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Revert back to Smartermail 15
Idea shared by Jason Earle - 6/14/2017 at 8:56 AM
Proposed
I like some of the features in Smartermail 16 but it fails to compare to version 15. We had version 16 for three weeks and I just reverted back to Smartermail 15 today, and man am I and all 200 of our users are excited that it rolled back without an issue. The speed improved ten fold and all the features that were missing like resizing and preview pane are all back and operational. Smartermail 15 is far superior to 16 and I think you really made a bad move in changing.
 
I strongly vote for reverting back to 15 and ditching the 16. Move forward with 15, you had a great thing going.
 
As for anyone else interested in rolling back it went without a hitch. All I did was stop SM service and stop IIS site. Then uninstalled Smartermail 16 and reinstalled Smartermail 15. Start the Smartermail service and then IIS, within seconds we were right back to where we left off and very happy. Did not have to revert any config files or anything else. Was a simple uninstall and install.

Jason Earle

IT Systems Administrator
JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca

28 Replies

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I've thought about rolling back also, but I don't think that is a viable long term option as SmarterTools has made a commitment to SmarterMail 16. In my opinion there has to be a real commitment to either fixing the product or abandoning it. Continuous hot potato resolutions will not produce an enterprise level product for consideration in the mail server arena.
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It's good to know that there's a rollback path after running v16 for a few weeks - but we're not quite there yet.
 
As long as SmarterTools remains committed to weekly updates until all the issues have been addressed, which it appears that they are, then I'd rather be a part of the solution since we've made investments in time for v16.  This is one of those 25 steps forward, 19 steps back situations - I do believe that in the aggregate things are working better and will continue to work better with the support of the community.
 
We haven't yet solicited feedback from our own users but we'll be doing that soon.  The unsolicited feedback we've gotten so far has been mixed with either very positive or very negative feedback.
 
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Just curious.,.. what do your users really love or really hate about SM16; or is it the same items - with some hating/others loving?
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Absolutely confirmed. V.15 runs fast and stable as a rock. I've tested the rollback from V.16 > V.15 in the same way, works.
I'm running V.16 since the second Beta Version on a test server (2012 Standard Eval.) until the latest productive Version (16.0.6369).
Never had a piece of server software running for months, that was so buggy at all.
@dear all at SmarterTools, do yourself a favour and continue with V.15.
I fear, you will loose at lot of customers with V.16
For my opinion V.16 is definitely not useable in a production environment, it's still in Beta phase.
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I did notice some configuration seems to be missing such as smtp bypass and archive message rules, but very minimal and effect on functionality really. If you are able to get a copy of your old mailConfig.xml you will absolutely no difference than before you updated to 16
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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No we didn't have anyone who liked the new 16. Server ran extremely slow compared to 15 was the biggest issue. Second was not being able to adjust or hide preview pane. Others had issues of sent button or attachments disappearing from the view area and not being able to get back. The list went on and on. We did not have a god experience with 16 and as far as I'm concerned this should still be in BETA not in production environment, especially since we are paying for an enterprise software.
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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During the beta, I brought up some issues with the preview pane, but it was declined.

You can still view and vote for the idea here (maybe ST will reconsider).
https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a88803/sm16-window-panes-feedback-on-new-ui.aspx

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Derek Curtis Replied
Employee Post
The ability to change the preview pane, or remove it completely, is part of the roadmap for the .1 release.
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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@Derek - any chance that roadmap can be made public-ish? Of course, all the usual caveats that roadmaps are subject to change, etc. But it might be helpful to the community in the current fast-paced environment to know at least some of the plans for the future.
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Agreed, this was not ready for the production environment and should of remained in BETA until the bugs were worked out. Either way my users have been super excited since switching back and have not had one complaint since.
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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We agree too with this assessment. Its hard to believe someone at smartertools thought this was a good move. I am looking into reverting as well.
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Scott and others, believe when i say you will be so glad you came back to 15. Best move we made. So happy once again. 16 is brutal.
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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We, too, decided to roll back to SM 15 today. The number of bugs we have with SM 16 is just too numerous to overlook, especially with the web interface. Very disappointing.
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so is this after the 16.1 update?
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Is anyone actually having success with any version of 16. I keep coming back to check but it is still constant bugs and complaints showing on the forms. Just curious as to if anyone here is actually having success in running 16 in a production environment?
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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See this thread: https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a89267/my-users-have-revolted.aspx
 
Apparently V16 is generally OK with Outlook, but there are numerous issues with the Web interface.
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Most of the bugs I have reported have been resolved in the hotfixes they have been pushing out.
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Yes, this is with the latest update. Here are the major bugs that we cannot live with:

1. Web interface rarely refreshes. We get browser notifications, but have to manually refresh the inbox to see the messages.

2. Selecting messages in the web interface is VERY FLAKY and it often selects the wrong messages. We've had several users delete huge chunks of their email accidentally.

