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On Tuesday, November 12, as part of a company wide initiative to bring all corporate websites under the OpenText brand, the Community will be down briefly around 11am Eastern / 8am Pacific as we transition to a new domain name. The community will be offline while we make the change and when it comes back online it will be located at community.opentext.com and the old domain will redirect to this new location. Thank you for your patience as we make this important change.
This is part 4. As plans, decisions and schedules are finalized regarding Windermere – there are several things to share and socialize in order to help you and your organization move forward with Novell and GroupWise.
I thought we were done with a three part series, but it looks like we have a few more points to discuss and share with you. I would like to say this will be the last such blog submission, but I don’t want to be called a liar when we end up doing a part 5. I guess we will just have to see.
Below, you will find a few more topics highlighted that we have made specific technical decisions around. Please let us know if you agree or if you think we have missed something critical in our analysis, understanding or evaluation of our customers or the market.
Novell will release a new IDM Driver with GroupWise Windermere. The current plan has the Windermere IDM driver releasing shortly after Windermere is available. Communication about options for organizations who are currently using the IDM driver and background information on what is changing is provided here.
Background
Currently, the GW 2012 code checks for eDir rights. As you already know, Windermere GroupWise will not create directory objects so these missing directory objects cause issues for the 2012 code that expects them. There are a variety of internal and external solutions that may rely on the existence of these objects in order to function properly. This includes solutions from our partners. For some partners, they may not have completed porting existing Admin OAPI solutions to the new Admin RESTful interface. In addition, the mechanism for locking out older versions of ConsoleOne will also lock out the IDM driver.
Running ConsoleOne will not be supported on Domains and Post Offices that have been upgraded to Windermere. However, no lockout mechanism will be provided since it would also lockout the existing IDM driver.
The Admin API, IDM driver and ConsoleOne will fail when running against Windermere under certain scenarios. Customers will have to wait for a REST based IDM driver to be made available. Customers will need to wait for partners to provide REST based solutions. Engineering is not planning on updating the GroupWise 2012 or GroupWise 8 based IDM driver to address failures. The solution will be to upgrade to the Windermere version of the IDM driver when it becomes available. Engineering is also not providing an update to the Admin Object API to be backward compatible for 3rd-party solutions. 3rd-Party solutions will need to convert their solutions to run with the new Admin RESTful interface. Communications and planning with our partners and a partner BETA for Windermere has already begun.
Here are a few scenarios that help illustrate a few of the issues we anticipate and the solution or recommendation provided
A command line script will be provided as a sample SDK app that can remove the DN from GroupWise user objects based on the value of the owning domain's tree information and/or a script to remove both the Domain tree info AND users DN info to move systems to a scenario 4 state. Engineering recommends this script NOT be run if the IDM driver is also configured. For customers not using IDM that utilize Admin Object API based solutions the script *may* improve their experience until those solutions can be rewritten to REST.
Summary: Customers that rely on Admin Object API based solutions or that use the GW IDM driver should consult with Novell before upgrading to Windermere.
The View Designer and the capability that it provides will be discontinued in its current form in Windermere. An updated View Designer will not be provided for Windermere. The GroupWise Windows Client views will begin a transition in Windermere from the View Designer technology to an XML based solution. This transition is expected to carry beyond the Windermere release.
In the future, all GroupWise views will simply be XML based definitions that can be edited using any XML editor.
For the Windermere release, we will initially support Apple iPad1, iPad2 and iPad3 and iPad mini. Additional tablet support will come as we move forward.
The discussion on the scope of validation required to issue a support statement for tablet devices being used to run the new Web Administration Console has been fun! As we evaluated how any Web application is rendered and how best to support Web Administration on as many devices/tables as possible, we made the following choice.
For Web Administration using a tablet, we will only officially support pixel widths of 1024 and greater and pixel heights of 600 and greater. While lower resolutions will effectively work, there may be screen anomalies, repainting artifacts or other annoying user experiences. Note that this willl affect the first three generations of iPhone (480x320), and both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S (960x640). It will however pick up the iPhone 5 and next generation iPhones to come. We may decide to officially support other resolutions for Windermere SP1.
Given the information/decision, here are the tablet resolutions that we will be supported.
2048x1536:
1920x1200:
1366x768:
1280x800:
1280x720:
1280x600:
1136x640:
1024x768:
1024x600:
We have decided to streamline the Linux install for the agent or server components. There will not be a GUI install for Linux. The Windows agent/server install will continue to have a GUI based install. Linux, however, will more closely match how components and software are deployed and installed on this platform. We will also remove the dependency on python libraries on the Linux agents install. This change will affect the POA, MTA, GWIA, DVA, DCA and the new Web Administration Service.
Thank you for continuing to read, provide feedback and ask clarifying questions regarding Windermere. As you should be able to tell, Product Management and Engineering are taking a bigger step forward with Windermere in order to set our product, technology and customers on more sure footing and prepare them for the ever changing landscape ahead. We hope you understand the changes we are making and while there may be some pain associated with these changes for some customers, we certainly believe that all customers will benefit.
As always, please submit your feedback for all to see so that all can benefit.
Dean