Happy Halloween!

I am pleased to announce for a special treat this year that as of today GroupWise 18.1 is officially shipping.   For GroupWise & Enterprise Messaging customers that are active on maintenance 18.1 will be available in your customer portal in the next couple of days.

This release contains many new features, some of the key themes that are addressed in this release include:

Enterprise Messaging Integrations and Improvements.    I have spoken frequently about enhancing the Enterprise Messaging suite and improving integration among the various products in the suite.   The first step of this is to integrate GroupWise Mailbox Management into GroupWise Administration console so that it is not a seperate utility.   18.1 is the first iteration of that integration.   Mailbox Mangement remains a seperate product that you need to license either buy purchasing the product or it comes with Enterprise Messaging.  Once licensed you will be able to manage it from GroupWise Admin Console instead of a sperate utility.   With 18.1 we have partially integrated Mailbox Management into the GroupWise Admin console and administrators are able tomanage some users rules.  Our plan is to complete the integration in the 18.2 release.

There have also been several client enhancments to improve integration between the GroupWise client and TeamWorks.   Including the ability to search for TeamWorks rooms,  create new TewamWorks rooms and Favorite/Unfavorite TeamWorks rooms.

TeamWorks is a component of Enterprise Messaging and is only available with Enterprise Messaging.  TeamWorks 18.1 is also shipping as of today for our Enterprise Messaging Customers.

Another key feature is the ability to Archive GroupWise Messenger conversations with Retain.  This is key for Enterprise Messaging customers, but it is also key for GroupWise customers that have Retain but have not upgraded to Enterprise Messaging.  In order to have access to this new funcationality you must have Retain 4.6 or later and GroupWise 18.1 or later.

Ideas enhancements - Community driven requirements.   We have made a commitment with each release to incorporate ideas directly from our customers into the release.  We have had an excellent track record with that and this release is no exception.  Some of the features included in this release that come directly from the Ideas Portal Include:

• • Multi Users Calendars (proxy) on mobile devices

• • Draft Folder support for Mobile Devices

• • Resest System Folders from Administration

• • Disable Document Management in Client from Administion

Client Improvements.  Over the last couple of releases we have made an effort to improve GroupWise client usability.   This releases includes several new features and improvements for end users including, Improved and updated Find,  QuickViewer Smart Sizing,  Conversation threading improvements.

I haven't gone into specific detail about all of these features and there are more.  For more detail please check the documentation or better yet upgraded to 18.1 and try them out for yourself.

Finally,  before closing I would like to mention the new GroupWise Client that is being developed.   I recently wrote about this new client here.

The new client is NOT a part of the 18.1 release.   However if you haven't seen it please read the article and catch up.   I wanted to mention it here as my goal is to have this available to our customers as a Tech Preview before the end of this calendar year.   We have been making great progress on the new client and I am anxious for you to see it and play with it in a lab environment and give us feedback ahead of our first release.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy 18.1!