Zimbra Hints & Tips

Main functions

The main areas of Zimbra: email, calendar, address book and documents are accessed via the tabs on the left or top of the screen (depending on which skin you choose).

Below, or next to,  those are three more tabs for help, settings and exit. The online help is excellent and should be your first port of call when you want to do something. This guide isn't going to repeat everything in the help, but draw your attention to some interesting features you might not otherwise realise Zimbra has.

Using the Zimbra web resources

The Zimbra website (www.zimbra.com) has forums, wikis and documentation.  Zimbra users and administrators from across the world ask questions, offer advice and find out how to get the most from Zimbra.  We've put a few useful tips on this page, and we recommend you visit the Zimbra website to find out more.

Searching

Zimbra has excellent search facilities. It can do simple or advanced searches, including searching the contents of many common attachments. You can save searches to run later.

The search bar is near the top of the screen. For a simple search, type your search term in and hit search.

Searching in different places

The default search looks through your emails, but click on the icon to the left of the search bar (an envelope + looking glass) to search through contacts, documents or everything.

Building complex searches

Click on "Search builder" to the right of the search button. Under the search bar appear lots of icons for aspects of the search. You can use these to build up complex search queries and then save your search, by clicking on the disk icon next to Search at the top.

Email

Number of items on a page

Zimbra displays 25 items on each page, however, this number can be increased to 50, 75 or 100 in the Options sections.  Use the blue arrows in the top right to page through your emails, or search to select a few to look at.

Sorting email by conversation

Normally emails in Zimbra are sorted by conversation. This useful feature gathers together all the emails in a single conversation, even if they're in different folders (e.g. some might be in your sent folder) and puts them together for you to see. Sometimes you want to have emails with just one on a line (e.g. to order by date or sender). On the top left, click on "View" and select "By Conversation" or "By message" to switch between them. Some ordering options only work when sorting by message.

Ordering emails

To order emails, click on the header (e.g. "From", "Subject" or "Received"). You can't order on every column and some only work when sorted by message.

Changing the column headers for emails

The column headers (From, Folder, Subject, etc.) can be moved, resized and removed. To move, just drag-and-drop. To resize, put your mouse on the line between two columns (columns have a minimum size so you can't resize all of them). To remove/add columns, right=click on any column header and choose the columns you want to see.

Writing emails

Click on "New" to write a new email.

You can enter email addresses in different ways :

• Just type in email addresses, separated by semi-colons.

• Start typing and Zimbra searches the address lists and offers you options.

• Click on the "New" or "CC" button and a pop-up box allows you to pick names from address books. At first, no names appear; you need to enter a search query to show some names.

The "Options" button at the top allows you to switch between HTML and plain text formatting and also to add a BCC field.

(The Options tab on the left allows you to permanently choose your preference for HTML or plain text).

Email also allows you to add attachments and perform a spell check.

Tagging

Tags allow you to select emails in different folders and group them together.

At the top of the screen, select Tag -> New Tag and give your tag a name and colour.

Now right-click on an email and go to Tag Message. Select your tag to add it to that group. You'll see that a tags section has appeared on the left of the screen and clicking on your tag brings up all the tagged emails. You can also tag your contacts.

Out of Office Messages

Click on the options tab on the left of the screen, then the Mail tab at the top. Take a look at all the options and notice that you can set an out of office message.

Creating filters to manage mail

Filters allow you to more effectively manage email, for example by automatically filing mail in different folders. There are two ways to create a mail filter.

You can go into the options tab on the left of the screen, then click on "Mail Filters" at the top. Add a new filter. You need to tell the system which mail the filter will get and what it will do with it. Be careful with this, especially if you arer going to throw mail away. "Any condition" means that email matching any one of the conditions you set will be caught by the filter, "All conditions" means mail must match all the conditions you set.

Adding RSS feeds to your mailbox

1. Select New -> Folder

2. Click on "Subscribe to RSS/ATOM feed"

3. A URL panel appears. Paste in the URL of the RSS or ATOM feed. For example, for BBC news stories http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/front_page/rss.xml

4. Name your folder and click on OK.

You now have a mail folder with the feeds from that site (in this example, the recent BBC news stories).

Quickly show unread messages

You want a quick way to see unread messages, though they might be spread across different folders.  The solution is to set up a saved search and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

1. Click on "Advanced Search" , select "Status" and tick "Unread".  If you want to exclude some folders, click on "Folders" and tick the ones to be included (the default will include all folders except Trash and Junk).  You should see your current unread messages show up right away.

2. Near the top, click on the diskette icon (next to "Advanced Search" ), give your new search a name and save it.

3. Now go to "Options" (depending on your skin, this might be a paper icon on the left of the screen or an "Options" tab along the top).  Go to Shortcuts -> Saved Search Shortcuts.

4. Click on "Browse" and select your saved search.  In the entry panel to the right, enter the number 1.  Hit save.

Typing "s1" within the Zimbra web client will now bring up all your unread emails in one pane.  You can also find your search on the panel on the left hand side (you may need to scroll down a little) and click to run it.

Changing your initial mail view

By default, you log onto the Zimbra web client and see your inbox.  What you see when first logging on can be easily changed.

1. Go to "Options" (depending on your skin, this might be a paper icon on the left of the screen or an "Options" tab along the top)

2. Go to the Mail tab and look for the "Initial mail search" which is probably set to "in:inbox".

3. To show unread mail by default, change this to "is:unread" and click Save.

4. There are many other options for the initial view.  Choose another folder by replacing inbox with the folder name (if the name contains spaces, put quotes "" around it).  Putting in Tag:ToDo will show all emails tagged with the ToDo tag (assuming such a tag exists).

