69 Replies

Agreed… not hearing anything is no good. Need more feedback from ST about what is happening with SM. 

For betas adding new features and so on, it would be really nice to have a place where we can know (maybe a beta participation program that people willing to participate can join) what features/modifications are on the roadmap as well as how their are going to be implemented.

That would allow at least :

- Customers to have a real vision of the future of the product (not only "super new stuff is coming")

- Collaboration between participating customers and dev team with comments, suggestions, questions about the the roadmap. Who know maybe users/customers of the product might have great ideas about what could improve it or what would be a regression.

- Having some beta testers willingly to test the new features on a testing environnement as they are being implemented and report issues/comments/suggestions 

A bit like the windows insider program where you can decide to install currently in dev builds, knowing that there can be issues, but allowing to test and feedback about things as they are being implemented. 

Could maybe be a win-win situation :)

This silence makes a lot of noise :-(

We are going to start talking about it now that everything is near completion!  

Its a huge release!

Great news! I can't wait to know something else!

It would sure be nice to have two release tracks: Stable and advancing.

It would also be nice to have a forum for registered users, perhaps only those with support subscriptions, to communicate in and speak candidly.

Tim, we are anxious to hear about what's coming and a potential updated timeline or target. Thanks to all for the hard work. 

This is excellent.

Just following up a week later. Since it's near completion, can you post some of the enhancements?

We realize there's a beta process and it will be a while before production, but it would be nice to know what's coming soon. For example, if a customer is thinking of moving to Office365 for a specific feature, we can tell them that feature is coming soon to SmarterMail.

Thanks.

I am expecting a lot of code cleanup, speed improvements, and a Linux version. Some cool enhancements like a Mark as Spam button, ties to more external spam programs, etc. but not much more. 

My biggest concern is testing usually takes 4-6 months which means we won't see a real release this year. I am hoping I am wrong but I am thinking the changes are so vast that we will get the information next year. 

Mmmm

Guys when can we hope to have the list of what's new in the new version?

Agreed. Been another month with no information about it.

This could be our fault.

There is an issue with receiving email messages from Square we reported last month.  Any SmarterMail installation that uses SPF (basically everyone) cannot receive emails from Square because the SMTP negotiating process is taking forever and timing out.  Turning OFF SPF fixes this, but that is not an option for us.

We are getting periodic updates from SmarterTools on a fix.  This could be the reason for the delay.

Hey Ron, 

The issue only presents itself if you're using SPF for incoming SMTP checking. If you just use spool filtering it's fine. But we are doing lots of other stuff as well. 

Kind Regards, 

Last year was very similar. Largest update happens towards year end for some reason and the last few months the team goes very silent that being said I have been hoping for one thing in particular only for the last few years and keep renewing purely for that hope (which never happens) - better file storage / drive storage inbuilt with sharing (similar to google drive). That would be the absolute icing on the cake for me and have me renewing yearly.

And in line compose rather than popups each time. I am hoping that the interface has some more user customisation options too like allowing users to upload their own backgrounds and more "user end" experience improvements such as chat from any and every single page in the system and better collaboration integration with the messenger.

Anyhow I doubt any of my hopes and wishes will be fulfilled but am hopeful that this is more than just improvements to exchange / EAS etc etc etc and more to the actual software and new user features or improvements. 

Maybe a mail app for ios and android would be nice too :)

Zach:

Regarding SPF, there is STILL a major flaw with Settings > Security > Whitelist > SMTP Auth Bypass.

For example when we onboarded a Google G-Suite client which needed two users to remain on G-Suite and everyone else on SmarterMail, authentication must be bypassed via those G-Suite users, otherwise it completely fails.

Split delivery is setup via Domain > Configuration > Email > Inbound Message Delivery > External (use MX record) or External (use host record))

The problem is that once the SMTP Auth Bypass enables all G-Suite IP addresses, all of a sudden everyone who sends spam from Google to a local user (sent to all domains on SmarterMail) is completelyTrusted and no spam filtering happens at all. I've been complaining about this for months, and this has been a problem for years.

I've asked for SPF and DKIM filtering to combat this problem, and after weeks of trying to get a technician to simply understand the underlying problem, finally I've been promised a solution.

However, my response: We do not have a time frame for this yet.

