Re: Zimbra calendaring and the President's office

[Tim Ross <tross@calpoly.edu>]

Frances,

Thanks for the info.  Sorry to hear that the unhappiness comes from the higher offices at your university.

I'm sure we are going to hear some grousing about the calendar printing options.  They are very limited compared to Oracle.  One of our IT directors found that printing the week view in the Standard web client from the browser "File->Print" was closest to the calendar that he printed in Oracle.

We've definitely been pushing Zimbra from our side to implement improved calendar features.  They have been pretty responsive, so hopefully these issues will be mostly resolved in the near future.

Thanks again for the run-down on your experiences.  I will try to share any helpful information with the list as we go live next month.

Tim Ross
Application Administrator
Collaboration Support Group
756-6226

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frances Atkinson" <frances@sfu.ca>
To: "Tim Ross" <tross@calpoly.edu>
Cc: "zimbra-hied-admins" <zimbra-hied-admins@sfu.ca>
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 10:51:41 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: Zimbra calendaring and the President's office

Hi Tim, most groups are not complaining and appear to be adapting well, almost universally using the web. We were very proactive with pre and post training some 1300 users in administrative offices who were migrated from Corporate Time (Oracle) in Feb. We also trained and lined up their desktop support to give them maximum attention (and in turn we fed the desktop support staff and gave them maximum access to the core technical team in the week after cutover.) Most people had their major glitches and points of confusion ironed out then, or in later training sessions, and I believe most are doing well. We continue to send out, via email, the top tips of the week.

Some who were expected to have problems are happily managing multiple shared calendars, in a dizzying array of colours. They are given advice on opening multiple windows. Some flip between the advanced and standard interfaces which give different calendar views.  We've recently been told about an office that loves the new calendaring possibilities and hopes to "repatriate" their users who had turned to Google calendaring (and also are using Zimbra Desktop).  

Unfortunately we have, as someone said, "pain in the wrong place". A few of our key executive offices are very unhappy. Slowness of the web is the biggest issue. They are managing very high-intensity calendars, with multiple competitions for most time slots. They are not doing much if any shared calendaring. They schedule while on the phone, they schedule large numbers of meetings with off-campus people, they are trying to accommodate the hard-to-schedule. (I'm not sure about meetings with large numbers of people - probably there are some.) Basically they need to flip around and juggle things in the calendaring system more quickly than the web allows. 

There have been a few issues with data migrated from Corporate Time (Oracle) -  meeting instances disappearing from a recurring series, and a few other glitches. These are fixable when discovered, but have affected their confidence, with worries that a key meeting with someone important will not be on the calendar. 

A particular problem affecting only one situation (our President unfortunately) is a preference for weekly printed views, with comments, which they cannot easily generate in the format desired.

A small number of secretaries have been quickly supplied with new desktop machines, and had Chrome installed - it's faster - but they remain unhappy. The latest plan is to try them on Outlook, which could be interesting because they are not historic  Outlook users. Zimbra Desktop is also being tested - but it won't solve the printing requirement.

Frances



----- "Tim Ross" <tross@calpoly.edu> wrote:

| Hi Frances,
| 
| At Cal Poly, we migrated to Zimbra email last September and will be
| migrating to Zimbra calendar (from Oracle 10g calendar) next month. 
| We were curious what these users are seeing as the biggest issues that
| slow them down.  Does it have to do with creating/managing meetings
| with large numbers of users?  Managing other users' calendars? 
| General slowness of the web client to respond?  Migrated data versus
| new meetings?  Have other groups on campus complained also, or have
| they adapted more easily to the new calendar system?
| 
| We appreciate any info, so we can work towards avoiding any meltdowns
| here.
| 
| Like Stanford, we have seen some issues with the ZCO and are not
| recommending it to our users.  It will be available for those who just
| can't do without Outlook calendar, but we are recommending the web as
| the best solution. 
| 
| Tim Ross
| Application Administrator
| Collaboration Support Group
| Cal Poly State Univ., San Luis Obispo
| 
| 
| ----- Original Message -----
| From: "Frances Atkinson" <frances@sfu.ca>
| To: "Pam Buffington" <pam.buffington@oit.gatech.edu>
| Cc: "zimbra-hied-admins" <zimbra-hied-admins@sfu.ca>
| Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009 7:36:45 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
| Subject: Re: Zimbra calendaring and the President's office
| 
| Hi Pamela, and others, our President's office went from Eudora/POP for
| email and a Corporate Time client program for calendaring, to ZWC for
| everything. 
| 
| They say the web client is slowing them down to unacceptable levels,
| resulting in a key secretary having to catch up on the weekends. 
| 
| Our desktop support staff are testing the President's very large
| calendar on Outlook as I write. His office does not come from an
| Outlook environment, so this could be interesting. 
| 
| Andy from Zimbra emailed me and suggested we try Zimbra Desktop, also
| upgrade our Zimbra installation to .13 or higher for calendaring
| performance improvements. We're currently on 5.0.11 and are/were
| planning to upgrade to 5.0.14 on April 4 (i.e. on our next monthly
| maintenance window.) I notice that the Zimbra site for Zimbra Desktop
| says don't put it into production yet - the President's office seems
| an adventurous place to do so! ZDC is, however, being used
| successfully by staff supporting an Associate Dean in one of our
| Faculties. Does anyone have any ZDC experience with key executive
| users?
| 
| Frances 
| 
| 
| ----- "Pamela K Buffington" <pam.buffington@oit.gatech.edu> wrote:
| 
| | Hi Frances, We are currently in the process of transitioning our
| | Presidents/Provosts office from an environment where they used
| Eudora
| | for email via pop, and Exchange for Contacts and Calendaring  ... ?
| | ... Yeah ok, I don't know why they did that either.
| | 
| | We started off very rocky with lots of Outlook problems that turned
| | out to be Windows problems not ZCO problems. BUT Things seem to be
| | going ok right this second. *Knocks on wood* 
| | 
| | Can you give us more details about your melt-down? Is it Outlook
| | related, or ZWC, or ??? What version are you on these days?
| | 
| | Thanks
| | Pam
| | 
| | ----- Original Message -----
| | From: "Frances Atkinson" <frances@sfu.ca>
| | To: "zimbra-hied-admins" <zimbra-hied-admins@sfu.ca>
| | Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 11:15:58 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada
| | Eastern
| | Subject: Zimbra calendaring and the President's office
| | 
| | Hello Zimbra higher ed sites, I would appreciate knowing what your
| key
| | corporate offices' experiences are with Zimbra calendaring, or
| whether
| | they are even using it. (If not, what are they using?) 
| | 
| | Our President's office is currently having a melt-down after a
| month
| | or so of trying to use it!
| | 
| | Thanks in advance for any info.
| | 
| | Frances
| | 
| | -- 
| | Frances Atkinson
| | Director
| | Institutional, Collaborative, and Academic Technologies 
| | IT Services
| | Simon Fraser University
| | www.sfu.ca
| | 778-782-5721
| | frances@sfu.ca