[Users] September 15, 2020 Zeta Alliance Conference Call Summary

[Randy Leiker]

Hello Zeta Alliance Community, 

Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders: 


    * Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: [ https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance | https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance ] 
    * Each week’s call agenda can be found at: [ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit ] 
    * A copy of each week’s summary is also posted to the Zimbra Forums: 
        * All Earlier Months: [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 ] 
        * July 2020 : [ http://forums.zimbra.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68486&sid=f6efb04e7b2efd87cdd77e53d28be082 | http://forums.zimbra.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68486 ] 
        * August 2020 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 ] [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 ] 
        * September 2020 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68705 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68705 ] 
    * Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome. 

September 15, 2020 

Integrating Calendly With Zimbra 
Noah P. said he has a couple of customers trying to integrate Calendly with their Zimbra calendars. Noah contacted Calendly support to discuss how to integrate and was told that they did not have resources to add interoperability with Zimbra, and instead they recommended using Exchange, which was not helpful. He also learned that Calendly does not support integrations using ActiveSync, which is available in Zimbra. Noah reported that he also considered youcanbook.me, which offers a CalDAV interface for integrations, but it too did not appear to work well with Zimbra. John E. said that a Calendly integration is on the Zimbra road map for the Modern UI in 9.0, but he did not know the timeline of when this might occur. Cine suggested looking in to harmonizely.com which provides both CalDAV and Zapier support for integration with Zimbra. John E. asked Noah about the specific integration goals he is seeking to achieve with Calendly and Zimbra. Noah said that he is trying to enable outside parties to schedule appointments via Calendly, which then uses Zimbra calendars to determine availability for appointments. 

Differentiation Between Zimbra Cloud and On-Premises Zimbra 
Following-up on the prior week’s Zeta Alliance call where Zimbra Cloud was discussed in detail, Noah P. asked which features Zimbra BSPs (Business Service Providers) can rely on that are unlikely to be implemented in Zimbra Cloud, and remain only available in on-premises Zimbra installs, for market differentiation purposes. John E. said the more traditional on-premise features in Zimbra are less likely to appear in Zimbra Cloud, which for example, would include the archive and discovery features. But, Zimbra Cloud is likely to implement most, if not all, of the Modern UI integrations available in Zimbra 9.0, like Zoom, DropBox, etc. Noah said he feels Zimbra Cloud is driving Zimbra pricing downward for BSPs, so he is trying to show justification of the value provided by an on-premise install for Zimbra to customers. John E. said that Zimbra Cloud is designed to push back against certain low-cost service offerings from Microsoft and Google. He explained that this is more difficult to do in markets outside of North America where Microsoft seems intent on diving for a $0 price point, as compared to the North American market where there does seem to be a pricing floor. He said that Synacor is still learning what works best with Zimbra Cloud and feedback on this new service is welcome. Mark S. asked if there were any updates available on when the Zimbra channel can begin to sell Zimbra Cloud. John E. said the further roll out globally is pending the availability of a complete picture of how such a scenario could play out, and not necessarily due to technical barriers, but it does not yet have a firm timeline. 

Question About Recent Synacor Earnings Call 
Mark S. asked about the last earnings call for Synacor with Himesh Bhise, where there was a discussion about head-count reductions and wondered how it affected the Zimbra division. John E. suggested re-listening to the earnings call for everyone to form their own opinions. 

CardDAV Issue With iOS Devices 
Mark S. asked if anyone is having trouble with CardDAV when using an iOS device for synchronizing contacts. John H. said there is a known Apple bug in iOS 14 that is being investigated, where there is a rewrite issue taking place involving a local host name, but that does not seem to be related to the issue Mark asked about. Mark said that CardDAV in Zimbra does not seem to be responding appropriately when he creates a CardDAV account on an iPhone, similar to an issue discussed in an earlier Zeta Alliance conference call where certain contacts do not seem to be getting synchronized to an iPhone when using ActiveSync. Mark said he has not observed anything relevant to the issue in the Zimbra logs hinting at the specific cause of the issue. John E. said that since the CardDAV standard is easy to access over HTTPS, he suggested querying the CardDAV interface on Mark’s Zimbra server to look for anything that looks unusual, and suggested using either a library called Neon or another utility called Cadaver for querying CardDAV on the Zimbra server. 


Randy Leiker ( randy at skywaynetworks.com ) 
Skyway Networks, LLC 

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