Re: shared mailing groups

> > if the 
> > same email address was found on multiple lists, then that email 
address 
> > received multiple copies of the email sent to the lists. 
> 
> Did you test this?  If it sends it all as one message the MTA should
> deal with this (compress the recipients, and most mailstores suppress
> duplicate deliveries anyway).   But maybe I recall that OGo's mailist
> thingy sends and individual message to each recipient.

In my tests from my OGO server running Postfix to my Gmail account, if the 
same email address was in 2 mailing lists, then it received 2 copies of 
the email.  I guess the WebUI mailing list feature is just more basic than 
one might expect.
 
> > I see that the zOGI interface to OGO does not deal with mail, whilst 
the 
> > old xml-rpc interface does. 
> 
> Sort of.  Does the old xml-rpcd's mail API even work?  It is really darn
> ugly. 

I tested it and it does work (although the sample code in the old xml-rpc 
PDF is wrong.  After fiddling with that a little, it worked.  (For anyone 
whose interested, the documentation refers e.g. to methods as 
'server.setFrom'
when they need to be 'server.mail.setFrom').

> The latest versions of zOGI do have the beginnings of mail
> support; at least for sending.  So adding something more isn't out of
> the question.

That's good to hear :-)
 
> > From the zOGI interface, it does appear 
> > that Teams can contain Contacts (and not just Accounts), so I'm 
assuming 
> > that Teams would serve as a good basis for mailing groups. 
> 
> If that is true it is an 'unintended feature'.  Teams should only
> contain accounts.

It could just be my misunderstanding of the sample code on the zOGI site. 
I haven't tested it yet.  However, knowing that that is not how Teams 
should work, I won't be using that as it may well become 'broken' in the 
future.
 
> >  My idea would 
> > be to extract the Contact details from the Team, resolve unique email 
> > addresses locally, populate the xml-rpc Mail object with the details, 
and 
> > send the email through the OGO server via that old interface. 
> 
> Seems reasonable although the server might be able to help.  Look at the
> code for the getNotifications API method.

Sorry, but I don't understand how getNotifications might be useful.  It 
only seems to relate to Appointments.

> > I'd be grateful to hear what others think about this, and what you do 
in 
> > regard to mailing groups.    I can see that what I'm trying to do 
maybe 
> > falls between what zOGI is designed to do, and what the OGO web 
interface 
> > is designed to do.
> 
> It seems reasonable, and not terribly hard, to create a new entity:
> Group -that can contain contacts & enterprises.

I haven't started to look at the Objective C code in OGO, but I'm relieved 
to hear that adding Groups should not be too difficult.
 
> > A further problem I foresee is giving users access via Funambol -- 
this 
> > would also mean that they are using the local email client of the 
phone, 
> > and thus will lose the shared mailing groups (although it's great that 

> > Funambol can take care of the synchronization of contact data). 
> 
> Correct, on that level the groups need to be supported by the MTA.  But
> that I think is really trivial (at least if your MTA is Postfix).
> Delivery is probably best handled by the MTA anyway for a variety of
> reasons.

That the MTA should resolve the recipient identity sounds right, but maybe 
it is expecting too much.  My installation of Postfix didn't seem to 
reduce multiple emails to the same recipient to just one email.

The issue I'm referring to with providing access via Funambol, is that the 
shared mailing groups would be unavailable on a phone, unless the phone 
email clients understand mailing groups and Funambol could sync such 
things between the server and the phone.  I'd be very surprised to hear 
that such synchronization was possible.


Bernard

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