help YOU and us saving your software ! !
Again and again, we need a native GroupWise Mac client.......
I caution against using the "well, outlook doesn't have feature parity on Mac/PC either" argument with management as a Mac Outlook user is a fully functional citizen. The Mac client simply carries a lot less bloat from 20+ years of features on the PC. The document referenced is also about eight months old, and MS updates the Mac Outlook client at a blistering pace (seemingly weekly). As someone who uses both, I'd argue that the Mac client is now the better Outlook client.
If you're here and still hopeful for a Mac client, read Mike's posts above from a year ago, or previous updates. It's not going to happen. The positive, once one realizes they're in a dysfunctional relationship with Groupwise, the Mac client, and MF, is that the alternatives are pretty great.
Sounds like Micro Focus wants to lose more of the what seems to be rapidly shrinking customer base so that GroupWise dies on the vine. On one hand the users are saying we MUST have a native Mac client and on the other the "official" response from Micro Focus saying the direction for Mac is IMAP-CardDav and CalDav. Yes, I've heard the Microfocus representative talk about how developing the native Mac client would take longer than a single development cycle as if that were a valid reason not to do it, which is really lame.
On top of that we have contributing members here saying that the alternatives to GroupWise are "pretty great" and singing the praises of Exchange/Outlook. Am I missing something here?
I think there are more than enough reasons given in this feature request that should have made Micro Focus sit up and take notice of what their customers want and need so they can remain customers. Sad commentary on "listening" to the needs of customers. I doubt Micro Focus is monitoring this thread anymore so this rant falls on deaf ears.
How hard it can be for GroupWise 18 Mac Client? I don't know but it's worth to do for big positive feedback I think.
Please kindly take a look what's loyal GroupWise customers and partners mention how important it is ? thanks
Groupwise was such a good product. Too bad they let the Mac client die. It could be a leader and a great alternative to Outlook.
macOS Catalina is out today. The old 32-bit GroupWise Client on Mac is officially dead. That is all.
Need a solution for macOS Catalina. What is the preferred current product? The new GroupWise Web 18.1?
They will never build a stand-alone GW-Client for a Mac ...
But it is possible to use the new GW-Web (18.2) to get a Web-Mail frontend which a look nearly like the GW-Client. But it is Browser based.
An other solutions is to configure SMTP/IMAP at the GWIA and the CalDAV/CardDAV service to support the native Mac-Programms for Mail, Calender and Addressbook. This solution is a little bit tricky because Apple `tune` there apps sometimes :-/
We need a fully featured Mac desktop client. That's a fact. Everybody knows that. The only way to give the product management resources development is to vote for this idea. Please get others to vote for this.
We need a Native GW Mac client, last minute to do this.
Yes a new Mac client for Groupwise would our users love
Well in the past year, Windows has gone from 75% market share to 72%
Apple now at 17%; Android at 11%
So when do you figure - will Apple / Mac be at 50%?
Realistically - the browser is the future - exe’s are wonderful ... but logic from a development standpoint dictates a universal platform - and what’s that - HTML. So - cry and scream and hope and wish... but hasn’t the die been cast for a while now?
Oh and by the way, we really really actually do want a Mac GW client !
I'm getting the picture that this might take a very long time or maybe not even happen...?
Okay ... 299 votes sofar. That's a lot of votes one would say.
What has happened sofar at MF? They build a new webaccess GUI, which is a good start and looking better that the old one. Is it complete yet .. no .. but it's a good start.
Did they improve the desktop GUI so it's more of this day and age? No.
Will they create a fully featured Mac desktop client? No. Why would they do that when they created the native access system. We have a couple of users in our company using this on their Macs and they are very happy with it sofar.
A few months ago I attended a GroupWise webinar where they were showcasting the new GroupWise client. They were so happy with all the updates they did and I heared about a dozen times 'end users are going to love it!'. Really !!?? Are end users loving it? No, they are not. Sorry, but really, they are not!
On the Q&A section I mentioined this idea and asked for their opinion about it. Yeah, they had a look at it and that was about it. They mentioned the native access client and moved on. Over 250 votes back then ... and they moved on.
So ... are they really listening you would wonder?!
I have to agree with the comment from Tim W. The browser is the future! All company are moving away from the desktop apps towards online apps.
What does GroupWise need? A partnership with another eco system! If it wants to stay alive, it really needs to partner with an open source solution that is growing right now by the minute! A system like NextCloud. NextCloud is growing really fast and users are loving it. However, it lacks a mailing (or groupware) system.
Again ... 299 votes and did we reach a solution sofar? No (apart from the new webaccess GUI and the Native Access solution).
You really want to change things around? Maybe this idea (allthough 299 votes sofar) is dying too ...
There are a couple of new ideas out there. Ideas for better partnerships with other solutions. Ideas like these:
https://ideas.microfocus.com/MFI/mf-gw/Idea/Detail/15259
https://www1.v1ideas.com/MFI/mf-gw/Idea/Detail/15260
These ideas are new, fresh and looking for support.
My suggestion; vote for these ideas and turn MF's attention to them. Hopefully something good will come from it and MF will finally see that something needs to change in order to keep GroupWise alive!!
