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By: James Koole on April 22nd, 2010
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service, filtering
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Great news if you use the standalone email filtering option in OpenSRS Email Service. Effective May 1, 2010, we are dropping the price to 10 cents/mailbox per month.

But wait, there’s more (I’ve been waiting for the chance to use that line for a long time).

We’ve also added outbound filtering to the service at no additional cost. All the benefits of using OpenSRS to filter your incoming mail are now available outbound as well.

Let us handle outbound spam and virus filtering and you won’t have to worry about abusive users getting your servers blacklisted.

If you are already using email filtering, your May bill will reflect the price reduction. Consult the documentation or speak to your Account Manager to find out how to add outbound filtering for yor users.

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By: James Koole on February 5th, 2010
Posted in: Announcements, OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

Effective Tuesday, February 9th, 2010, we’re implementing a new “soft-suspension” process for all users of OpenSRS Email Service. This new process is intended to mitigate the potential effects of spam sent by users of OpenSRS Email Service and to ensure good deliverability and reliable service for all users.

Full information about the change has been sent to all OpenSRS Email Service Resellers. Full details are available in the Resource Center – direct link.

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By: James Koole on October 19th, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

Bringing more tools down to the Reseller level from the support or Professional Services level is something we’ve been focusing on for OpenSRS Email Service. You might remember that we recently made it easier to have deleted email and mailboxes restored without requiring customer support intervention.

Bulk Migrate End-user Mail from Other Email Services

Just last week we rolled out the ability to migrate user mail into OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes in bulk. This means Resellers are now able to create a bunch of new accounts on the service, and then move existing mail data from outside servers into those accounts in bulk. This simplifies and streamlines the process of moving users from other email services and servers onto OpenSRS Email and diminishes the need for support or Professional Services involvement on smaller mail migrations.

There’s more detail on page 43 in the Mail Administration Center (MAC) User’s Guide for those looking to start using this tool. If you want to get a sense for how the tool works, here’s a tutorial screencast that shows at a higher level just how it’s done.

What Do You Think?

We’d love to hear what you think of the tools that we’ve already brought down to the Reseller level, be it the ability to restore deleted mail or this new tool to migrate end-user mail over to OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes. I’ve started a forum thread if you want to comment and add your opinions or thoughts. As always, comments right here at the blog are always welcome.

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By: James Koole on April 24th, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

As mentioned last week, we’re ready to roll out the latest version of our webmail application to Resellers. Webmail 5.5 is now available in the Test environment. We encourage email resellers to login to the Test environment, enable it on your test account and take it for a spin.

Webmail 5.5 is part of the continuing evolution of our webmail application. The overall look and feel is very similar to what users are accustomed to and the transition should be relatively seamless for most.

Here’s what’s changing in Webmail 5.5:

Features:

• Added a Calendar: The calendar features a full “drag-and-drop” interface and is available in both the standard and basic interfaces. Calendars can be shared within the same domain if the end-user chooses to do so. Users can import calendar data from standard ical/.ics format calendar files or from a public ical/.ics format URL. Calendars can be exported to a standard ical/.ics format file. Resellers can choose whether to offer the calendar to their users using the Branding Tool.
• Added RSS Feed Reader: Users can now subscribe to and read RSS feeds within webmail. Users can enter their own RSS feeds or select from a predefined catalog of popular feed sources. The ability for Resellers to choose the feeds within the catalog is planned for a future release, but for now, the contents of the catalog is determined by OpenSRS and contains a broad range of different sources. The RSS Feed Reader is currently only available in the standard interface. As with the Calendar, the RSS Feed Reader can be enabled or disabled by Resellers via the Branding Tool.
• Improved “Basic” interface: The Basic Interface has been upgraded to support all features of the Standard Interface with the exception of the RSS Feed Reader feature. The Basic Interface also now includes a rich text editor and spell checker in the email compose area.

Performance:

• Improved overall speed and responsiveness: Much work was done to optimize webmail across different browsers and for users on slower connections. The result is a dramatic improvement in speed and performance. The improvement is felt across all browsers, but is most noticeable on Internet Explorer and for users with large mailboxes.

