ScalableOGo Clients

The project focuses on providing access using three selected clients: Mozilla Thunderbird (in combination with Sunbird or Lightning), a modern web client and Microsoft Outlook. SOGo has strong support for standard groupware protocols, which allows you to use other clients like KDE Kontact or Novell Evolution as well. To synchronize SOGo with mobile devices, a Funambol GroupDAV connector is in development.

AJAX Web Interface

As per the initial development contract, the SOGo webmail client was developed to look like the Mozilla Thunderbird client. The SOGo calendar initially used the user interface of the regular OpenGroupware.org server. This version of the interface is still available in the skyrix and agenor branches of SOGo. It uses a mild level of AJAX (e.g. to toggle mail status fields or to add recipients without reloading the HTML page).

In 2006 Inverse started to rework the web interface. The inverse branch contains an interface which makes heavy use of AJAX. Further, the scheduler was reworked to match the design of the Sunbird application. You can take a look at the interface on the screenshots page.

The SOGo web interface can be localized in an easy way. The layout of the application is template based and can be adapted to site specific requirements.

Mozilla Thunderbird, Sunbird and Lightning

The primary native client which ScalableOGo is being developed for is the Mozilla Thunderbird application. Thunderbird is a mature and widely popular email client which can be enhanced to a full groupware client using the Mozilla Lightning extension.

Thunderbird is the IMAP4/POP3 email client of the Mozilla project. Using the Thunderbird SOGo Connector you can hook up the Thunderbird address book to ScalableOGo address books and enhance the capabilities of the Lightning calendar extension. It uses the GroupDAV protocol to synchronize the data with SOGo.

Microsoft Outlook

ZideOne developed a MAPI Message Store Provider which works against CalDAV and GroupDAV servers. Unlike solutions which sync against an Outlook PST file, a MAPI Message Store Provider directly feeds the data in and out of Outlook. It uses the same API Microsoft uses to connect Outlook to Exchange.

The current SOGo project also offers a native Outlook integration via OpenChange / SOGo's Microsoft ActiveSync implementation, allowing modern versions of Outlook to talk to SOGo without an extra plugin.

Funambol

Funambol is a Java SyncML server which can be used to synchronize external data sources with a set of mobile devices. To connect ScalableOGo using Funambol you can use the Funambol SOGo Connector, which is fast and directly attaches to the SOGo database. Another option is the Funambol GroupDAV Connector, which can be used with other servers too.

ActiveSync

The other option to synchronize mobile devices is to use SOGo's built-in Microsoft ActiveSync support, which works with most smartphones and tablets out of the box.

Other Clients

SOGo was developed with standard technologies, namely GroupDAV, CalDAV, IMAP4 and LDAP. Hence you can use the respective connectors of GNOME Evolution and KDE Kontact to connect to SOGo. Apple iCal, Apple Contacts and any other standards compliant CalDAV/CardDAV client also work out of the box.