Kontact KNOW HOW

or most companies it is difficult to The KDE groupware client imagine life without a groupware Fsolution. Groupware allows users to exchange contacts and appointments and handles other dynamic processes, such as out-of-office rules or temporary First Kontact mailbox access, allowing you to tailor your enterprise communication to reflect Kontact 1.0 joins the growing group of Linux-based competitors to Outlook. your work flow. The Kontact client supports a variety groupware servers, handles messages, Kolab, Kontact, and KDE The KDE Kontact project originally and can even gives you a weather forecast. BY DANIEL MOLKENTIN designed groupware features that needed a Kolab server (see Box “Kontact and Kolab History”), but it added connectors for other groupware servers at an early stage [1]. In this article we will be look- ing at Kontact 1.0 and KDE PIM 3.3, both of which were current when this issue went to print. If you need to do so, you can use Kontact as an IMAP client on your home network and manage your personal information off line. This said, Kontact shows its true capabilities as a client in a groupware environment. You might mistake Kontact for Outlook or Evolution at first sight. You can access the organizer, mail client, and address book via a tool bar at the side of the win- dow. But looking under the hood reveals a completely different engine. Kontact is simply a program framework. The Kon- tact shell integrates plug-ins, wrappers for so-called KParts. Figure 1:The Summary page provides a report from Kontact’s component applications. KParts are familiar applications such as KMail, Kaddressbook, and Korganizer, range of RSS feeds (see Figure 1). The features, such as incremental sender and all of which use KDE’s interprocess com- weather report is provided courtesy of subject line searches in the current folder munication protocol DCOP [2]. It makes the National Weather Service. and druids that integrate popular anti- no difference whether you run the pro- The button bar on the left is not only spam and anti-virus products such as grams as Kontact shell parts or as used to toggle between applications, but KMail filters. A log window helps you stand-alone applications. The features also for drag & drop operations. For test complex filtering rules by monitor- stay the same, and users can set things example, users can drop an email mes- up to suit their requirements. sage on a task button to tell Kontact to Kontact and Kolab History remind them to reply to that message. The idea was to produce an Open Source Together but Still Apart And if you need to send an address book software that could integrate Outlook When you launch Kontact, it shows you entry, just drop it on the mail icon. The clients.These were the original specifica- an overview page with email messages, menu and button bars change to reflect tions for a free groupware solution for your next appointments and birthdays, the current application, displaying the internal use,which Germany’s Bundesamt the weather, news, and your Palm syn- relevant actions for that component. The für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI – Ministry for Information Technology chronization status. You can compile an status bar displays messages from all Security) published about three years ago. individual news overview from a wide components, no matter which one is cur- Apart from purely Web-based systems, rently active. Selecting an application nothing fitted the bill back then. A consor- Daniel Molkentin comes from Ger- that is currently running outside the tium comprising Intevation (quality many’s river Rhine area, is a member assurance and project management),

HOR Kontact framework moves that applica- T of the KDE Core team, and a Kontact tion into the foreground. Erfrakon (responsible for the server),and the developer. He is currently studying The KMail email client (see Figure 2) QT and KDE specialists,Klarälvdalens computer science at the Technical is another Kontact part. The new version Datakonsult (KDAB,who programmed the University in Chemnitz, Germany. client) got the job. THE AU 1.7 from KDE PIM 3.3 has long-awaited