What is the problem with this simple solution and this avoidance? Can something not be promised to be solved in some sort of rough timeframe?

@William

The idea is simple, if SPF passes for a sender matching a domain on your domains list or in some sort of list, auth bypass/etc, then let the delivery through. However this is complex to solve as there is a specific order to the checks that we do during SMTP. We have to to put thought into when the SPF check runs and making sure we aren't doubling the work we do. For example SPF was checked (conditionally) at the same time all the RBL's, rDNS, and URIBL's were checked. But now, we have to almost always run SPF a little bit before everything else and "change-the-flow" and skip the rest of the spam checks if we deem it to be a proper relay-able sender.

So it's not quite a "simple solution" it is a simple idea and when Zach brought it up with us I was kind of shocked at how "simple" it would be, however as with many simple ideas we need to make sure it fits cleanly into everything else. 

I am at this very moment making the changes necessary for this behavior to work as expected. As far as a release timeline goes, I can't say when it will come out, but it will be in the next/this "big" version.

@Ron
While I'm here talking about SPF and SMTP and what not. We have already made changes that should stream line all the DNS checks we do in both SMTP, Spool, and really the whole service. We now do more concurrently and better control the timing of all the DNS checks we do. Also made changes to be better at reusing results that were done at previous times to prevent us doing double checks. MAIL FROM should be way more predictable now with the time it takes.

I'm at least encouraged that this long lasting problems will eventually be resolved.

As far as simplicity goes, SmarterMail already checks SPF/DKIM and as you've stated:

"For example SPF was checked (conditionally) at the same time all the RBL's, rDNS, and URIBL's were checked"

Therefore if the code is efficient, the state of those checks should require a simple reference. Having to relocate the SPF/DKIM checks seem to suggest inefficiency in the code, but it's obviously really old code at this point in the development. However this is finally resolved, it will be appreciated, especially how difficult it was to even explain the problem through several back and forth tickets and years of the existing problem.

Will any of these nice fixes make their way into existing code in a production ready track or will they only be available with the new beta(ish) release and new features?

Hey Proto, 

This version will be released as the next production version. It's only really a beta internally. 

Once it is released it will no longer be called a beta.

Kind Regards, 

Thanks Zak:

No rant or complaint here but these new versions seem to take a number of months to get stable enough that we don't risk losing clients or dumping many unpaid hours in by upgrading before things settle down.

I was hoping we might see the fixes available in the stable (prior as ST will see it) release as well as in the release with all the new features.  This type of development fork has become quite common.

We might even have licensed up another server for the leading edge, advancing product and moved willing clients onto it.

Thanks for the update and have a great evening,

Agreed Proto... The first I heard of this beta was back in the beginning of 2022, it's now nearing 2023 and we are still sitting empty with no information. No communication about it other than "it's coming"... I assume it's only been tested with ST internally, which means once it RTMs, it will still sort of be a public beta.

If they do not want to publicly talk about this new build, create a special forum category that is for active license-holders only and make us sign some online-based NDA before giving access and let the ones who want to be in the know, to be in it.

I agree with echoDreamz

With internal testing, can ST devote a PC to UK language and timezone and an EU timezone. This has regularly appeared to be an issue after an initial release.

Viv

Agree with the above discussion. The 3 phases of software development are tried-and-true and help deliver a stable release:

Is everything okay within the management or team of Smartertools ? Without naming anyone or anything in particular, I sense there is something astray going on with the team. This is the first time in the last 3 years there has been major silence and no major clear announcement on the direction since August I guess. I hope eveyrone is well. I was curious that the CEO has also gone very silent on all his social networks as of late (since 3 months) and similarly senior guys at Smartertools. Also been seeing the way the team has been replying to the above threads, looks very worrying. Also with my renewal set to come up in a month I am feeling butterflies in my stomach and seeing the replies on the forum with very little clarity from management and replies, I sense something is very much astray .... 

Shivam:

I'm not sure I share your concern about communications from the ST team and I have noted similar things from other development teams and even from ST previously when there was a huge push from SM15 through to SM17 to get MAPI initially functional.

I am not an ST employee but do operate a few servers and have since one of the earlier releases (v2 or v3 I think).  We also have an SPLA license so ready access to (and do use) the obvious alternate - Exchange itself.

