Open-Xchange webinterface with access to file-server?

[primaxx]

Hello, Community!

I have a situation where some of my users are located on sites with very slow Internet-connections.
Today we are using a mailserver called Desknow, which has a quite superb function: When logged in to the webinterface and you want to attach a file to the mail you are going to send, you are given the option to attach a local file, or a so called Desknow-file. The latter is actually direct (web)access to our file-server. What you see is a folder-tree with files, and then you just tick off the file(s) you want to attach. There is no up- or downloading. Attaching one of these files makes it possible to send emails with large attachments without the user having to download the file attached locally first. (I can for instance send a mail with a 15Mb attached file from my mobile-phone, over gprs, and it is done in seconds.)
Unfortunately this is one of the few things that I'm happy with in Desknow.

So, I want to change mail-server, and Open-Xchange seems like a great option, but my question is; is it possible to link for instance Infostore to our file-server somehow?

I am sorry my English is so bad, but I still hope there is someone here who understands me, and can answer my question.

Thank you for any response!

Rgrds, Primaxx

[Martin Heiland]

Hi,

we're currently planing to support E-Mail attachments taken from the OX Infostore. Would that match your use-case? Or would you like to add a E-Mail attachment from an external resource (like an FTP/HTTP Server)? In this case, sending a hyperlink to the resource may be a reasonable solution. You can also send direct-links to folders and objects where another OX user has access to, for example by sharing a folder. Check the "Send as Link" feature at the infostore.

In future releases we plan to support the publishing of OX resources (like the infostore) to external users. In this case you could send a (optionally passwort protected) accessed to your infostore/contact/calendar/task folder to an external user which does not need to have a OX account. What do you think about this?

Greetings

[primaxx]

Hi, and thanks for the response!

What you talk about is interesting, but I don't think it's exactly what I'm looking for.

I hope the folloing scenarios better illustrates my (and I would be surprised if I'm the only one) needs:

Situation 1:
Our main office hosts both our email-server and our file-server.
The user is off-site, and logged in to the OX webinterface and want to send a mail. He also wants to attach a document, and this document is located on our file-server. When, in OX, he clicks browse for attachment to add, he must either
a) allready have downloaded the document from our file-server to his local computer, or
b) browse to the (through for instance vpn) mapped drive with his share on our file-server
and download the document.
The document does either way have to be downloaded to the users computer, before it gets uploaded to the mail-server (which actually could be the very same machine as the file-server) before the email is sent.

Situation 2:
Our main office hosts both our email-server and our file-server.
The user is off-site, and logged in to the OX webinterface and want to send a mail. He also wants to attach a document, and this document is located on our file-server. When, in OX, he clicks browse for attachment to add, he is given the opportunity to browse through (for instance) OX Infostore. When doing so, he actually browses our file-server. Then he just mark (a checkbox) the file(s) he wants to attach.
The consequense is of course that when sending the mail with the attachment, he don't have to first download the file to his local computer, before uploading it back to the mail-server again.

It is, of course, situation 2 I want, and I really, really hope it is possible with OX! (This is also what Desknow offers)
This gives us useful access to our file-server, and we don't have to store documents on multiple places (For Instance both OX infostore and our file-server). This is especially important to us, since we have a lot of data on our file-server.

I hope my explanation was easier to understand now! :-)

Rgrds, Primaxx

[Viktor Pracht]

we're currently planing to support E-Mail attachments taken from the OX Infostore.

Isn't this exactly what the button "Send as attachment" in the InfoStore panel already does?

[Martin Heiland]

No, i meant using the infostore as data source for e-mails (browseable). Currently it is only possible to send _one_ Infoitem attached to one E-Mail, not multiple attachments.

[Viktor Pracht]

Currently it is only possible to send _one_ Infoitem attached to one E-Mail, not multiple attachments.

Ever tried selecting multiple items and then pressing the button?

[Martin Heiland]

From different folders?

However, i think primaxx wants to integrate his existing NFS/Samba/whatever fileserver to the OX Infostore. This is currently not possible and as far as i know we don't have any plans for implementing this in the next release.

[primaxx]

From different folders?

However, i think primaxx wants to integrate his existing NFS/Samba/whatever fileserver to the OX Infostore. This is currently not possible and as far as i know we don't have any plans for implementing this in the next release.

You are so right! And that's so sad...