Thunderbird

1
Thunderbird

• October 18, 2006
• Jon Atherton, Dan BartholomewCIT/IS

2
Agenda

• Background
• Migration Tools
• Migration Experience
• Training Survey
• Roadmap

3
Background
Ownership of e-mail CIT SO Messaging Client
Support (backline) CIT IS PD E-mail
back-office meetings ITMC Committee
4

• E-mail back-office members include
• Jim Howell, SO
• Jon Atherton, ID
• Dan Bartholomew, ID
• Lee Brink, ID
• Tom Parker, IdM
• Jeff Truelsen, ATSUS
• JP Brannan, ATSUS
• Others
• The objectives of the group included
• Discuss current issues with E-Mail service.
• Plan for upgrades to servers and Software
• Plan changes to Clients (including WebMail)
• New features like Alternate E-mail Identity
  (COEA)
• (Other stuff)

5

• E-Mail working group was created in April the
  members include
• Rob Bandler, Univ. Registrar
• Thomas Crook, Human Ecology
• Debra Howell, Facilities
• Don Sevey, Campus Life
• Steve Staiger, ILR
• CIT Jon Atherton, Dan Bartholomew, Leslie
  Intemann, Diane Sempler, Jeff Truelsen
• The objectives of the group included
• Discuss current issues with Eudora.
• Is Thunderbird the right E-Mail client? Discuss
  CITs discovery and evaluation process.
• If Thunderbird is the right client, discuss next
  steps and develop a migration plan.

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Migration Tools

• EudoraRescue Maintains Status, Label and
  Priority. Pre-processor for Thunderbirds import
  facility. Win
• EmailChemy Single step import tool but does not
  appear to maintain Status, Label or Priority
  information. Mac/Win
• Transend Similar features/limitations to
  EmailChemy Win
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner Single step import tool.
  Maintains Status and Labels. Puts output
  mailboxes in fixed location. Mac

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Migration Efforts

• College of Human Ecology
• Facilities

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Facilities

• Migration of users One on One
• Made training sessions available
• Show tell format
• Offered before the migration and some follow-up
  after migration
• Included instructions on Searching LDAP
• Address book manipulation
• Cleaning up old mail was optional
• 80 of usage was POP
• Eudora Rescue was used
• They use Roaming Profiles
• Extra configuration for all users
• Automatic compression
• Set master passwords
• Forward messages inline
• Reply at top of E-mail
• Configured to send HTML

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Steps used for migration

• Initial E-mail or Phone call to the person
• Scheduled a time to perform the move
• Pushed TB via active directory using the MSI
  installer
• Created Account settings (did not import accounts
  from Eudora)
• Ran Eudora Rescue
• Imported Eudora mail into Local Mailboxes
  (Tools-gtImport)
• Set preferred settings (over and above our
  defaults)
• Verified the installation / migration
• Left old Eudora folders intact for a while in
  case they were needed
• Deleted Eudora folders (Inactive TSM copy
  remained for up to 6 months)
• Merge Migrated mail into account mailboxes from
  Local.

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Issues

• They had difficulties with the LDAP searching
  (may be result of Eudora and Thunderbird sending
  slightly different search requests)
• They leave the attachment as part of the mail
  file rather than splitting it off. Indicated some
  problems with using Detach attachment. (Need to
  do further testing to see if we can reproduce
  this).
• They had problems with Deleting items from the
  Junk mailbox blocking deleting from other
  mailboxes until Thunderbird is restarted.  (Need
  to do further testing to see if we can reproduce
  this)
• Not sure if Thunderbird is more or less
  problematic since there are always more problems
  when you first start using a new application. 
  Time will tell.
• Lots of Nit Picking by the users.  Again, may be
  the result of having to change from Eudora rather
  than defects in Thunderbird itself.

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Recommended Practices

• Pre-migration
• Migration Steps

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Pre-Migration
Before you start the migration process you may
wish to meet with your staff and review some of
the difference between Eudora and Thunderbird. A
few of the differences are listed below

• Thunderbird is NOT Eudora. Although both
  applications process mail, they behave similar to
  each other and their feature sets are different.
• Thunderbird uses accounts whereas Eudora uses
  Personalities.
• Thunderbird keeps the attachment as part of the
  mail file. Deleting the mail file deletes the
  attachment. You need to detach the attachment
  before deleting the mail file if you wish to keep
  it.
• Because of number 3, when you view an attachment,
  you are looking at a temporary copy. Changes
  made to it are NOT re-written to the mail file
  and are stored in a temporary file. If you need
  to change an attachment, either use Save As to
  save a copy or detach the attachment and make
  changes.
• Directory searches are performed a little
  differently so results may not match 100.
• Other differences

