The latest beta version of Kerio Connect 7.2 is now available for public testing. Beta 5 will run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and has progressed significantly with the long-awaited Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac support.

Before we begin...

One thing is very clear to me - we have seriously underestimated the engineering effort needed to make Outlook 2011 work with Kerio Connect. You gave us a lot of grief for that, and rightly so. On behalf of Kerio, I am very sorry for the frustration we have caused to you, our loyal customers and our dedicated partners.

And now about the latest Beta 5--Well, we are not done yet. There remain a few kinks to be worked out but we are in a much better position to have a fully functional, quality product for you soon.

Here's an overview of what works and what doesn't in Beta 5:

Folders - Everything works. We have not had any reports of problems. If you find any, please report them back to us via the standard beta testing channels.

Mail - Everything works except a read flag. Two-way synchronization, sending messages, initial creation and updates of drafts, setting up flags were all tested and seem to perform well. We know about a bug with a read flag which does not work reliably yet and a fix is planned for the final release.

Calendars - This works only partially: the engineering work has not been completed. Events synchronized from Kerio Connect to Microsoft Outlook 2011 are not always displayed correctly. Exceptions from recurring events do not work yet and in some cases events are grayed out and may not be editable. Non-recurring events synchronized in the other direction (from Outlook to Kerio Connect) work well. Meetings do not work fully yet - you will be able to invite attendees, which are looked up in Local Contacts and on the server, and you will be able to see their free/busy availability. You won't be able to send a meeting request and in most cases the meeting is not going to be stored in your calendar reliably.

Contacts - Everything works except contact picture synchronization. We are working on it.

Tasks - This works only partially, with some similarities to the calendar events. Synchronization from the server works (except recurrent tasks and tasks with attachments), as well as the initial creation and updates of tasks (again, non-recurrent tasks only). We know about a bug in dates - a task may have an incorrect start/end/due date - it is sometimes moved by a day. That's because the time zone information in the EWS request is sent inconsistently.

Sticky notes - Everything works. Be aware, however, that you will experience a feature scope inconsistency between Microsoft Outlook and Kerio WebMail. A sticky note in Outlook has a title and subject/body, Kerio WebMail sticky notes do not have titles, therefore you will see the sticky notes subject/body but the title information will not be there.

Public folders - Everything works.

Access rights to folders - Everything works.

Shared folders - Shared folders will not be supported in the 7.2 release.

Out of office - Out of office will not be supported in the 7.2 release.

Categories - Everything works. Note, however, that color assignments are not supported in the current implementation of the EWS protocol in Outlook. The color of each category is therefore stored only locally in Outlook and in Kerio Connect, but is not synced.

There are a few important considerations:

• You may experience high server load shortly after the initial deployment of Beta 5. This is because Outlook will assign categories to all messages based on the contact category. Since Outlook is sending these requests one at a time, rather than in batches, the server will be heavily taxed during such period. For the testing, we strongly recommend you turn off "Assign categories to messages from categorized contacts" in Outlook/Preferences/Categories. We are investigating this problem and looking for a workaround.
• If you intend to install Kerio Connect 7.2 on Mac OS X, please be aware that Microsoft Outlook 2011 will only work with Kerio Connect 7.2 on Intel hardware. Kerio Connect 7.2 on PowerPC-based Mac will not support Microsoft Outlook 2011 in this beta or in the final release.

You can find Beta 5 at http://www.kerio.com/betas/connect along with the instructions on how to provide feedback - see chapter Got bugs?. Although the product has come a long way, we do not recommend this beta for production environments.

That's all for today and please do let us know how you feel about this beta.