Helping you evolve from Email

Google Apps integrates with a third party solution that offers task management in the Google Calendar portion of Google Apps but does not offer direct access to tasks within the Google Gmail mail client.

In Zimbra, Tasks for project tracking and to-do items can easily be created directly in the web interface via the Tasks tab to track progress & share Tasks to other users without the use of extensions or a separate calendar program.

Zimbra’s Tasks tab is found at the top menu bar of the Zimbra web client:
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Both Zimbra and Google Apps offer a Documents feature to upload, edit and share common file types (Microsoft Word, Excel, .pdf). But what about the other types of files (.mp3, .tiff, .html)? This is where Zimbra Briefcase comes in and it’s a feature that Google Apps does not offer with their Google Apps hosting.

Zimbra Briefcase is a storage solution for nearly all file extensions within your email account so you can access your important files anywhere. It’s also a place where you can manage files in folders and share to others.  Read more... (330 words and 10 images, estimated 1:19 mins reading time)

        

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite offers advanced calendaring features that are not found in the Google Calendar bundled with Google Apps.

The Google Apps Calendar includes a web calendar with the ability to share calendars to internal users on your domain as well as granting access to public html calendars for external sharing.

In Google Apps, basic sharing of calendars is achieved by clicking on the drop-down selection next to the calendar name:

In the sharing preferences, I can grant calendar access to others on my domain:

However, if the person I want to share to is an external user without a Google Calendar account I must send them a direct link to a html or .ics file (which must be sent manually by copy/pasting the URL into an email):
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One of my favorite features of Zimbra is how it recognizes key information (metadata) within emails. GMail is great at picking out hyperlinks and email addresses, though the drawback is that this information is handled by whatever software application the link is setup to trigger. For instance, if I follow a link to an email address at a colleague’s office Outlook Express may open with the default sender being the user whose profile is being used to access my GMail account. This is not desirable as I do not wish to accidentally send emails as anyone other than myself. Zimbra, on the other hand, will simply open a new message within its own window, ready to send emails as me! Let’s take a closer look at this along with some other similar differences.  Read more... (434 words and 10 images, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)