Helping you evolve from Email

Note we have an update to this article located here: Thunderbird and Lightning working with Zimbra

This article is about what to expect when sending invitations from iCal, Entourage, Outlook and Zimbra’s web client to Thunderbird with the Lightning extension installed.

The Macintosh Thunderbird mail client freely available from Mozilla.com has much to recommend it, especially when used in conjunction with the extension called Lightning, in early beta. Together they make for a very fast, streamlined user experience, and provide the triumvirate you may have come to expect from Outlook/Entourage, and Mail/iCal/AddressBook: Email, Calendaring and Contact management. Their current primary drawbacks when used with Zimbra are that they do not sync contacts and calendars with the Zimbra server, the way for example iCal and AddressBook do with Zimbra’s iSync Connector, and… you cannot yet initiate invitations to events.

Why is the development of Thunderbird and Lightning interesting? It’s not – if you’re looking for mail, calendar and contact combo and are fine with getting it through, for example, Zimbra’s comprehensive web interface, however, currently on the Mac the only option to both send and receive calendar invitations via an e-mail client is from within Entourage. In OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple’s Mail.app unfortunately does not yet recognize invitations. And many people would like more options than Microsoft Entourage. Even one more option would be fine for many people. So there’s some enthusiasm at the introduction and development of another competitor in the field.

A note to Firefox users: you can download Thunderbird using the Firefox browser however you may not be able to download Lightning using Firefox. If Firefox is your only option, Right-Click to download directly to disk. If not, expect the following dialog prompt:

Users using, for example, Camino or Safari, should not experience this issue.

Also note that the Lightning add-on is still in BETA. Use at your own risk.
Thunderbird to Thunderbird
Sender’s view:

When scheduling a meeting from one Thunderbird account to another, a user can perform the following steps:

1. Click the Calendar Tab
2. Select the time and date on the calendar by double clicking anywhere on the day of the meeting or event. You can always adjust the time later.

If scheduling to your own calendar, use this window:

If you want to add attendees to your invitation, click the More >> button to expand the window:

(3) Complete all appropriate fields. Click OK.

This entry will be added to your own calendar but… no one else’s calendar. The ability to send calendar invites from Lightning (through Thunderbird) is anticipated in a future release.

From Zimbra to Thunderbird
Recipient’s View

1. Note: When an invite is received from Zimbra by Thunderbird, a button appears in the top right corner of the recipients preview pane which reads, “Add To Calendar” and an .ics attachment appears at the base of the preview pane.
2. Clicking this button will add this calendar entry to both the Thunderbird calendar and the Zimbra calendar.

From Entourage to Thunderbird
Recipient’s View

1. Note: When an invite is received from Entourage by Thunderbird, the .ics attachment appears in the email (notice the icon at the base of preview pane).
2. Double clicking the icon will display:

Select OPEN WITH and choose iCal.
(3) The message invitation will be added to the calendar.

From iCal to Thunderbird
Recipient’s View

When an invite is received from iCal by Thunderbird, nothing appears in the recipient’s preview pane to indicate there is an invite to be accepted or attachment to be added to the calendar. Only the subject line states that this message is an iCal event invitation. The calendar entry automatically enters the invite into the calendar.

From Outlook to Thunderbird
Recipient’s View

1. Note: When an invite is received from Outlook by Thunderbird, a button appears in the top right corner of the recipients preview pane which reads, “Add To Calendar” and the .ics attachment at the base of the preview pane.
2. Clicking this button will add this calendar entry to both the Thunderbird calendar and the Zimbra calendar.

We’ll update this more as the software develops. And, with luck, perhaps Apple Mail will recognize invitations, too, upon the release of Leopard, and we can add it to the mix here, too.

Now if I would only get more invitations…

        

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Zimbra hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.