www.linux-magazine.com November 2004 43 KNOW HOW Kontact

ing the filtering process. Unfortunately, the program still does not have a graphic sieve script editor, although there is some sieve management code that is cur- rently used for out-of-office messaging. One of KMail’s major features is its powerful crypto system, which can han- dle both OpenPGP and S/MIME. While OpenPGP is targeted at private users, S/MIME is designed for corporate and government environments. Encryption for Government Agencies KMail supports version 2 of the Teletrust Mailtrust standard for electronic signa- tures and encryption in government offices. The BSI Aegypten I and II pro- jects added this functionality to the mail client [3]. Enhancements to KAddress- book also facilitate encryption. Users can assign an OpenPGP key and Figure 2: Configuring news in Kontact. an S/MIME certificate to each contact, and you can opt to have KMail automati- OS-based handheld device [4]. Kontact applications. Kopete allows you to take cally encrypt messages to these contacts displays the current synchronization sta- the contact data for a person from multi- or prompt you to confirm. tus, details on updated objects, and the ple messaging systems and use that data last sync time. This is the first version to to create a meta-contact. KDE PIM inte- User-Defined Fields support the KPilot successor, Kitchen- gration goes one step further. You can It is quite common for corporations to sync, which supports a wider range of add Kopete meta-contacts to the address need enterprise-specific address book devices. At this time of writing, there is a book. Once the contact is in the address fields. Although the Custom Field func- PC-to-PC plug-in and a plug-in for syn- book, you can use an appropriate IM ser- tion can handle simple cases, you can chronizing Qtopia and OPIE-based vice to send messages. use the Custom Pages to create more handhelds. And more plug-ins are in the There is no Voice-over-IP plug-in at complex KAddressbook settings. You still pipeline, such as one for Sync ML, the present. But there is a plug-in API that need to design a page with QT Designer. standard for many current cellphones. allows you to integrate external software KAddressbook saves the values of the The Kopete Instant Messenger inter- with Kontact. The Akregator blogging GUI elements, whose names all start acts with Kaddressbook under KDE 3.3 client uses a Kontact plug-in for this pur- with X_, in the Designer application as or newer. Besides the popular AIM, ICQ, pose. Custom Fields. Usenet fans will be MSN and Yahoo Messenger protocols, Despite its affinity to the Kolab project pleased to hear that Kontact helps them Kopete also supports IRC and Jabber, [5], the Kontact framework works in a out with their hobby. To do this, the pro- which are useful for enterprise server different way than the Kolab server. A gram uses KNode with an added Kmail-style quick headline search (see Using Existing Tools Figure 2). The developers stuck to the Unix philosophy of using existing tools when they programmed KOrganizer has redesigned day and Kolab, the groupware server,drawing on OpenLDAP,Cyrus IMAP,Postfix,and an Apache Web month overviews. If there is enough server with PHP for the Web-based administration front-end. Instead of storing data in a SQL space, the month overview expands to database, they used IMAP folders. display multiple months. If you are plan- The client side turned out to be more complex. KMail and KOrganizer,both of which have a wide- ning appointments, a free/busy view of spread user base,had very little common ground.The KDE project had made some attempts to merge the programs,which had led to the Kaplan project,but work had not progressed suffi- the personnel resources is a big help, ciently to use it for the BSI contract.This prompted the decision to use the Kparts technology to although it does assume that other peo- integrate KOrganizer and KMail,and this in turn spawned the Kolab client.The developers chose ple publish their schedules. If not, the proprietary Bynari Insight connector plug-in to support Outlook on Windows; the connector KOrganizer displays a shaded area to let converts Outlook’s MAPI to ractLDAP. you know. As interest in groupware solutions continued to grow, the KDE camp finally woke up,and the authors of KMail,KOrganizer,Kaddressbook,and other KDE PIM programs started work on frame- Flight Training works to support interaction between their programs. After being assimilated by Kontact,Kaplan Kpilot allows you to synchronize sup- started to make some good progress. Inspired by the component-based structure of KDevelop 3,it provides a common GUI for the existing applications. ported applications with your Palm