I'll share my perspective for your consideration.  I've gone entire renewal cycles at times trying to shoot between releases to find a stable one we could upgrade to that added some features we were looking for without, at the same time, adding some new known wrinkles that could cause us to lose many accounts again.  In one case I think that point spanned two renewal cycles without finding an upgrade point that seemed reasonable to us.   We've had that problem considering many of the releases this past year but, for me, the support isn't just access to updates or even to tech support which we never use.  Support goes the other way too.  We look at the fee as support for what ST are doing to help fund the continued development of the product and its adaptation to change.  Every dollar we contributed during one period where upgrades just didn't make sense to us was still a dollar well spent to have arrived at a release that started to more fully embrace Outlook (thru MAPI).

I'd like to see the forked, or as Kevind wrote above "3 phases" approach to releases so that we could see better value in the maintenance - taking advantage of more frequent additions to features or bug fixes.  That would tilt the scales for us, as it seems it might for you, but they are still tipped towards paying annually and supporting the development in any case.  The year the scales tip the other way, we will migrate to another product. In the interim we look at the fees as support for the development and one of the things that comes out of that development are new releases with new features.  In our experience it has not been simply a bug-fix project trying to polish something that is beyond its shelf life.  We continue to see value in it even if we don't see a release we can get on board with.

Just an honest thought for your consideration.

Hello Everyone, 

To address your concerns everything is alive and well here at the office. We are working hard to get this release out to you all. The reason that we cannot share anything is that it is at a point right now where some things could change. But it does have a ton of bug fixes from the past year. Regarding testing locales and time zones, I'll bring that up with my manager. But we already have several different VMS for QC that deal with different timezones and locales so I'm sure that we were already planning on doing that. The release may come sooner than you think. 

Happy Halloween, 

Hello Zach,

Thank you for the update.

To be honest I'm a bit confused and worried. You're saying you can't share anything because "at this point things could change" and on another hand you're saying that the release may come sooner than we think (well for my part I thought a beta would be available months ago, so not that sure).

So I'm asking myself, what could be these possible changes that prevent SM to share a roadmap on what is being worked on and where the product is heading.

Our end users/customers are constantly asking us about when some different feature/bugfix/enhancement/... will be available to them and we can only say that "we don't know".

You're also saying "it does have a ton of bug fixes from the past year."... Does this mean that the multiple reported bugs are actually fixed but put on hold for months, waiting for a major new beta version to come out ?

Well sorry for having so many questions but I have a bad feeling about what is coming and I really hope I'm wrong about it.

Thanks for everyones replies and responses. 
Crossing my fingers.

Great to see a new build coming!

I hope it fixes the date format in webmail, even when a customer changes language to English UK it shows date format in US format MMDDYY and not UK format DDMMYY

Still no news and we are here waiting for it, at least for the bugfixes pending since quite a long time :(

We need more than that tim :p

Because of the development path MS are taking the push will be on to sell Smartermail and EM client as a matched pair instead?

Perhaps a full pairing with a mobile client at some point

Rspamd will be a welcome addition

So now there will be a beta around - probably in December. Prior it sound here like there will not be any public beta this time and you are directly going into "produkction/stable buiild" ( It's only really a beta internally. Once it is released it will no longer be called a beta.). I am glad that you changed your mind and are not going to start with this "new build" as a public/stable build.

But what is a little bit bad that in last public build there still are issues and we are waiting already over some month for any upcoming fixes. :-( We cannot allow downtime/extra issues before Christmas - so I will better wait for some first posts/reactions/experiences with this beta - and then I will decide when I feel save enough updating our production server.

For the future I would like up to three branches of SmarterMail:

public/stable - almost stable versions (including bugfixing after release-candidate/custom build process)
public/release-candidates - custom builds (for example for bugfixes/hotfixes that need testing/verification at customer systems)
public/beta - for new functions/new features
of course the public/release-candidates - custom builds and pubblic/beta only for the paying customers :-)

Thomas:

May I add to your suggestion that there should be a private forum for those with support contracts to facilitate open discussion.  

Yeah, I agree with Thomas. For us it's also _much_ more important to first have our hands on a stable release, with the pending bugfixes (without huge changes that will be in a beta state).

Then we can in parallel test-drive the beta on a separate cloned test server of our current in-production rig, to check and validate the big changes before going live.

Especially when there are considerable changes like a new webmail.

