Controlling Your Horde:
Webmail and Groupware at UCLA-Mathnet

jimc, 2007-06-21

UCLA-Mathnet has upgraded our webmail and groupware service, using the Horde software suite. Here is how to get the most out of The Horde.

You may use The Horde from any computer in the world. (Please do not give your Mathnet password on a machine likely to be infested with viruses, spyware, keystroke loggers, or similar malware, such as a rented machine at a hotel or internet café, or your home machine unless it is regularly updated and scanned.) You do need to accept cookies from our server, so your authentication can be effective from one page to the next. To begin using The Horde:

Navigate to https://webmail.math.ucla.edu/horde (there is also a convenient link on the webmail.math.ucla.edu machine page). A secure connection (https) is required, to protect your password and possibly confidential mail from eavesdroppers. Beta testers use this link.
Choose your mail server (home site) from the drop-down list.
Fill in your loginID (user name) and password, and press Enter (or click on the Log In button).
Here is a screenshot of the login form properly filled in.
If you mistype your password it has an annoying feature: a 30 second timeout while it tries to log you in (unsuccessfully) to other mail servers.

The Horde's portal will appear, with components listed with icons at the top, and also in the sidebar (click on Organizing to see all). Click on the icon to start a component. Horde security does not like you to use the browser's Back button; to get to a previously shown page use the appropriate forward link, not the Back button.

The installed components, creatively named, include:

IMP Webmail
MIMP Webmail for mobile devices
Kronolith Calendar
Turba Address Book (contact list)
Nag Task List (to-do list)
Mnemo Notes

IMP Webmail

When IMP starts, you will first see a page of message subjects starting with the first unread one. Here's a screenshot of it.

To read a message, click on the subject or sender links.
To dispose of multiple messages, click the checkboxes in the left column, then click on one of the disposition actions. These are described below with the message view. Dispose before leaving the page (e.g. before viewing a message) because checkmarks are not remembered later. You may wish to view messages in a separate tab or window.
To see a different page of subjects, click on one of the arrows above the subject list, or type in a page number. The arrows mean First, Previous, (type number here), Next, Last Page.
To see a different folder, use the Open Folder dropdown list in the upper right corner of the page.

By default, deleted messages stay around until you purge them by clicking Purge Deleted among the disposition actions, so if you make a mistake you can undelete a message (using the Mark As disposition action). Be sure to purge (expunge) deleted messages before you log out.

Here's a screenshot of a message. When viewing a message, you may click on web links; the referent will open in a separate tab or window of your browser. (Beware of fraud, advertising or virus websites.) If there are attachments, they are listed under Part(s); click on one of the titles to see it in a separate tab or window, or on the download icon to save it on the machine where your browser is running. (Beware of attachments that are viruses, particularly if executing on other than Linux.)

When finished with the message, you have several choices. The disposition actions are listed above and below the message or subject list.

Jump to the previous or next message: arrows at the upper right.
Back to (name of folder) to see the list of messages again.
Delete: the message is marked for garbage collection. Remember to purge it before you log out; that's on the message list screen.
Reply, Forward, Redirect: Opens the Compose (new message) window preloaded with the current message, from which you can send it to someone else. (It is not deleted.)
Print: A copy of the message appears on your browser in a separate pop-up window which is printed automatically. The browser's print dialog may pop up. Remember to close the pop-up once the message has been sent to the printer.
Move, Copy: First pick a different folder from the adjacent drop-down list, then click on Move or Copy. The message appears in the other folder and is or isn't marked for deletion in the current one.

Here's a screenshot of the Compose window, which will be in a separate tab or window of the browser. Just fill in the recipient(s) and the subject, type in your text, click on Attachments if you need to attach files, and finally click on Send Message in the top row. Attachments are obtained by your web browser on the machine where it executes. If you are at home or at another institution, and if the desired file is at Mathnet, you will have to download it to the local machine using SSH or FTP, so your browser can find it.

