SmarterMail integration

[savornicesei]

Hi all,

I am using SmarterMail Enterprise 15.7 that is provided by my hosting company. I’m actually a fan of the product, since it provides email, contacts management, calendar, notes, tasks, even file storage, WebDAV, free for 10 users and they’re working towards a linux version as well (it’s a .NET product).

Since I’ve discovered DAVx5 I’ve moved all my important things from gmail, yahoo, gdocs to SM. Now I’ve got a new Nokia 8 phone with Android 9 Pie on it and I want to set everything right (regading privacy):

• no skype contacts added to my Contacts list
• no sync of my Contact to google account
• sync Contacts, Caledar, Notes, Tasks (only) with SmarterMail through DAVx5
• use mainly FOSS android apps

With these in mind, I have some questions:
Contacts

• SM provides its own ‘Master categories’ for contacts but when cleaning up my contacts list from SM I noticed the contacts categories from my phone were synced as contacts. On my new phone - will I get the Master categories or no categories at all?

Tasks

• I did install OpenTasks on my old Android 4.4 phone (thank you for still supporting this version of Android!) but they were never synced. Was it because of the Android version or do I need to configure something?

Notes

• No sync from what I’ve read. I would like to investigate what actually needs to be done (for SM as backend) so I would be grateful for any insights or key words related to notes and webDAV (and SM).
  I found this diagram from DAVx5 documentation higly informative

Android OSS apps
While investigating notes syncing I found:

• Orgzly for note taking
• some Simple* apps covering the rest: Simple Contacts, Simple Notes, Simple Calendar (from https://simplemobiletools.com/)
• Simple Mail as mail client
• Notepad for notes
• other *pads for note taking
  Not sure what to pick up and install so I’m wondering what you’re using (given the DAVx5 with SM as backend).

Other
I never found being mentioned in the official documentation what version(s) of SM are supported (or were used at testing)

Thank you.

[rfc2822]

Hello,

@savornicesei said in SmarterMail integration:

With these in mind, I have some questions:
Contacts

• SM provides its own ‘Master categories’ for contacts but when cleaning up my contacts list from SM I noticed the contacts categories from my phone were synced as contacts. On my new phone - will I get the Master categories or no categories at all?

I don’t know which method of contact groups is used by SmarterMail. Often, such categories are not synced over CardDAV at all. DAVx⁵ supports both methods: vCard 3 CATEGORIES and vCard 4 contact groups.

Tasks

• I did install OpenTasks on my old Android 4.4 phone (thank you for still supporting this version of Android!) but they were never synced. Was it because of the Android version or do I need to configure something?

Are those tasks exposed over CalDAV? In this case, you only have to install OpenTasks and select the respective calendar/task list in the DAVx⁵ account. However, there are many services which don’t provide a CalDAV interface for their tasks; in this case, they can’t be synchronized with DAVx⁵.

Notes

• No sync from what I’ve read.

Personally, I just use tasks for everything Technically, there’s no difference between a task without due date and a note.

Not sure what to pick up and install so I’m wondering what you’re using (given the DAVx5 with SM as backend).

Other
I never found being mentioned in the official documentation what version(s) of SM are supported (or were used at testing)

Some hints can be found at https://www.davx5.com/tested-with/smartermail, but please note that there is no official documentation from our side. DAVx⁵ treats all CalDAV/CardDAV services the same and we can’t support every single server. We just provide a list of hints for tested services so that users can get an idea, but the only official documentation about CalDAV/CardDAV internals of your server is the server documentation. You can find supported sync fields here: https://www.davx5.com/manual/technical_information.html

[savornicesei]

So there’s no specific testing of DAVx5 with SM as backend. Then I need to dig into the SM WebDAV internals

Guess I won’t be using my new shiny phone so soon

[rfc2822]

@savornicesei There were some basic tests when we have added https://www.davx5.com/tested-with/smartermail, but unfortunately, we can’t do permanent tests with all those services.

If you find something which should be mentioned on https://www.davx5.com/tested-with/smartermail, please just post here!

[savornicesei]

@rfc2822 Some updated information after a clean setup on the new phone:

• SmarterMail does not provide webDAV resources for tasks and notes. I didn’t get any answer if it’s on their ToDo list or not
• The way to sync contact categories as a new contact or as categories is selectable in DavX5, before initial sync
• The customizable phone numbers labels are not supported by SM. Unfortunately, I added one on my phone, synced it to SM and the default ‘Home’ phone number was also lost
• SM has separate fields for Address, City, State, Country but after sync, all the address fields were concatenated and added in the ‘Home Address’ field.

I’m not sure if they’re bugs on DAVx5 side or a lame support for WebDAV in SM.

[rfc2822]

Thanks for the update!

@savornicesei said in SmarterMail integration:

• The way to sync contact categories as a new contact or as categories is selectable in DavX5, before initial sync

You can also change it at a later time in the account settings. Which method is the right one for SmarterMail, according to your tests?

• The customizable phone numbers labels are not supported by SM. Unfortunately, I added one on my phone, synced it to SM and the default ‘Home’ phone number was also lost

Those things are supported well by DAVx⁵, while many servers have problems with that. So I guess these are missing features in SmarterMail. If there is any specific thing you’re missing in DAVx⁵, please let us know.

• SM has separate fields for Address, City, State, Country but after sync, all the address fields were concatenated and added in the ‘Home Address’ field.

Does this help? https://www.davx5.com/faq/entering-structured-addresses