44 November 2004 www.linux-magazine.com Kontact KNOW HOW

(see the article in this issue), it mainly INFO Agreements uses the WebDAV protocol but relies on After completing the Kolab project,KDAB IMAP for mail handling. The Exchange [1] Kontact:http://kontact.kde.org and the PIM authors soon agreed that it server needs to enable IMAP and Web [2] “KDE Scripting with DCOP,”by Scott would make sense to stop developing the access via the Internet Information Wheeler:Linux Magazine #36,p. 47 ff. Kolab client and work on the developer ver- Server to support this. [3] Aegypten 2 project: sion of Kontact instead. At the end of 2003, http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten2 The Opengroupware project [6], a BSI published a tender for a Kolab successor, Skyrix offshoot founded in 2003, is cur- [4] KPilot compatibility list:http://www.slac. which aimed to improve usability and user- com/pilone/kpilot_home/hardware.html rently planning a Kontact connector that friendliness. Kontact became the successor [5] Kolab:http://www.kolab.org will either use XMLRPC or WebDAV. to the Kolab client,and the follow-up project And the free Neuberger & Hughes [6] Opengroupware Project: is due for completion at the end of 2004. http://www.opengroupware.org Exchange4Linux [7] server, which only [7] Exchange4Linux:http://www. supports Microsoft Outlook via a propri- billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/home resource framework abstracts the data etary connector thus far, can also look to [8] Kolab Forum:http://www.eforum.de from the source and the transmission Kontact integration in the near future. [9] Kolabports:http://www.zfos.org/ protocols. It is extremely simple to set up a [10]E-Groupware: http://www.egroupware.org Groupware client. A druid that prompts Connectivity users for their names, passwords, and [11] SuSE OpenExchange:http://www.suse. de/en/business/products/openexchange/ You can use XMLRPC or WebDAV to read servers handles the configuration. But calendar data from an IMAP server or you should close any active PIM compo- SQL to access a database; the programs nents before you start. There are druids Version 2.0, which is due late this year, handling the data will not notice the dif- for Kolab, OpenExchange, and E-Group- will have a single bootstrap command. ference. This technology also produced ware so far. There are some pitfalls on All the hard work that goes into the E-Groupware connector. (E-Group- the road to choosing a groupware server. installing Kolab may be worthwhile in a ware forked off from PHP Groupware a Installing Kolab is quite time-consuming. complex scenario where high availability while back.) The connector uses its own The Kolab server is distributed as an is needed. Although the Kolab server XMLRPC-based protocol to communi- OpenPKG environment that provides, does not have a general purpose tool, cate. SuSE has also started to integrate and needs to build, a full set of packages, you can use standard tools to guarantee the same technology into its OpenEx- from GCC through to the daemons. You high availability for the central data stor- change Server product. OpenExchange need to launch the build manually. age components, Cyrus IMAP and also uses WebDAV to exchange contacts Check out the Kolab forum at [8] for OpenLDAP. and appointments, IMAP for mail han- more help. There are also issues with the other dling, and LDAP to access the global groupware servers. Address book field address book. The E-Groupware and Pitfalls: Choosing a Server content, which the E-Groupware server OpenExchange connectors are included There are pre-compiled OpenPKG RPMs can not understand, is simply discarded, with KDE PIM 3.3. for Debian Woody on the download and the group planning functions do not page, and the Zfos project [9] has binary work. The Web interface shows the Kontact Support for packages, which are simpler and quicker server’s true strength, providing far more Exchange to install, for various operating systems. functions than Kontact supplies by Work on an Exchange connector is in The packages also include an alternative default. Users will need their browsers to progress. Just like the Novell Connector engine by Codefusion. If you need the manage E-Groupware. The homepage at original, you will [10] provides a demo. need to modify the The OpenExchange licensing model is install script as its weakest point. Whereas SuSE sup- described in the ports an unlimited number of email readme. clients, the license for the proprietary, If you run third party groupware module of Kolab, you must OpenExchange server is quite expensive make sure you in larger environments. remember to dis- able a few native Conclusion system services. Kontact demonstrates that groupware is As the Kolab envi- not a monoculture. Even though it does ronment sets up a not support the full groupware server directory tree be- functionality, the combinations we low /kolab, you looked at in this article are quite capable can easily confine of handling the scenarios previously Figure 3: Kontact’s Kmail client. it to a root jail. dominated by Exchange and Outlook. ■

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