THIS IDEA HAS BEEN MOVED OVER TO THE NEW IDEA SYSTEM, PLEASE MAKE YOUR VOTE THERE AGAIN IF YOU ARE STILL INTERESTED IN THIS SOLUTION, THX!
https://community.microfocus.com/t5/GroupWise-Idea-Exchange/Fully-featured-Mac-desktop-client/idi-p/2703104
While we're on it: after carefull consideration I believe it's not a viable idea to create a cross-platform GroupWise client based on the current Windows client codebase and (visual) concept. A new GroupWise-client to succeed it should imo be part of an ecosystem, so for those interested the new idea portal link is here to vote on. Added concept description here too.
https://community.microfocus.com/t5/GroupWise-Idea-Exchange/Why-it-makes-sense-for-GroupWise-to-build-a-new-client-as-part/idi-p/2743232
In this competitive world of email systems the one that owns the ecosystem owns the users. Obviously moving to Exchange/O365 (or Google systems for that matter) makes sense if you are a Microsoft Office dependant company as of course Outlook is an integrated part of that system. As the GroupWise client is not only visually but also from an integrations standpoint lacking in such ecosystem, moving to Exchange means moving off from any MF solution. In closed systems there is near no room left for competitors, nor for choise.
As there are a lot of (hosted/onprem) email solutions to choose from, how can GroupWise stay relevant? GroupWise would need an Office-like ecosystem around in which an end user feels comfortable. LibreOffice can provide such and could brings a rich MS Office/Google like expirience once settled.
Once we get over the idea to leave the current GroupWise Windows client for what it is and start over based on a framework of a well established (Libre)Office suite I believe this brings what it takes to get GroupWise back as an alternative for current competitors. Sure others could and would provit too from such developments, but having something to choose from does also benfit GroupWise and the Enterprise Messaging Suite (EMS) it's part of. It's obvious LibreOffice is and open source project, so there has to be worked with that community to get this done. The Office part is the most important piece missing in GroupWise and the EMS, but as we already started integrating LibreOffice Online by adding the Secure Content Editor Appliance (which is provided by Collabora Online(COOL)) to TeamWorks and Filr so the first pieces are already there. As LibreOffice is running on Mac/Win/Lin that would secure a cross platform client solution for the long term and honoring the higest voted requests for non-Windows support;
https://community.microfocus.com/t5/GroupWise-Idea-Exchange/Fully-featured-Mac-desktop-client/idi-p/2703104
https://community.microfocus.com/t5/GroupWise-Idea-Exchange/Fully-featured-Linux-desktop-client/idi-p/2703105
Trackback to the old idea portal where either scored ~300 and ~250 votes
https://www1.v1ideas.com/MFI/mf-gw/Idea/Detail/320
https://www1.v1ideas.com/MFI/mf-gw/Idea/Detail/321
Tough on short term it would take quite some time to develop, I would expect long term that get's less as with LibreOffice more developing partners will maintain the new code at least making sure that what is there is stable and well tested by a huge community. This stable base should be good enough to create enterprise supported clients from for Micro Focus to distribute as part of their GroupWise and EMS solution. As mentioned the COOL solution is already a partnership currently, so could the new client be a part in their long term supported Collabora Office for governments and companies. In the EMS this would complement working off- and online, on any device and leveraging open standards. This collaboration eco-system can be managed by ZENworks and secured by NetIQ solutions which gives MF a way to provide a full ecosystem again.
So, how would this work:
* Start with a new module in LibreOffice called "Contact", complementing Writer/Calc/Impress/etc. Contact-management is the centerpiece of a solution (opinion), this allows accessing, syncing and managing contact information which then can be used in any module for sharing, communication/interacting and as a part of document merges. In the LO Online version the Contact-API allows you to access your contacts from within any module so you can do document merges easily in Online-mode too.
* The Contact module has multiple tab's allowing access to email, calendar, tasks, notes, message(r)s, etc. This is the part that is not much different from what we are used to in the GroupWise Client today. This is the part that is all open source and for that could be used to add multiple tab's of each to be able to access multiple systems at the same time, which could be multiple GroupWise mailboxes or any POP/IMAP or online accounts a user has, well depending on modules privides by Micro Focus and other developing partners and/or the community. Depending how the plugin-infra is setup MF could obviously choose to create closed plugin's and leave other (IMAP, NNTP etc) plugin's up to the community, but my idea is to have a more open and common infra for email, calendar, task which supports the end-users common expirience that will offer. Tough open source plugins could still offer a calendar for like GroupWise which has multi user options embedded and a more simple calendar plug for other purposes. Having a more open infra allows for expermiments by the community.
* The Contact module's core should have a plugin that carries the hart of access to GroupWise (GroupWise client protocol) and should run on any platform. Depending on how it's developed it could be either open or closed source, think we prefer to open it up so it can be build as part of the solution, or only as part of the MF provided binaries. Maybe something with on- and offine mode needs to be part of this in case we want offine mode to be a part of the GroupWise access plugin. From a cross platform perspective I would suggest to leverage the default LO Database, but that could also be GroupWise's (wasn't that use dby eDirectory today and open sourced a while back? It at least runs on all targetted platforms).
* We need a plugin infra for 3th parties so they can ty into the solution, but this could also be leveraged for Micro Focus provided solutions like Vibe/Filr/Retain/SMG etc plugin's. There's a host of 3th parties providing language correction solutions, access to CRM's, etc.
This may not be all, but at least the centerpiece of the idea.
Our company couldn't wait any longer. Management made the decision to move to Microsoft for all services. Too many dissatisfied users - both Windoze and Mac.
They will continue to lose customers if this isn't addressed satisfactorily. I am under pressure to change as well.
please vote at the new ideas portal at https://community.microfocus.com/t5/GroupWise-Idea-Exchange/Fully-featured-Mac-desktop-client/idi-p/2703104
Another day another request for a Mac client. I just got off the phone to a customer who asked if he buys a new Mac can he run Groupwise.
I wish I could say YES!
Though I see that the web access in GW 18.2 is getting slicker.