MIMP Mobile Webmail

This version produces forms that are perhaps easier for a mobile phone or PDA to display, but otherwise it is generally similar to IMP Webmail. It has the unfortunate feature that you need to log in twice. We're working on making it use only its own phone-friendly login screen.

In replies the complete message is quoted and your text goes above it, both of which are impolite e-mail practice. Only limited relevant parts of the message should be repeated and your comments should go below each such section, so the reader will have seen what's being replied to, before seeing the reply. We haven't yet figured out how to teach netiquette to MIMP.

Kronolith Calendar

The purpose of this kind of calendar is to keep track of and to publish events that occur at a specific time, such as meetings, or classes that you teach, or people's birthdays, or vacation periods.

The Kronolith Calendar service opens with a full month display. Zoom in or out by clicking on the interval tabs at the top: Day through Year. You can change the initial view interval: select Options, User Interface, Select View to Display on Startup. After setting options, click on the Today icon to return to the starting view.

Initially you can create events involving yourself, but if you want to make meetings, you need an address book entry for each co-worker that includes at least his e-mail address and his free-busy URL. (See the section on the Turba address book.) To find out the correct format of the URL, click on My Calendars, and your own free-busy URL will be shown at the bottom of the form. Copy and paste this into the co-worker's address book entry, changing the last field to his loginID, not yours. Or if the person uses a foreign calendar server, ask him what the correct URL is (and whether the calendar server will even answer queries from outside; ours will.)

To create a new event, click on the + (plus) icon next to the date or hour. Or to edit an existing event click on its pencil icon. In the event editing form a few items are not self-explanatory:

End or Duration: Choose one or the other with the radio buttons, and fill in the ending time of the event, or how long it will last (but not both).
Alarm: If selected, Kronolith will send e-mail to the attendees a specified time before the event starts. The program checks for sending reminders every five minutes (so it's ineffective to set the alarm less than six minutes before the event). To use this feature you must first specify your own e-mail address in Options - Personal Data.
Attendees: This list will appear in a separate window or tab. In the Add Attendees box you can give a comma separated list of e-mail addresses. On the event editing form if you check the box for notifying attendees, Kronolith will send mail to them notifying them that they have been invited.

If you have a PDA, you will want to synchronize it with Kronolith. Click on Import/Export (top row of icons), and in the form that appears, select the export format that your PDA understands (typically iCalendar, or possibly CSV (Comma Separated Values)). Click on Export and your calendar will be sent to your browser, from which you can save it (or open it with your separate PDA sync software). Now you can send the file to the PDA.

Conversely, if you made appointments on your PDA and want to transfer them to Kronolith, retrieve an iCalendar, vCalendar or CSV file from the PDA. Then on the Import section of the Import/Export form, fill in its filename and click Next. WARNING: It looks like there's a problem here; the entire calendar is replaced with just the last event in the file, even if you didn't mark Replace Calendar.

Note on timezones: By default, Kronolith talks to users in the timezone where the server lives, but keeps records in UTC. Thus the time of an event (and of reminder notifications) is unaffected by timezone changes, but the text description shows times in your current timezone. You can change your timezone like this: Click on Options in the main icon bar, and select Global Options from the drop-down list. Click on Locale and Time, and adjust Your Current Time Zone, a loooong drop-down list. If creating an event that will happen in another timezone you should change to that timezone first (lest you make errors converting the times in your head), then change back; and when you arrive in the foreign city and want to view your events, also change to its proper timezone.

Turba Address Book

The Turba Address Book service keeps a list of people you know and delivers them as needed. Here are typical activities with Turba.