3. Slow. The web interface often just sits and spins.
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@ Jason - The webmail is very, very different so if you have a lot of webmail users then use caution. However, the core mail engine seems to be significantly improved over previous versions so connecting to mailboxes via anything but the webmail seems to work better in almost every scenario. The admin interface is also very different - in some areas better, but in other areas worse. Most of the admin area issues are having to do with the responsive design making it "work" in every screen size but not "work well" in any of them. Again, depending on how much time you spend looking at the spool / logs, that might not matter.

We've been live since about a month after the initial launch and have updated with weekly builds since. Overall, we believe it to be an improvement, but it's one of those 25 steps forward, 22 steps back things.
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Makes one curious as to why the underlying "engines" in V15 and V16 aren't pretty much the same, and separate from the GUI, so that they can be made as stable as can be, independent of the web interface. And then, of course, we would be able to select which UI we want to use (either or both).
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I don't know that it actually is different. Just seems to be.
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My 2 cents: most of our user`s gripes is with the interface, so I guess that this can be endlessly improved - it just takes some time and will from SM team (and I guess their first priority right now is with the back-end); most can probably be easily improved.
 
But I personally can see a nice improvement on the mail engine itself, which is why I`ve decided not to give in to the complaints and instead find temporary work-arounds until the interface issues are fixed. We have ~ 200 user accounts (at least half constantly active at the same time) on a decent server (nothing to write home about: a VM with 8x Intel Xeon E5-2630v2@2.60GHz CPU cores, 16GB of RAM, 10Gbps NIC, 2x SSD storage in RAID-1 and Win Server 2012 R2) and server performance is fine - at least just as it was with SM 15. RAM and CPU usage are higher, but only with ~ 10-15% higher and it does not look like a problem. The benefits I`m seeing are:
- a bit better SPAM control (although I complain about the missing response time counter for RBLs) - we`ve seen a sizeable decrease in SPAM
- all of our users have mobile devices (Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone), as well as tablets and they all sync their emails at least with their mobile devices. Many do it though IMAP, but at least 80 - 90 connect through ActiveSync constantly. Moreover, at least 30 use constantly MS Outlook 2016 configured though ActiveSync and have quite large mailboxes. We`ve had so many issues with ActiveSync on SM 15 that if v16 would not have come out when it did, we would have gone back to MS Exchange or to Office365. ActiveSync works so much better now (still has some issues with MS Outlook, but not as bad; it`s pretty much perfect with mobile clients, even Outlook mobile) and this really helps our users.
- it`s easy to update and configure (even with the interface change, it`s still worlds better than many other systems, including MS Exchange)
 
Of course, every case is different and I understand that many have issues - but we`ve actually been though a lot and I do not remember any major system change where there were no issues and complaints and people that just wanted their old ERP back, their old DMS back and so on. What I want is for issues to actually be solved and I can see that SM is working around the clock to fix many things, but probably the change was just too big for them to work on all the problems. Although I think that if they worked a bit more on making the interface more usable and functional instead of "pretty", 90% of the complaints would go away. Take Advanced Search for instance - most users prefer using Outlook (the desktop client or the mobile one) to the WebMail just due to this, but most of them can and do use the WebMail while physically present at work.
 
I would really like to see something of a time-line or roadmap from SM that would outline their current priorities or areas of focus, so we would not bang our heads on this wall and hope something comes of it. 
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Well said, Ionel. For me, the UI isn't even close yet, so I'm staying away from V16 for now.
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One month later, I reverted back to SM 15 after a few days of a so bad experience. SM15 is really a better choice for now. Until, we hope SM16 will run smoothly, quickly and with the important features, we miss. Such as it is, I agree, it is not useable in a production environment. I suspect the advanced asp.net structure (over .net 2.0 /1.1) causing a lot of the slowliness problems. The graphic user interface of SM16 was interesting, but...

I come to this community often and would like to read more "return of experience" , if you have some .
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We rolled back from SmarterMail 16 to 15 due to user complaints about the usability of the web interface (editor especially) on mobile.
Reinstalling v15 worked, EXCEPT (so far that we've noticed), it lost settings under "Incoming Gateways". We had to reinstate these settings manually in v15 after we noticed routing issues.
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Just curious if anyone that has rolled back to v15 has tried to move ahead with v16 again? Anyone still using v16 are you still having major issues or have things improved. Debating whether to try again. Any advise appreciated.
 
Jason
Jason EarleIT Systems Administrator JCL Investments Inc. | https://www.jclinc.ca
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Hi,
With the number of fixes getting released am sure it would be getting improved but am too still on 15.x and happy post seeing daily threads/posts, i would still stay on 15.x till dont see some positive posts on SM 16, am with you in same boat.
 
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Hi,
With the number of fixes getting released am sure it would be getting improved but am too still on 15.x and happy post seeing daily threads/posts, i would still stay on 15.x till dont see some positive posts on SM 16, am with you in same boat.
 

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