Exchanging Outlook for Ximian? Here's how

Figure J
Evolution purposefully mirrors Outlook, which so many businesses already use.

I like the look and feel of Evolution on my Linux Mandrake installation (using the KDE 3.1 desktop). The interface is intuitive, and has many features that closely mimic Outlook. For example, the Summary folder item is analogous to the Outlook Today icon, and allows you to put in things like a localised weather forecast, as well as a quick look at your calendar and email inbox (see Figure K).

Of course, if you're connecting to Exchange and a Windows network, then there are going to be authentication issues involved. Since I'm not authenticating to the Windows Active Directory from this Linux machine, a "distributed" password wouldn't be possible because it would need to originate from a Windows system. If you normally authenticate on one domain and your Exchange server is on another domain, you're used to typing your password each time you open Outlook. The Evolution client has the option to save the password for the Exchange account for each Linux account. Figure L shows a view of the initial authentication.

The Out of the Office AutoReply in Outlook/Exchange is a frequently used feature in many organisations, and the Evolution client offers this feature as well (see Figure M). It functions similarly to Outlook, except that the Evolution client doesn't give you the option to apply rules to incoming messages while the AutoReply is turned on.

I have become quite familiar with the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Outlook (for example, [Ctrl]N starts a new mail message from the Inbox, and [Ctrl][Shift]M opens a new mail message from anywhere in Outlook). I was quite please to see these keystrokes are maintained in the Evolution client, as you can see when you open the File menu (see Figure N).

Figure K
Evolution's Summary folder item mimics the Outlook Today feature in Outlook.

Figure L
Here's an Evolution authentication screen.

Figure M
An Out of Office AutoReply feature also exists in Evolution.

Figure N
Opening the File menu shows the keyboard shortcuts available for the various functions.

Debugging option
As you evaluate this product and work out the kinks, you have a nice option for debugging. You can start the application by typing evolution or evolution-1.4 from a command prompt. In the background terminal, you can see any error events as they interact in your session.

Connectivity problems
I was a little disappointed with the occasional authentication problems I had. For example, I ran into trouble when I had a client authenticated via Outlook Web Access and Microsoft Outlook and then tried to access the same mailbox with the Evolution client.