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News plugins for Evolution 2.1.2.1

Evolution Email Client

Evolution is a full featured email client, supporting POP and IMAP, addressbook and calendaring application for the GNOME desktop.  Evolution also features:

• Spam filtering
• GPG security and key signing
• Search Folders, allowing you to filter email based on your criteria
• Web calendar integration
• Manage multiple email accounts

Evolution is one of the most feature rich applications for the GNOME desktop.  The below topics are just an overview of what Evolution can do.  To learn more, visit the Evolution User Guide, available in the GNOME help.  Click System in your panel, then help, and enter "Evolution" in the search box.  Or visit the Evolution homepage for more information.

Adding an account

The first time you start Evolution, you will be prompted to enter your email account details.   Enter your name and email address, and click next.  Choose your "Server Type", most users will use POP, and your server information and username.   (This information should be available from your ISP).  Click next, and enable any of the receiving options such as automatically checking email every ten minutes.  Click next and configure your sent mail settings.  Choose your "Server Type, most users will use SMTP, and enter your server name.  Click next, and enter the name you wish to use for the account in Evolution, usally your email address, and you're finished.  To add additional email accounts, click Edit in the menu, Preferences, Mail Accounts, and Add.

To receive new email, click the Send / Receive button in the left hand corner.

Evolution Contacts

In Evolution, Contacts are individuals you add to your addressbook.  A single contact is called a Card.  To add a new Card to Evolution, click on Contacts on the left hand menu, and then New and Contact.  Enter the contact information, including name, email address, address or instant messenger contact information.

Calendars

Evolution supports the ability to manage multiple calendars, both local, CalDAV and web based calendars.   To create a new calendar, click File, then New, then Calendar.  If the calendar is one to be saved only on your computer, enter the name and color.  If it is an internet based calendar, enter the name, color, URL and how often the calendar should be refreshed for changes and updates.

Features

Standards Support

Novell Evolution embraces mail, calendar and address book standards to ease data sharing.

Supported mail protocols include IMAP, POP, SMTP and Authenticated SMTP, as well as Microsoft Exchange 2000 and 2003. Novell GroupWise support is currently in beta.

iCalendar support allows users in disparate collaboration servers to share meeting information, publish this information and subscribe to calendars published on the Web (webcal).

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) support enables users to access their existing company address books. Users can also share contact information using vCard message attachments.

Security and Encryption

Industry-standard encryption, including support for PGP/GPG, SASL and SSL/TLS, ensures message security.

E-mail Client

Novell Evolution connects to corporate communications architectures, including Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise.

The message composer auto-completes e-mail addresses stored in the Contacts list.

View options allow users to view e-mail chronologically, by author or by thread. Custom folders can be color-coded to note priority or type, and vFolders, dynamic saved searches, provide convenient access to messages spread across multiple folders.

User-defined filters automatically move or process incoming and outgoing mail into specific, customizable folders. Account-management tools enable users to receive, manage and organize messages from multiple e-mail accounts.

Integration with SpamAssassin enables client-side junk-mail filtering.

Enhanced offline access for IMAP mail is also included in Novell Evolution.

Calendar

Users can create customized reminders for their events that open windows or play sounds. A "snooze-button" feature allows users to delay the reminder.

iCalendar support enables users to arrange appointments and schedule meetings with Microsoft Exchange, and other applications that support the iCalendar standard.

Group scheduling helps users schedule meetings, view attendee availability and allocate resources with other users in organizations running on Microsoft Exchange.

Free/busy searches enable users to publish and view schedules to facilitate the planning of group meetings.

The new overlay feature enables users to view multiple calendars so they can see their personal calendars as well as those of coworkers, work groups and others in a single color-coded view. This allows users to see conflicts or possible events without using the free/busy search.

Support for Web-based and multiple local calendars extends the ability to add any valid .ics file to calendar views, allowing users or workgroups to track events without leaving their Novell Evolution Calendar view.

Figure 3

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Figure 4

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Contact Management

Users can keep track of their business associates, friends and family by adding them to their contact list and maintaining multiple contact folders.

LDAP support enables users to access their existing company address books without changing collaboration infrastructure.

Userscan save time with address auto-completion, a feature that uses locally stored contacts or those found in LDAP directories to automatically complete e-mail addresses. They can also share, receive and save contacts using built-in vCard support.

Task and To-do List

Users can organize their work by entering to-do items into the task component. Summary, description, due dates, priorities, and categories can be entered. Users can then view their items by date, priority, deadlines and other criteria or view tasks in the integrated calendar view.

Extensible Architecture

Novell Evolution 2.0 includes the new Novell Evolution Data Server component that exposes Evolution-accessible data (such as mail, calendar and contacts) to the rest of the desktop applications. For example, users can view appointments and tasks in the desktop panel calendar, display appointment reminders in the panel notification area and add buddies to their Gaim instant messaging client by adding them to the Novell Evolution address book. This enables independent application developers to access collaboration server data (such as Novell GroupWise) without writing code for each server type.

Users can access, edit and update e-mail, address book, calendars, and task folders on Novell GroupWise servers from within Novell Evolution. They can also access the GroupWise Address Book for names, addresses and other contact information. Furthermore, they can enter Novell GroupWise Messenger information in the Personal Contacts feature for easy, secure, instant messaging via Gaim.

Users can issue meeting invitations and view colleague availability.

Built-in Microsoft Exchange Support

Users can communicate directly with built-in WebDAV support, eliminating the need to maintain separate IMAP e-mail server access to support Linux and UNIX users.

From within Novell Evolution, users can view, edit and update e-mail, address books, calendars and task folders on the Exchange server.

Using existing global address lists, users can access names, addresses and contact information from the Exchange Global Address List.

Public folder support allows users to share documents and files in existing Exchange public folders. They can also create new public folders for collaboration.

Through the Manage Permissions feature, users can control access to personal and public folders, calendars and task lists.

With the proper authorization, users can open other users' calendars or shared folders.

The Out-of-Office Assistant helps users create custom vacation or notification messages that run on the Exchange server.

Through the Calendar Delegation feature, users can set permissions to allow others to view their calendars. Users can also delegate permission to a colleague (for example, an administrative assistant) to accept and schedule meetings in their calendars.

Direct resource booking reserves resources such as conference rooms or vehicles for your meetings and appointments.

The new mailbox- and folder-size features display Exchange server quota notifications to keep mailbox sizes down.

S/MIME protocol support

S/MIME certificate support gives users a higher level of authentication in their correspondence. This feature ensures that messages are digitally signed and encrypted. Users can view, manage and import certificates and recognize additional certificate authorities with a centralized certificate-management tool.

Palm Device Support

Users can access the latest information with two-way synchronization between Novell Evolution (calendar, address book and task list) and their Palm handheld devices.

Overview

Evolution provides integrated mail, addressbook and calendaring functionality to users of the GNOME desktop.

Feature Highlights

View screenshots

• No viruses or worms

• Junk filtering

• Desktop integration

• Developer Platform (EDS)

• Evolution#

• EPlugin

• Advanced email searching

• Web calendars

• User-defined filters

• Multiple accounts

• Palm device support

• Customized reminders

• Multiple calendar views

• iCalendar support

• To-Do list

• LDAP compatible

• Share vCards

• Security and encryption

• Open Source

• (read more...)