274111 - Thunderbird needs better LDAP support

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: LDAP Integration, enhancement)

Description

[Celso Pinto]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041207 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-5)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041207 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-5)

At it's current state, Thunderbird's LDAP support is really bad.
Here are some thoughts to improve this, in random order:
1) allow creation of LDAP vcards
2) pack a clearly defined LDAP schema with thunderbird, or at least put it
somewhere in the site so that it can be downloaded
3) at least allow the user to choose if he wants to download N vcards when the
Address Book is loaded. Currently the user is presented with an empty window and
at a first glance this looks like a bug. Not everyone needs to know that putting
a '*' wildcard in the search box will download the vcards
4) allow the user to edit an LDAP vcard. This is really important!

Hope you find a way to improve LDAP support in future releases.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Doug Wright]

-> Core:MailNews:LDAP Integration

Comment 2

[pkoelle]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041207 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-5)
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041207 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-5)
> 
> At it's current state, Thunderbird's LDAP support is really bad.
> Here are some thoughts to improve this, in random order:
> 1) allow creation of LDAP vcards
> 2) pack a clearly defined LDAP schema with thunderbird, or at least put it
> somewhere in the site so that it can be downloaded
> 3) at least allow the user to choose if he wants to download N vcards when the
> Address Book is loaded. Currently the user is presented with an empty window and
> at a first glance this looks like a bug. Not everyone needs to know that putting
> a '*' wildcard in the search box will download the vcards
> 4) allow the user to edit an LDAP vcard. This is really important!
> 
> Hope you find a way to improve LDAP support in future releases.
> 
> Reproducible: Always
> Steps to Reproduce:

(In reply to comment #1)
> -> Core:MailNews:LDAP Integration

(In reply to comment #1)
> -> Core:MailNews:LDAP Integration

I fully agree on improving LDAP support in thunderbird, however I'd suggest
rethinking point 2. Reasons:

0. Not another schema.
1. There are already too much schemas out there
2. Most sites may have custom attributes deployed the client have to deal with.
3. Having to sync multiple attributes for different clients serving the same
purpose is really a bad thing (you have to intercept write calls).

I think the best thing would be not having any harcoded attributes. One could
take a completely data-driven approach consisting of two parts:
1. Normal settings per server: hostname, port, basedn, authmethod (plain|SASL),
username|ID, password, rfc2254 search filter, scope.

2. A mapping from server side attributes to client side attributes where the
user can select the attributes he want to fetch from the server (the list could
be build by querying a v3 server) and in what fields the values should be filled
in (client side). Its easy to provide templates for well known configurations
(Novell|Domino|AD) through a dropdown field without loosing flexibility.

thanks
 Paul

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.