Announcement: Owl: Exchange support for Thunderbird

[Ben Bucksch]

If you would like to read your email on a Microsoft Exchange server account using Thunderbird, there are a currently 2 main possibilities:

• If the Exchange server has IMAP enabled, you can connect via IMAP, after manually setting up the account
• ExQuilla, a Thunderbird addon, uses the EWS propietary protocol of Exchange.

However, for a large number of corporate Exchange servers of large companies, these 2 protocols are not enabled towards the Internet. Oftentimes, only Outlook Web Access (OWA), the webmail frontend of Exchange, is enabled. This rules out both options above and leaves you without access in Thunderbird.

There are some other protocols that Exchange supports, e.g. the native Microsoft Outlook application protocol, or ActiveSync, but none of these have an implementation in Thunderbird.

So, with my company, we have been developing a Thunderbird addon that uses the OWA protocol to connect to Exchange servers. This should allow to read and write email in Thunderbird with your Exchange account that has OWA enabled. The name of the new extension is Owl.

We are currently in the early alpha stages, where we test internally and fix bugs. We should be going into beta soon. We are currently fixing bugs and other roadblocks in Thunderbid to make this happen and working with Thunderbird developers to integrate these patches.

Ben Bucksch
Beonex

[Disaster Master]

On 10/11/2018, 11:30:38 AM, Ben Bucksch <ben.b...@beonex.com> wrote:
> So, with my company, we have been developing a Thunderbird addon that
> uses the OWA protocol to connect to Exchange servers. This should allow
> to read and write email in Thunderbird with your Exchange account that
> has OWA enabled. The name of the new extension is Owl.
>
> We are currently in the early alpha stages, where we test internally and
> fix bugs. We should be going into beta soon. We are currently fixing
> bugs and other roadblocks in Thunderbid to make this happen and working
> with Thunderbird developers to integrate these patches.

Interesting, thanks Ben...

Any blog or write-ups for the plans for this, with regard to what will
be supported?

I.e., are there plans for supporting Calendars & Contacts as well?
Shared calendars/contacts/mailboxes?
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[Sean M. Pappalardo]

> Any blog or write-ups for the plans for this, with regard to what will
> be supported?

Like, can Thunderbird + Owl work as a complete Outlook replacement? :D

Sincerely,
Sean M. Pappalardo
Sr. Networks Engineer
Renegade Technologies

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 11/10/2018 17:30, Ben Bucksch wrote:

So, with my company, we have been developing a Thunderbird addon that uses the OWA protocol to connect to Exchange servers. This should allow to read and write email in Thunderbird with your Exchange account that has OWA enabled. The name of the new extension is Owl.

That's great! Judging by the bugs you filed, that's based on JS Account. Maybe your team would be interested in addressing some of the JS Account bugs, mostly failing/disabled tests to make sure JS Account continues working.

Jörg.

[Mark Rousell]

Ben,

On 11/10/2018 16:30, Ben Bucksch wrote:

So, with my company, we have been developing a Thunderbird addon that uses the OWA protocol to connect to Exchange servers. This should allow to read and write email in Thunderbird with your Exchange account that has OWA enabled. The name of the new extension is Owl.

We are currently in the early alpha stages, where we test internally and fix bugs. We should be going into beta soon. We are currently fixing bugs and other roadblocks in Thunderbid to make this happen and working with Thunderbird developers to integrate these patches.

This is a very interesting idea. Using OWA's internal protocol is not something that I think I would have thought of.

Third party access to Exchange Server seems to be an ever-moving target. According to one note about Exchange 2016 when it was first launched[1], EWS itself is effectively deprecated, to eventually be replaced by similar REST protocols to the ones used by Office 365 for third party access.

So using something other than EWS makes sense (especially, as you say, as it's not necessarily available on all corporate installations). On the other hand, Microsoft could change the OWA protocol at any time, couldn't they?

Of course, EAS (ActiveSync) would be the best, longer-term supported third party access protocol but that requires a patent licence. May I ask, did you look into doing that?



Footnote:
1: Sorry, I can't find a link to it now. It was probably on the Exchange blog back when E2016 was launched. It promoted the still-to-be-released (at the time) REST protocols for on-premises Exchange 2016 (and later) as a future direction for third party access instead of EWS.

-- 
Mark Rousell
 
 
 

[Mihovil Stanić]

11.10.2018 u 20:37, Mark Rousell je napisao/la:

Of course, EAS (ActiveSync) would be the best, longer-term supported third party access protocol but that requires a patent licence. May I ask, did you look into doing that?

EAS is standard which hardly changes and is used by most clients. I think even Outlook uses or used EAS at one point.
Concerning licence, I don't think you need licence if program is open source and you are not selling it, so Thunderbird fits right in.

For example SoGo is based in USA or Canada if I remember correctly, and it's using EAS in their open source groupware program. GroupOffice is also using EAS implementation, and they are based in Europe.

Best regards,
Mihovil

[Mark Rousell]

On 11/10/2018 20:25, Mihovil Stanić wrote:

11.10.2018 u 20:37, Mark Rousell je napisao/la:

Of course, EAS (ActiveSync) would be the best, longer-term supported third party access protocol but that requires a patent licence. May I ask, did you look into doing that?

EAS is standard which hardly changes and is used by most clients. I think even Outlook uses or used EAS at one point.