This is the kind of change the end users are quickly upset about if it brings new bugs.as  they also need to learn again how to use it.

Some poeple are fast to adapt to a new interface, but not everyone :)

PS Questionum: Is it based on the new interface used by latest SmarterTrack builds ?

Kind regards.

+1 on the prospect of not withholding so many fixes for known bugs until the next major release.  Which plays into my next thought....

+1 on the prospect of "Too Much All At Once".  When a million things change at the same time, a million tiny bugs seem to hatch also.

+1 on what others have said about this huge new release being essentially a Public Beta, even if it's packaged as not a beta, but a major release to current.  We've gotten burned too many times over the past year on updates creating new problems, especially when the customer is using Outlook 365.

 

I appreciate that ST has been doing extensive internal testing, but the REAL test of a product comes when thousands of customers put it into production and find the hidden cracks.

With that said, we're really looking forward to the MAPI fixes.  Our senior mail admin (who is also one of the company principals... and my brother) has been going nuts with sync problems ever since we onboarded a very large MAPI client last December.  He frequently sits and shouts at his screen while he opens another ST support ticket.  (just kidding about the shouting, he only does that occasionally... but his frustration is off the charts) 

 

Hmmm, almost 4 months without a bugfixes/maintenance release... Not that much news on the new major/big release. December approaching, will Santa have both in his bag ? :)

I sure hope it's not close to Christmas/New Years.  We desperately need some of the MAPI fixes that are (allegedly) in the new build, but are a lot less likely to install a major upgrade around the holiday season due to staff taking time off.

 

We wouldn't look at the new release until its second or third maintenance build. 

Each release for the last couple of years has wrecked something

Viv

Problem is, what used to be a regular release cadence has now shrunk to just a few per year.  There have only been TWO since March 31st.  (I'm counting 8250 and 8251 as a single release, since they were only a day apart and 8251 was just a quickie fix that should have been in 8250.)

We are really in a jam with MAPI problems and the fixes, for which we have tickets open, are supposed to be included in the upcoming release.  We couldn't wait 6 more months for a couple followup bugfix releases before pulling the trigger.

 

Gmail has expanded Report Spam to...

Report Spam

Report Danger / Phishing

Interesting.

Please give us a button in SmarterMail.

The question is who gets those reports, and whether some other action takes place, like automatically adding to a content filter.

We support a large client with an on-prem Exchange server, who uses the Phish Alert Button from KnowBe4.  When clicked, their IT team gets notified with a copy of the suspected phish, but that's it.  It's up to their team to decide how to handle it.  

One thing learned early on was, people use it to report even trivial spam.  And worse, even legitimate email from their outside vendors, simply because the message had a clickable URL in it.  (there's no accounting for stupidity) The takeaway is, if there's a button, you can expect some users to abuse it, or use it for reasons never intended. 

So we'd probably want an admin-level switch to enable/disable that button per domain, if ST ever decided to include it as an option.

 

Jay:

I agree.  In a perfect world, assuming ST don't want to take it on as some sort of spam control service, it might need to be very flexible.  In a simple sense, I've always thought cloud storage should probably be fleshed out to include S3 compatible repositories with a URL and the necessary keys, but I think this could get a lot more complex than that.  It might require a complex set of rules if it went beyond simply sending a copy of the reported email off as an attachment to an email (not a forward please).  If you are using Message Sniffer or something like that it could be as simple as a field for an email address but would those be sent off and reported without first being vetted?  That could lead to people sending things like subscriptions they no longer want to the address hoping they would be blocked.
Maybe confining anything other than a forward to an email address to something implemented within SM and setting filters automatically as you suggest might be a solution but the logic to derive the filtering required could be quite complex and introduce opportunity for false positives.

Ticking this box off with something so that it looks competitive would be nice but implementing something comprehensive might be a significant undertaking outside the scope of an email server.  A problematic more complex solution might do more harm than good.

Back to this new release though.  With all that's been said, I do now hope it's a beta rather than production and that we'll get to use it alongside our existing license on a small scale for live, real world, testing.  We've set up an additional server in anticipation.

I'd sure be interested in what the community thinks are outstanding issues with MAPI in the current version.  I was hoping we had arrived at something I could move forward from a year old release with and was a bit surprised to hear about significant MAPI issues having been introduced in the current release.  Our mid 2021 release works reasonably well for the things that it supports.

December is here...

@Gabriele: you have to read the blog-post clearly: "more to come in December, so SmarterTools has still the complete month until they should release at least a beta. "A beta is coming in the next few weeks" - so right now they are still in their own timeframe/schedule.
btw: this is why I would suggest ST better not posting planned releasedates... in case of anything unexpected happens - and customers/community will ask/do some pressure on the date.

I suppose ST will start with the mentioned beta in around one to two weeks. I believe they are working hard to get this newrelease out - but I am not sure if this "first (beta) release" will be already production-ready. We cannot allow serious issues before/around Christmas sales - so I personally will wait for the first admins reporting here what they encountered/figured out.

I personally would really prefer at least one more hopefully stasble/bugfix-update for  actual/last release build 8251 (Aug, 4th 2022) before starting the new beta release with lots of new features. I suppose the christmas present will be the new (beta) release... but I am not sure if I should unwrap/install it before/around christmas...

@Thomas: "A beta is coming in the next few weeks" was said by Tim in early April 2022...

I'm just noting that we're now in December and the "few weeks" have already passed (on the other hand it's me who's never quite understood the meaning of the word "few"...)...

Hey guys, we’re working our asses off for you.  Next week will be a good week, showing customers all of what we have been working on.  All of you will want to look throughout our new SmarerMail and discover new and exciting features and changes that will benefit you.  It is not intended to be installed on production servers but run on your test environments to explore and test so that we can ensure smooth upgrades for you and your customers In production environments very soon. It’s an exciting time for us and hopefully for you.  We will be offering three blog posts that will introduce some of these features and changes for System, Domain, and Users.  So much to cover!

Tim:

Will this beta be MAPI/EWS license enabled and can we use existing EAS licenses in some limited quantity for testing purposes on it?

Thanks

@Tim: that's an exciting good news!

I'll be very happy to create a test enviroment and help you to beta test it!

I wanted to give a bit more info on the upcoming beta.

We're going to offer it as we've done in the past with other major releases because, to be frank, this IS essentially a MAJOR release of SmarterMail that goes beyond it being just a new Build. That means: 

This release is huge. It has so many new features, so many fixes and improvements that have been worked on for the last couple of years that it requires we handle this beta a bit differently, a bit like we did in the past as this is an entirely new version of SmarterMail. 

Suffice it to say this will be a BIG week!

Big week

This is a serious bug in SmarterMail that has existed now for years:

If a system administrator decides to use SMTP Auth Bypass in order to whitelist certain IPs, those whitelisted mail servers can spam local SmarterMail users because no spam filtering happens for whitelisted IPs! We discovered this once a client wanted to have split delivery with a couple users on G-Suite and the remainder on SmarterMail, which required us to whitelist all the Google mail servers because SMTP Auth between two providers fails SMTP authentication between MTAs. Now we have clients inundated with (in one case thousands!) of spams daily from Google because of this.

Now as we have been waiting for this solution for months, I wonder if this problem will be fixed in the beta?

Hey William, 

Thanks for reaching out. You'll be happy to hear that this will be addressed in the BETA. There will be a setting that enhances split domain configurations and only allows the relay of certain domains if they pass SPF. So say for instance if you have a split domain setup with Gmail as the Primary and SmarterMail as the secondary. If you set up this option correctly the entirety of Gmail will no longer be able to relay via the SMTP auth Bypass. 

More information on this will come soon. 

Please let me know if this helps. 

Kind Regards, 

Hello Everyone, 

Just following up with some good news.  You can now request access to the beta.

Please also take a look at this community post to get an insight into what we have been working on. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Kind Regards, 

BETA looks to be receiving regular updates and generally it seems positive feedback. Anyone have a sense of how many hurdles are left to clear and when we might see this in production?

We are currently doing test upgrades and stress tests with a variety of companies.  We are really close!

Tim, your blog hasn't updated with Part 2 and Part 3 yet.

We just published the next installment of the blog: Benefits for Domain Admins

The third post will be coming a bit quicker, and it will be HUGE!

Nice! Looking forward to details when this will exit Beta. 

how long is the road still?

I expected by now that there would be talk of a release candidate. I'm waiting to be able to use imported innovations in production that I've been waiting for for a long time.