Want a different initial mail view?  Go to Options > General and tick Always show search string.  Then, when you run a search or move around, the command to go straight there appears in the search bar at the top.  Just copy the command and paste it into the Initial mail search field.

Drag-and-drop attachments onto emails

Users of the Firefox web browser and Zimbra web client can install a Firefox add-on that allows you to drag-and-drop attachments into emails.

For those of you using the Zimbra web client with the Firefox web browser, we've implemented a new feature allowing you to drag-and-drop files into new emails and your Zimbra briefcase to add them as attachments.  You can even drag-and-drop multiple files in one go.

This works on Windows, Mac and Linux PCs with Firefox 2.0 or higher.

To implement this you need to:
1. Go to http://gallery.zimbra.com/gallery.php?act=viewProd&productId=68
2. Click on the link to "Install XPI" on the right
3. You may need to give Firefox permission to install add-ons from this site, then go back and click on "Install XPI" again.
4. When installed, restart Firefox and log into Zimbra.
5. Now, when composing a new email, you should see "Drag and drop files from your desktop to attach to this message" appear just above the main compose window.  Drop files onto the text to have them added as attachments.

There's a video showing the add-on being installed and used on Mac OS X at
http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2007/12/one_of_the_coolest_things_ever.html

Note: this is a beta product which means it may not work perfectly.  The known issues are

• May not work if you compose emails in a new window.  Go to Preferences > Composing  and check that "Always compose in new window" is UNTICKED.
• No progress indicator, so for large files you just need to wait.
• Whilst it works fine with Windows and Mac computers, Linux users may find they can drag-and-drop from the desktop but not from a file browser.

Calendars

Click on the calendar tab on the left of the screen.

Adding a meeting

The easiest way to add a new meeting is to just double-click on the calendar at the time you want to hold the meeting. You can set the start time, end time and whether it's a repeating meeting. Click on "More details..." for lots more options. Here you can add other people to your meeting, check whether they're busy (if they're on Zimbra too) and add more information for the meeting, including attachments.

Sharing your calendar

On the left hand side, where your email folders are for the email pane, is a calendar line with the word "Calendar", an icon and a checkbox. Right-click on the line and select "Share Calendar". You can allow others to edit your calendar, using the correct email address and password, but if you click on "Public" you'll allow anyone with the right URL (see the bottom of the pane) to view your calendar. They can view it in ICS format - a standard calendar format that most client software will understand.

When you share your calendar with another Zimbra user, they'll receive an email.  At the top of the email is a button they can press to add your calendar to their web client.

Address books

Click on the Address Book tab on the left of the screen.

Global Address List

The Global Address List (GAL) includes everyone with a Zimbra account. It isn't a full address book (e.g. it doesn't have other information like phone numbers, though it is possible to add those).

Your own address books

You can add your own contacts to your Contacts or Emailed Contacts address books, just by clicking on "New". These contacts can be tagged to link them together, and to link them with tagged emails.

Auto-adding contacts

Click on the options tab on the left of the screen and go to "Address book". Tick "Enable auto-adding of contacts". Now, whenever you send an email, the recipient will be added to your Emailed Contacts address book.

Sharing address books

As with calendars, your address books can be shared. Right-click on the address book and decide with whom to share it. The pane gives a URL for people to access it. Unless you want to publically share it, you need to specify the email addresses (or distribution group addresses) to share it with.

Importing contacts to your address book

If you already have contacts, you can import them in csv format. Select the options tab on the left of the screen, then go to Address Book and follow the instructions to import (or export) your contacts.

Outlook and iMail connectors

For users of Outlook 2003 and iMail, Zimbra includes a connector programme which allows mail and calendars to synchronise correctly.  These can be downloaded from http://mail.gozimbra.com/zimbra/downloads/index.html

Warning: The connectors are specific to different versions of Zimbra.  When we upgrade our Zimbra server, anyone using a connector will have to upgrade to the new connector version too.  We remind all our users of this at upgrade time.

Synchronising mobile devices

Zimbra works with a wide range of mobile devices, allowing you to access your email, contacts and calendars on the move.  Any devices running Windows Mobile 5 and 6 are supported, along with many others too.
If you're unsure, contact us to check whether your specific mobile device works.

Setting up synchronisatiion with Windows Mobile 5

1. Start ActiveSync
2. Select menu -> Configure Server...
3. Server address is mail.gozimbra.com
4. "This server requires an encrypted (SSL) connection" should be UNTICKED
5. Select Next
6. On the next screen, "User name" is the part of your email address before the @, for example john, lisa or tom.jones
7. Password is your normal Zimbra password.
8. Domain is your mail domain, for example gozimbra.com or mycompany.co.uk
9. Save password should be TICKED.
10. Select Next
11. On "Choose the data you want to synchronize", Contacts, Calendar and E-Mail should be ticked.  TASKS MUST NOT BE TICKED.
12. Select Finish.
13. Select "Sync"

Directly access Zimbra information

Using a technology called REST, you can put an address directly into your web browser to access information.

Let's assume the Zimbra server is called fermat.axiomtech.co.uk and the account is axiomtech@the-hub.net

Start off with http://fermat.axiomtech.co.uk/zimbra/user/axiomtech@the-hub.net/inbox.zip

This will download a zip file containing all the emails in your inbox.

Here are some other examples: