1899649 - [ews] Adjust account setup screen for Exchange Web Services - support manual account setup

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1984436

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, task)

Description

[Sean Burke [:leftmostcat]]

A couple of the assumptions made in the account setup screen about how accounts are configured are invalidated with the introduction of EWS support.

Most important is that prior to EWS, all accounts included distinct configuration for incoming and outgoing mail. Details for both the incoming and outgoing server are present in the "available configurations" listing (see attached imap.png). Likewise, manual configuration allows for configuring both with separate account information (see attached manual.png). EWS uses the same configuration for both incoming and outgoing mail and it does not make sense to configure them separately.

In addition to the above, the actual configuration parameters differ. IMAP, POP3, and SMTP all access their servers primarily through a hostname and port, e.g. hostname mail.thunderbird.example and port 993 (again, see attached imap.png and manual.png). For EWS, the relevant parameter is a complete HTTP(S) URL, e.g. https://exchange.thunderbird.example/Exchange.asmx.

The current solutions to these, at present visible only when EWS support is enabled (requiring a build with Rust enabled and setting the experimental.mail.ews.enabled to true), is to present only one set of details in the "available configurations" listing (see attached ews.png) and to disable manual configuration of EWS accounts.

Needed actions

• Determine how configuration details for an automatically-configured Exchange account should be displayed in the "available configurations" listing and implement any necessary changes. Note that the general pattern for this may be relevant for future protocol implementations in which incoming and outgoing mail share configuration.
• Determine whether users should be able to manually configure an EWS account. If so, changes to the manual configuration section will be needed to allow for incoming and outgoing mail to share a configuration and to accommodate using an EWS URL instead of a hostname/port pair. If not, do we need any sort of messaging around this, since all other account types are manually configurable?
• Decide how to differentiate our internal Exchange/EWS support and support offered through an add-on. At present, the distinction is not clear (see attached double-exchange.png), but the end result should also make sense when internal EWS support is not enabled.

Comment 1

[Sean Burke [:leftmostcat]]

Attachment: imap.png

Comment 2

[Sean Burke [:leftmostcat]]

Attachment: ews.png

Comment 3

[Sean Burke [:leftmostcat]]

Attachment: manual.png

Comment 4

[Sean Burke [:leftmostcat]]

Attachment: double-exchange.png

Comment 6

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

For the record, we're gonna update all of this only for the new Account Hub and not touch the old account setup since we're planning to remove it around end of Q1 next year.

Comment 7

[Toby Pilling [:tobyp]]

The scope here is to include the replacement of the existing FTUE and non-Account Hub UX of account setup for EWS accounts.

Currently, if I try to set up an EWS account without the new Account Hub turned on (mail.accounthub.enabled=false) and select "Exchange" under "Available configurations", then click "Configure Manually", I am not able to choose EWS and the details in this screen do not apply to EWS.

Clicking "Advanced config" creates the account "as-is" and leads to the "Account Settings" screen which also needs changes. We will treat the "Account Settings" changes and advanced configuration housed there in a separate issue.

As @aleca mentioned, we are prioritizing changes to the new Account Hub and will likely not make changes to the old UX. Manual config for the new UX is in bug 1984436