Usability:

• Added Dashboard hiding: A new “Dashboard” double-arrow button allows the left-hand folder pane area to be hidden and restored.
• Improved folder icons: Core folders now have custom icons to make them easier to identify.v
• Added/reorganized message list columns: We’ve added Reply-to/Forward Flags, the ability to mark a message as flagged/unflagged. Block/Safe Sender functions have been moved to the “More Options” drop-down. A Message-ID column heading and sort option has also been added. The “Attachment” column has been moved to the right side of the message index display.
• Improved Search: Users can now choose to search by sender, subject, message headers or message bodies. The default continues to be search within the message headers.
• Added a full message source viewer: Users can view the full, raw source of a message.
• Improved email composition: We added the ability to request a “read receipt” when sending a message. Users can now also set message priority when composing and sending email. An auto-save feature has been added that automatically saves composed messages as a draft periodically. Spell-check has been added to the basic webmail interface. The rich text editor has been improved to include more formatting options.
• Improved the Address Book: Added the ability to import from Mozilla Thunderbird address book files.
• Improved the General Settings area: The Interface Preferences and Display Preferences have been combined under a single tab called “Display Preferences.”
• Added Secure POP3 Mail retrieval: POP3 external mail fetching now supports SSL connections.

OpenSRS is “Reseller Friendly” and that motto is something we think about every day when making decisions about new products and features on existing products, like OpenSRS Email Service. While we’re excited to get this new webmail out to users, we understand that this kind of upgrade can have an impact on your support departments, and that email resellers will want to provide some warning to their users to help them get up to speed on the new version. With that in mind, we’re rolling out Webmail 5.5 in a preview program for the first little while.

Here’s how the preview program works:

• Participation in the preview is recommended, but optional, and the default is to not show the preview to end-users. Resellers can enable the preview through the branding tool in the Mail Administration Center (MAC).
• When the preview is enabled, users are offered a choice between the new webmail interface or the current webmail on the login screen.
• At the end of the preview period (which will run for at least eight weeks), the preview option will be removed, and all users will automatically use the new webmail.

Throughout the preview period we’re very interested in hearing from you about the new webmail application and how your customers are responding to it. There is a feedback form that is integrated into the login screen for webmail where users can share their thoughts.

Webmail 5.5 was promoted to the Production Test Environment on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009. We suggest that all of our OpenSRS Email resellers to log into the Test environment to see both how to enable the preview for your users, and also to see the improved webmail interface.

Right now, we’re on track to make the preview available on the Live servers for both Cluster A and Cluster B beginning on Thursday, April 30th, 2009. At that time, you’ll be able to login to the MAC and enable the preview for your users. As mentioned, the preview is disabled by default; it is up to you to determine when you are ready to begin the preview.

Here’s a short screencast that shows how to enable the webmail preview using the Branding Tool within the Mail Adminstration Center.

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By: James Koole on April 13th, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
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Since we re-launched our OpenSRS Email Service on our own, unified email platform in mid-2007, we’ve been very busy working to make it even better. A lot of what has been done was focused on the back-end infrastructure – making the service faster, more reliable and more scalable. But not all the work has been focused on the “plumbing.” For the last little while, we’ve also been working on a new release of the webmail application, version 5.5, and it’s nearly ready for its debut.

Over the next few months we’ll be providing our email customers with a way to let their users take the next release of our webmail application for a spin. This opt-in “preview” will run for at least eight weeks between when we make it available on the live servers, to when we retire the old webmail application and make version 5.5 the default webmail for all users.

One important thing to note is that this is not a “beta” program. We’re bringing the new webmail out as a completed application, but in a preview mode. The goal is to get some feedback on some new features we’re adding, but more importantly, we want to ensure that our email resellers can ease into the new webmail with as little impact as possible.

Better Performance, Calendar and RSS

This webmail upgrade is really part of the continuing evolution of our current webmail application. It’s really not all that different from an end-user perspective when it comes to reading and sending mail, managing contacts and doing all of the things you do with webmail.

The big change is in the performance of webmail. We’ve done a ton of work to optimize webmail and the result is a dramatic improvement in speed and performance. It’s felt across all browsers, but the difference is most noticeable on Internet Explorer. It’s much more responsive, especially for users with lots of mail.

And aside from the new stuff “under the hood,” there are a couple of new features we’re adding, namely a calendar and RSS feeds.

The calendar is a full-featured, web-based calendar with drag and drop, as you’d expect. The RSS reader allows users to subscribe to, and read RSS feeds alongside their mail.

We’ll be sharing more about the preview program and the rollout of webmail in the coming days. Rest assured, it will be up to you to decide when and how you’ll bring this new webmail upgrade to your customers during the transition period.