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Migration Steps

• Schedule a time that is convenient to perform the
  migration. Depending on the size of the users
  mailboxes, it could take an hour or more.
• Install Thunderbird from Bear Access or the MSI.
• Cleanup existing mailboxes and compress them.
• Mailboxes folders with non-standard characters
  in Windows will not import and should be renamed
  first
• Run a full virus scan on the Eudora mailbox
  folder including the attachment folder. This is
  critical since the import process may fail if
  Symantec quarantines either the mailbox or the
  attachment during the migration process.
• If the user wishes to retain Flags, Labels and
  status information, you will need to use one of
  the migration utilities to pre-process the
  mailboxes.
• Thunderbird and none of the migration tools will
  import filters
• Verify disk space needs and availability to
  duplicate the users mailboxes.
• Launch Thunderbird and select Dont import
  anything. You can then use either Tools-gtAccount
  settings to manually create accounts or use
  Tools-gtImport to import the settings from Eudora
  then tweak them as necessary.
• Import Address book using Tools-gtImport
• Import Eudora Mailboxes (Tools-gtImport)
• Verify the mailboxes and address book migrated
  successfully.
• If you are sure everything migrated properly you
  may wish to move the imported mail to the local
  folders.
• You may wish to archive a copy of the users
  Qualcomm\Eudora folder in case you need to refer
  to it.
• Make changes to preferences such as whether to
  have access to IMAP mail while offline, where to
  place replies

14
Training Survey results

• 65 responses received from members of
  Net-Admin-L, CCDs, and ITMCthis data represents
  a low return rate
• Top e-mail clients currently in use Eudora,
  WebMail, Thunderbird, and Outlook
• 40 of respondents have officially started
  migrating users to Thunderbird 43 have not 17
  do not plan to migrate

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More Training Survey results

• Responses to our questions about specific
  training (user migration, user how-to, IT
  migration, and IT how-to) were similar across the
  board. Approximately 50 gave a positive
  response, 25 were neutral, and 25 were not
  interested.
• Of the people who were interested, 66 prefer
  web-based materials 33 prefer classroom-based
  materials.
• When to hold Thunderbird training 33 prefer
  between now and the end of 2006, whereas 44
  prefer between January and March 2007.

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Roadmap

• Summer, 2006 Begin support for Thunderbird
• Summer/Fall 06 End user training available
• Summer, 2007 Move Eudora to Updates Extras
• Summer, 2009 End support for Eudora

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Qualcomm Announcement

• Qualcomm has announced the end of Eudora as a
  commercial product
• Open source built on Mozilla/Thunderbird
• Preserve Eudora user experience
• Maintain compatability

18
Penelope roadmap

• Release 0.1
• Importers for your mail store and contacts
• Remapping of accelerator keys
• Basic settings and personalities
• Release 0.5
• Filter importing
• Major UI Elements
• Unique Eudora message handling operations
• Release 1.0
• Stationery
• Import for all Settings
• Minor UI elements
• Source http//wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope

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Questions?
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3rd Party Extensions

• Extensions are written by third-parties, which
  means anyone from Google to some guy living in
  his mom's basement. Naturally the quality of
  extensions varies greatly. Your best bet is to
  read the user comments before installing an
  extension.
• Each time a new version of Thunderbird is
  released, each extension's author needs to update
  their extension. As you might expect, some
  authors are better at this than others. Until the
  extension has been updated, it is disabled.
• For the above reasons, we have chosen to not
  support extensions at this time. Discussions
  about potential future support of extensions are
  on-going.
• http//www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/email/thunderb
  ird/extensions.html

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Extension Skill Requirements

• You will almost certainly need to use the
  following technologies, although it is not
  necessary to be an expert in them. You may be
  able to pick up much of what you need just by
  examining the source code for other extensions.
• XUL (XML User-Interface Language). Used to define
  the onscreen layout of the UI and to attach
  scripts and style to the interface.
• JavaScript. The primary scripting language in
  Mozilla and the language in which most extensions
  are written.
• DOM (Document Object Model). Used to manipulate
  XUL in real-time as well as any HTML documents
  loaded.
• XPCOM/XPConnect. Mozilla packages together useful
  functions into XPCOM (Cross-Platform Component
  Object Model) components, which may then be
  accessed from external code, including JavaScript
  via XPConnect. This allows the extension
  developers access to the preferences database,
  the file system, and many other pieces of Mozilla
  technology (Extensions can be written in
  JavaScript, C, or even Python with PyXPCOM).
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Used to style the
  interface and to attach XBL bindings to XUL
  documents.
• More advanced extensions may require the
  following technologies.
• XBL (XML Binding Language). Used to extend XUL,
  allowing the creation of new types of widgets and
  associated behaviors.
• RDF (Resource Description Framework). Used as a
  data-storage format in some parts of Mozilla and
  in some extensions.
• Source http//kb.mozillazine.org/Dev__Extension
  s