The main use of Turba is with IMP Webmail and Kronolith Calendar; e-mail addresses can be extracted directly into messages and event forms. In a text entry box that expects an e-mail address, type a string appearing in the full name (not case sensitive) , such as the first or last name, or in the sought e-mail address, and if found and unique it will be replaced with the full name and e-mail address. Example: jim c would be replaced by
```
"Jim Carter" <jimc@math.ucla.edu>
```
On IMP Webmail's Compose form there is a button labelled Address Book, which will pop up a separate tab or window where you can search for contacts and transfer their e-mail addresses to the various recipient fields of the message. Select a row in the left panel and press the To, CC or Bcc button; repeat as needed. Click on OK when finished.
On Kronolith Calendar's Edit Attendees form there is a similar address book button which pops up a separate tab or window where you can add people to attend your meeting. Click on Add Attendees when finished. This form appends, not replaces.
When you are seeing a message, click on the book icon next to a sender's or recipient's e-mail address, and it will be added to your address book. Later you will want to edit the entry to expand it with, e.g., a phone number and office address. To use this feature you need to turn it on: Options - Address Books - Choose the Address Book..., select your normal address book, which is called My Address Book unless you renamed it.
If, in the main icon row, you click on the Address Book icon, you are presented with a form to search for contact(s) by their name or e-mail address. The Advanced Search form allows more complex searches. On the results page, by clicking on the fields of any row you can do these activities:
- Select the record for mass actions.
- Edit the record (using the New Contact form preloaded with the existing data, such as it is).
- Download to your browser a vCard for the contact. If you have PIM software locally, the browser should pass the vCard there for storage. For mass action, select records and click Export on the top or bottom row.
- View the contact information by clicking on the person's name.
- Compose a message to the person by clicking on his e-mail address.
- Delete records by selecting them and then clicking Delete in the top or bottom row.
New Contact: if you don't yet have any contact records, this will be the first form you use. The fields are pretty self-explanatory, except for the PGP key (presumably a S/MIME certificate in PEM format would be imported similarly). To use this feature, ask your correspondent to do this and mail the result to you, or do it yourself if he's in your keyring already:
gpg --armor --export loginID_of_user > /tmp/users_public_key.pgp
cat /tmp/users_public_key.pgp
Now paste the whole thing, starting with -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- down to and including END..., into the text box. Don't worry about strange line breaks; it arrives undamaged. There should be a <FILE> element to send the key file direct to Turba.
Browse: shows a list of all contacts.
Import/Export: Under Export pick the file format (suggested: vCard), click on Export, and your whole address book will be delivered to your browser for local saving. From there you can sync it with your PDA. Or if you have a new contact on the PDA, save its vCard (or other format) as a file on the browser's execution machine, and on the Import section of the form, upload that file to Turba. Contacts that are new to Turba will be saved; contacts already present will be skipped (with a message); so if you want to replace a contact record with the one from the PDA, delete it first on Turba. WARNING: Only if all fields are identical will duplicate records be skipped, so you could end up with similar records having minor differences, that you really would have wanted to be merged.

Nag Task List

The Nag Task List opens showing all your tasks, sorted by priority. Click on the name of a task to see details, and on that form in the upper right, there are buttons for editing or deleting the record.

In the main icon row there are icons for these activities:

List Tasks: lists all of them. In any of the search results forms you can sort on any of the fields by clicking its header (Name, Priority, etc.); to reverse the sort order, click the same header again.
Search: You can search for tasks in whose name or description a target string (word, etc.) appears.
New Task: Here you can edit a blank task form. You can ask that a reminder message be sent before the due date (if your e-mail address is known: Options; select Global Options from the drop-down list; then click on Personal Information; fill in Your From Address and click Save.)
Import/Export: You can export all your tasks in a file to be saved by your web browser; select the format (suggestion: iCalendar/vTodo) and click on Export. I haven't figured out how to export just one task, or to attach a vTodo file to mail. You can similarly import a file that is on your browser machine. But beware: all contained tasks are imported even if duplicates are already on file.

Mnemo Notes

The Mnemo Notepad opens showing all your notes (if any). Click on the displayed initial line of a note to see the whole thing. You can click on web links in the note; the target will open in a separate tab or window. On this form in the upper right there are buttons for editing or deleting the note.