To the best of my knowledge, Outlook only supports EAS for access to services other than Exchange (but I stand to be corrected).

I believe that Outlook on Mac uses EWS to access Exchange whereas Outlook on Windows has always used some form of MAPI for Exchange access.

Concerning licence, I don't think you need licence if program is open source and you are not selling it, so Thunderbird fits right in.

For example SoGo is based in USA or Canada if I remember correctly, and it's using EAS in their open source groupware program. GroupOffice is also using EAS implementation, and they are based in Europe.

This is very interesting. I wasn't aware that they were willing to license EAS for free. This could be very useful for the right project.

For anyone who's interested, I note that the Microsoft IP licensing pages are here[1] and here[2].





Footnotes:-
1: Licensing Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/mtl/eas-licensing.aspx>
2: IP Licensing <https://celaiplicensing.azurewebsites.net/pages/IPlicensing.aspx>. As a matter of interest, I see that this page not only covers EAS but also covers exFAT, RDP, SMB, Android patents, and "Microsoft Rural Airband Initiative" technology and patents (whatever that is).

-- 
Mark Rousell
 
 
 

[Jim]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 1:26 PM Mark Rousell <mark.r...@signal100.com> wrote:

This is very interesting. I wasn't aware that they were willing to license EAS for free. This could be very useful for the right project.

Not only that, there's a Mozilla-implemented JS ActiveSync client already available: <https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/jsas>. (You may also want <https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia-email-libs-and-more> for some stuff; I don't remember where we divided things up exactly...)

I have no idea whatsoever how licensing is handled though. Not my area. :)

- Jim

[Mark Rousell]

Wow, thanks for these links (and for the code if you were one of the authors!).

It's easy to forget it now but an awful lot of work must have gone into building FirefoxOS/B2G. I think it's a great shame that it didn't take off.

The latter link above has some useful information on licensing.

( Also: Reading some of the docs linked from Github, I see that there is is also an Android EAS stack written in Java. Git link on this page: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gaia/Email/ActiveSync )

-- 
Mark Rousell
 
 
 

[Sebastian]

On 10/11/18 7:27 PM, Disaster Master wrote:
> I.e., are there plans for supporting Calendars & Contacts as well?
> Shared calendars/contacts/mailboxes?

There's TBSync for for contacts, tasks and calenders with support for
EAS (Exchange Active Sync): https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync

And there's exchangecalendar for contacts, tasks and calenders too with
support for EWS (Exchange Web Service):
https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/tree/v5.0.0-alpha1
(The alpha supports TB >= 60)

Sebastian

--
python programming - mail server - photo - video - https://sebix.at
cryptographic key at https://sebix.at/DC9B463B.asc and on public keyservers

[Mihovil Stanić]

Wow, didn't know there was someone active in EAS implementation in TB. That's something worth supporting as seperate semi official or offical Thunderbird addon or even integrating into TB.
It just misses e-mail sync. for those without IMAP / POP access.

Mihovil

13.10.2018 u 09:11, Sebastian je napisao/la:

On 10/11/18 7:27 PM, Disaster Master wrote:

I.e., are there plans for supporting Calendars & Contacts as well?
Shared calendars/contacts/mailboxes?

There's TBSync for for contacts, tasks and calenders with support for
EAS (Exchange Active Sync): https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync

And there's exchangecalendar for contacts, tasks and calenders too with
support for EWS (Exchange Web Service):
https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/tree/v5.0.0-alpha1
(The alpha supports TB >= 60)

Sebastian

[Mihovil Stanić]

Ping so John Bieling can reply.

Mihovil

13.10.2018 u 09:11, Sebastian je napisao/la:

On 10/11/18 7:27 PM, Disaster Master wrote:

I.e., are there plans for supporting Calendars & Contacts as well?
Shared calendars/contacts/mailboxes?

There's TBSync for for contacts, tasks and calenders with support for
EAS (Exchange Active Sync): https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync

And there's exchangecalendar for contacts, tasks and calenders too with
support for EWS (Exchange Web Service):
https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/tree/v5.0.0-alpha1
(The alpha supports TB >= 60)

Sebastian

[John Bieling]

If JS Account is going to survive TB65+, Email Sync can be added to Tbsync/EAS. The actual sync is not so problematic, but the UI. With JS Account this could be solved.

I am always open for PR and will help providing sync code, but this is currently not on my agenda to be impl. by myself alone, because so many other things are planned.

My long term goal is indeed to turn TbSync into "the" central sync manager for Thunderbird. As a first step I created an API so other AddOns can hook into TbSync, which is currently used by dav-4-tbsync (https://addons.thunderbird.net/de/thunderbird/addon/dav-4-tbsync/) and after that is settled I will go for ews-4-tbsync. I do not know, if I can get the google addon owner to join as well...

John

Am 21.10.18 um 21:46 schrieb Mihovil Stanić

[Ben Bucksch]

Hello all,

we've been working hard on this, and we're ready for a first public beta test.

You can download the XPI from my website and install it in the TB addon manager. You need at least TB 60.3 or Thunderbird 64 beta, earlier versions will not work.

Go to the Addon settings to add an Exchange account.

If you encounter bugs, please email me privately, with a detailed reproduction, symptoms, and your Exchange domain.

Looking forward to hear from you!

Ben

Ben Bucksch schrieb am 11.10.18 um 17:30: