I really miss the integration of filecloud!

Didn't we need to have it integrated to miss it being integrated?  JK :) 

We will put it on the list of future integrations.  Now that we have the Marketplace, we have a team dedicated to integrations and we are looking forward to sharing more of what's to come.  In the future, I would like to have requested integrations available to be voted on so we can prioritize what you and your users want.  We do it internally now and I’m sure we’re not as accurate if it was made available through voting system in our community.    

Any detailed info on the Collabora integrations?

We host our own collabora service and integrating into SM has been a long time dream.

Ta

Collabora will work almost exactly the same as OnlyOffice: you enter your server details and it’s ready to go. We will have help docs available once the Marketplace is released. 

Hey @Derek

Thanks for heads up.

Where do we add the connector to configure the collabora server ?

So we need to be on a specific min version of SM for this functionality?

Ta

You will enable and add server parameters in the Marketplace. There will also be a card just as there is now for OnlyOffice. As for versions, we're calling their current APIs, so as long as your version supports those, you should be good. 

EDIT: As an aside, I saw your ticket about this and send off a reply. 

Hello ST,

After reading this announcement I have some concerns/questions about it:

- The term "Market" in Market place, does that mean some features that are provided through it will be paying addons ?

- Also will these the features available via this Market Place be separated installable modules, or are they still included in SM "core" (but enable via the market place).

- If these are going to be modules, can people build their own modules and maybe submit them to the Market Place (that's a bit what a market place makes me think of).

For now I'm a bit confused about what it means for the future features added to SM.

Thanks a lot for bringing some light 

Hi, Sebastien

Regarding paid vs. free options, right now everything that's available is essentially what's already available as an integration in SmarterMail. For example, the cloud storage options (OneDrive, GDrive, etc.), eM Client, SmarterMail File Storage, SmarterMail Chat, etc. Other things are available that you, as the administrator, can make available such as OnlyOffice, and, soon, other options like Collabora Online, Rocket.Chat, and others. So these are all "free" in that you won't be paying SmarterTools for anything, but there may be costs on your end to get things set up. That said, the Marketplace is flexible enough for paid options, whether those are paid for by you directly to the integration partner or paid for through SmarterTools via partnership. 

Some items are part of SM "Core". As mentioned, SmarterMail File Storage, SmarterMail Chat, etc. Others are separate modules you install and manage, like OnlyOffice. 

As for custom modules or integrations, never say never. For now, these are integrations we're building and making available to users. 

We need integration with teams in outlook and collaboration on files to compete with 365.

Working on a shared doc simultaneously....

Thats what we need.

Groups to automatically appear in outlook when joining a new account.

Not a marketplace for all kinds of unsupported 3rd party applications.... :)

I think SM is on the right track.

SM should mainly be a mail server, as an alternative to Exchange.

It is certainly not the future to rely on Outlook, so the right way is to look for alternatives such as emClient.

The SM File Storage is certainly a nice to have, but not comparable to the real Sharepoint/Onedrive alternatives. It certainly never will be, as the development is enormous.

Like e.g.

- own app for iOS/Android incl. scan app

- own desktop application for WIN/MAC/Linux

- Locking files on/offline to reduce overlapping when editing

- Offline availability on end devices

- Extended sharing authorizations (guests, user groups, etc.)

- Browser extension for fast upload/donwload

- Own document viewer with extended document protection (save, print, allow/prohibit editing)

- Digitally sign documents

- Direct integration of MS Teams 

- Direct integration of MS 365 or OnlyOffice for file editing

- and much more

By integrating such extensions via the providers' API, SM becomes a well-rounded solution and a real alternative to MS 365 and even better!

You need OnPrem Office to be an alternative.... due to GDPR issues we are discouraged to use Office365 here i Europe.

I know exactly what the problem is. I am from Germany. 

I have been a Microsoft partner for 25 years now and have followed the whole development of Exchange and the rest of the MS products. 

In my opinion, the best thing to do is to try to become completely independent of MS.

We have tested many alternatives on the market in recent years and have come to the conclusion that it is best not to use an all-in-one solution, but to rely on different manufacturers.

You cant when the defacto std. is Microsoft Office.

You need an alternative that can do the exact same thing that MS can but its not MS.

Only then will you be moving customers.

We need an alternative here in Europe to MS365 and the forced exchange of data with the US.

Would like to see integration with Ringotel Softphone app. It integrates with SIP servers, but also has strong API integration capabilities. They have integrations with SMS/MMS providers, CRM suites, Google contacts, M365 contacts, Jitsi SaaS, custom webhooks, etc. It also has a place for custom url hotlinks inside the app for end users to use.

I would like to see online meeting and contacts especially.

Thanks for the suggestion, Barry!

Hello

We need to study the product before implementing, how do we hide the marketplace from the domain admin?

I just started playing with it. If I disable all the integrations, it looks like you can disable all the integrations, then in a test domain enable what you'd like.

Disable ok, but I want to hide the Marketplace

What I found is if you turn everything off, users won't see the marketplace at all, domain admins can, but all they can do is see it. Seems inconsistent to me. If "allow domain admins to override" is off, the domain admins shouldn't have the menu choice.

I'm going to throw my vote in with 3rd party integration as a priority. I think trying to compete directly with MS365 / exchange feature to feature is a recipe for disaster, given MS as a multi-billion $$ development budget and an incredibly LARGE user base, with features that everyone is already used to.

Their weakness is 3rd party integration, so for ST to be a viable alternative in a lot of cases 3rd party integrations of any type should be considered. And i think, at some point, allowing individual developers to add their own 3rd party "apps" to the market would be a great selling feature, and would take a lot of development load of ST to focus on just the core products.

Very cool, looking forward to this gaining some traction and having more options to choose from. Anything we can do to get away from the cloud only big data privacy invasive options is a plus.

I see in the docs it says "ChatGPT" as an app to install. I suspect it should be called "OpenAI" integration since you can select which model to use. "Chat GPT" is their product that interacts with the models available from Open AI. If it works with the standard api endpoints, administrators could also integrate with LiteLLM to proxy whatever AI providers they want (including privately with Ollama).

Hello

Will there be a possibility to write plugins yourself (e.g. trigger webhooks, trigger a jabber call via tapi interface etc ?

Where is the config card for ChatGPT hiding? i can enable the option under the domain admin, have it show under the user marketplace, but i cannot find the spot to configure the modal & API Key per the help file - help.smartertools.com/SmarterMail/Current/Topics/Marketplace/AI_Integration/chatgpt 
no modal box appears, and when i click on ChatGPT under the AI Intefration all i get is a 'Settings managed by an administrator." am i missing something?

Yu have to login as Domain Admin -> More -> Domain Marketplace -> then click on ChatGPT.

However for me it just trows errors like this:

... Error logs gave me the hint, the account from the collegue who gave me the api key does not have a valid subscription so no tokens. (the error could be more indicating).

What if You are the administrator? :) 

Jerry - you're seeing that because the system administrator has disabled "Allow domain administrators to override". You'll need to have that enabled for your domain in order for you enable ChatGPT and set the Model and API key. You, then, can allow users to change their settings to use their own Model and API Key if you want.

Daniel - I'll open a ticket for you on this. Also, regarding building your own integrations, we've discussed it but, at this time, any integrations available will be built by us. 

I did an edit ... as it was interface related ( between the display an the chair)

[2025.03.25] 08:42:10.367 [OpenAI] Error getting AI response for user XXXX Exception: HTTP 429 (insufficient_quota: insufficient_quota)

[2025.03.25] You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, read the docs: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/error-codes/api-errors. HTTP 429 (insufficient_quota: insufficient_quota)

[2025.03.25] You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, read the docs: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/error-codes/api-errors.

[2025.03.25]    at OpenAI.ClientPipelineExtensions.ProcessMessageAsync(ClientPipeline pipeline, PipelineMessage message, RequestOptions options)

[2025.03.25]    at OpenAI.Chat.ChatClient.CompleteChatAsync(BinaryContent content, RequestOptions options)

[2025.03.25]    at OpenAI.Chat.ChatClient.CompleteChatAsync(IEnumerable`1 messages, ChatCompletionOptions options, CancellationToken cancellationToken)

[2025.03.25]    at OpenAI.Chat.ChatClient.CompleteChatAsync(ChatMessage[] messages)

[2025.03.25]    at SmarterMail.MailService.Utility.OpenAIMiddleware.GetChatResponseAsync(String text, String modelName, String token)

[2025.03.25]    at SmarterMail.MailService.Utility.OpenAIMiddleware.GetAiResponseAsync(String text, UserData user) 

The collegue gave me the answer that he has no subscription :-p

We agree with Brian about the increasing difficulties competing with MS 365.  We just lost a very large (well into 6-figures annually) client to 365.  The bean counters got tired of accounting separately for Office licenses, email service, Zoom and Zoom Room subscriptions... and 3 years of MAPI sync problems & bugs added friction which ultimately led to their C-suite having "golf course" and "dinner" conversations with other C-suite types about alternatives.  All gave glowing endorsements of 365 and encouraged our client to do the same.  So they finally finally listened to their peers and jumped.  

There was NO way we could compete with all the apps and native integrations bundled into their in MS 365 plans.
 

I had the same frustration. I'm logged in as or impersonating an admin and it says it's disabled. It's not obvious where the server wide or account-wide settings are. Do they even exist? It seems like I wasn't able to do anything until that check box was enabled. But... what exactly are we overriding? Where are the server-wide settings for "chatgpt"? 

@Jay Dubb

Yeah. Only thing we can offer is compliance with #GDPR. Everything else is not an option unless you use webmail and who does....

We need the marketplace options as a part of MAPI/integration with outlook as plugins/native apps.

Where do I find the marketplace?

Is it in 9182?

Dont see anything as system admin or domain admin.

Nothing comes up in when I search help for the word marketplace?

It's new with 9210

@Patrick

LOL, I check the release notes twice already but didnt see it there but its in the first line.    I must have been a sleep. 

Thanks Patrick. 

One question .. SmarterMail Chat is XMPP?

Hi, Jack. Yeah, SmarterMail Chat uses XMPP. 

@Brian Bjerring-Jensen  said : "You need an alternative that can do the exact same thing that MS can but its not MS."

If you are not familiar with it, look at LibreOffice. 

We switched to (originally) Open Office about 18 years ago, and are now using LibreOffice. It will do all the same that MS Office does and its free. The exception is email and we use SmarterMail for email.

LibreOffice will open MS Office docs, and also has a vector drawing app like MS publisher, we use it for all of our flyers, brochures and building floor plans for when we are doping cabling. Works similar to a CAD program too with dimensional lines.

I personally have not touched MS office in about 15 years now, and we are switching many of our non profit clients over to LibreOffice as well.

The killer apps driving people to 365 seem to be Sharepoint and Teams.  Sharepoint used to be nasty but it's gotten to be pretty good actually, and Teams is quickly becoming the Swiss Army Knife for many companies because it's fully integrated into so much of the 365 stack.  You can work in your own OneDrive space AND Sharepoint, all from within Teams, and VOIP providers (like Ring Central) snap right into Teams like it belongs there.  It's one app people use all day long for nearly everything.

That is nearly impossible to compete with, and it's what all the consultants are pushing because they make a TON of money performing the integrations, customizations and migrations.  We've seen a few clients spend north of $50,000 to consultants for setup/migration labor, and one went well above $150k for a bunch of customizations.  

I appreciate what SmarterTools is developing, but Microsoft has a huge head start and we seriously hate having to compete with them.

 

Libreoffice is not an option in many places since MS Office is defacto standard in many organisations.

Maybe it works for NGO's and schoolkids, but you cant ask a company to turn its back on MS Office, let alone 365 unless you have an alternative that can do the same or more.

You dont trade in your car for something worse.... that has less performance, convenience or security.

You just dont. And I dont want to try to sell that.

If I sell an exchange alternative, people expect to have full Exchange functionality and they dont.

They expect to have things integrated like MS365 and not having to manually transfer meetings and calls to Teams and whatever.

It's a sad state of affairs that Microsoft was built on the backs of its worldwide partner network and became the dominant force in the industry, and now that they are "too big to challenge", they have pivoted to directly competing against those same partners.  Microsoft is not just biting the hand that fed them for 30 years, they are chewing off that hand by taking those customers away from the partners.  We just learned of another client who sourced their 365 licensing from a local MS partner, and MS is now soliciting that customer directly for additional services.  Microsoft is bypassing the partner and going directly sales-pitching that partner's own customers.  

Think about it this way.  Say an Allstate or State Farm agent sells a client auto insurance.  While that agent is cultivating the relationship to sell other lines, imagine if Allstate or State Farm corporate office directly contacted that client to get their home, boat, and life insurance without involving the local agent.  That is something that used to never happen.  Companies did not interfere and insert themselves into relationships that belong between agent and client.  But that is what Microsoft seems to be doing, based on the marketing emails that client forwarded me.
 

Awhile back, I was gifted a book by Microsoft's CEO.   It was a mediocre read, and at the moment I cannot find it on my bookshelf to cite the title.    He explained that Microsoft was in trouble because it was so far behind Google in web search, so they pulled out the stops and BING was the result.   He did not connect that need to the creation of Office365, but you should be able to read between the lines.  Search requires a good algorithm, but it also requires a lot of data.   A.I. is not mentioned in the book, as best I can remember, but the implications are clear:   A.I. needs even more data than web search.   

When data is hosted on premises, it is not available to Microsoft or Google or anyone else for data mining.    When it is hosted on someone else's cloud service, it is available to the hosting services data collection engines.   Do they use that availability?    I think we should assume so.   Office365 was not about meeting customer needs, it was about changing Exchange pricing to force customers onto the Microsoft cloud, because the winner in our brave new world is the tech company with the most data at its fingertips.  So Microsoft sacrificed its distributors because it needed to control its end-customers data.

Pundits pay lip service to the notion of scientific ethics, but it does not really exist.  Once something becomes possible, someone finds out how to monetize the technology and ethics get rationalized out the window by those who imitate the pioneer..   Big Data and A.I. will do great things for us, until they perfect the ability of government to control us.   An understanding of human nature should lead us to expect nothing less, the only real question is timing. 

@All

Seriously SM has done a stellar job of creating this market place.

The integrations still need some tweaking but we are on the way there.

The MS arguments for some may be true but many use Google docs which is similar to collaborate office.

I use both libre Office locally and collabora office in a browser and promote it to clients.

There are great tutorials just released by Collabora office with short videos helping users get accustomed to the slight differences between the products.

Go to the collabora website and take a look!

For 90+% of users collabora office will be more than sufficient.

The idea is to give people options which is what SM are doing.

In relation to teams this is just a shit show.

365 is so riddled with vulnerabilities like a sinking ship with too many holes to plug, it's the Titanic time to help clients who can't help them selves.

Use the built in chat/ video feature of SM and give clients an alternative to teams, setup a coturn server or use public ones.

Come on people stop complaining and being sheeple and start to have conversations with clients, setup a collabora demo server and offer it for free for a few months or as a value add.

Stop loosing to MS because complaining is not going to fix the issue, what is needed are alternatives and we have them right here.

You can run the collabora developer version with the full feature set indefinitely, cluster 2 together for HA > connect to SM you're done.

Start running SM on Linux and move away from windows.

Otherwise you may as well wait to slowly die out like the dinosaurs.

@SM team thanks for your efforts here please keep refining the UI for integration with collabora and next cloud the connectivity to NC is a bit slow and needs to be better presented in the UI.

""Cheers

G

Well said Doug. Other CEO's have put a fine point on the need for data and algorithms to process it recently as well. They're all getting into this space right now!

@Gerardo Altman  - That is far easier said than done.  Microsoft has spent billions developing platforms and integrations that are exceedingly difficult to compete against.  It's not always about price, and most non-tech people don't understand (or care) about potential vulnerabilities a hacker is 30 seconds away from driving a truck through.  They have gobbled down the Kool Aid that they're in capable hands with Microsoft and their fully integrated "everything", which currently no cobbled-together solution can touch.  Seriously, I sat with the CIO of a company of roughly $100 million in revenues pitching off-cloud backups for their 365 tenant-- because Microsoft is not responsible for the loss of their data-- and was told in these exact words, "Microsoft would never lose our data."  That, and other phrases you'd expect from a Kool Aid non-techie whose job was leading the technology department.  I was amazed at how assimilated that CIO was into the MS ecosystem, like the Borg, and no amount of logical arguments had any effect.  Their mind was made up.

We hate Microsoft "corporate" and we hate competing against them even more.  But even with Smartertools products and the marketplace, we have not been able to conjure up the MS killer/competitor that CxO types would look twice at.  This is made even MORE difficult because CxOs in any given vertical know each other, golf together, attend conventions and conferences with each other, and Microsoft 365 is like crack to these folks.  They can't get enough of it.  We recently lost a very large account because the CFO of a client was told by several industry peers at their annual convention, that if his company wasn't on 365, they were in the stone age and getting left behind.  No joke, no embellishment.  Six-figure annual account out the door because he believed the hype and handed the account over to a Microsoft partner to "transform them into a modern business".
 

@Jay Dubb you're not wrong in everything you have said. - Very correct actually.

We've also lost a large client to O365 it is what it is.

But does that mean we should all quit and try nothing?

To move a mountain you need to start with the small jobs 1st, then progressively move up in layers/ stages.

We all need to start somewhere and this is that start.

Have the offering as a starting point, there will be a much smaller subset of clients who will be willing to try something else.

work with them, evolve the solution, start somewhere and build.

Like everything the pendulum swings in both directions, be ready now is the time to prepare and build a solid offering.

Yes all service providers will loose some clients to O365 its inevitable but have something else as an option.

SmarterMail already has.

- conferencing built in (like teams)

- public calendars

- now Online office alternatives (i highly recommend collabora their licensing model is great and you can even start with the full featured dev as a starting point)

- NextClooud can connect into SM as another all online solution offering OneDrive like features, conferncing and many other features not available in O365.

start to build out something that isn't available in O365 or differs enough that its a viable option for a specific niche business type/ audience.

Be clever in your infrastructure design, use ZFS, use Ceph etc if you must use a SAN, augment slower data to spinning disks or have hybrid SSD + spinners to get the most value from your infrastructure /GB.

None of these things are perfect and still need a bit of polish to look and perform like well integrated applications.

But if we all don't make the effort to try these alternatives and provide feedback to ST then we get what we get, the amount of effort you put in will be exactly what you get back.

You cant control a CTO/ CFO etc who has their mind set on changing to O365 without having a good relationship with them, and since they are often transient this is really out of anyone's control.

What is in your/ our control is investing time and effort into alternate solutions that are managed in-house for a better SLA and to give people an option.

Start a POC and offer it for free, run it for 12 months, get some feedback from clients willing to participate, work with them to try and iron out their issues and provide feedback to ST to help improve the integrations.

with our combined efforts we can all benefit from the work and time put into making an alternate set of services something that other service providers want to offer making it more acceptable to the general public as a viable option.

if we just throw our hands in the air and do nothing, then we get nothing in return.

""Cheers

G

@Jay Dubb

..."Microsoft would never lose our data."...

That said, the solution is simple (and, unfortunately, twofold...):

1 - Explain CLEARLY and IN WRITING what the customer must do and what they risk if they don't. And then have them sign their response.

So if they ever lose data, you can demonstrate that it was THEIR choice and you are not liable.

2 - Offer both options: MS365 and the alternatives you like (SM or whatever...)... Explain them well.

Then the customer will choose, and that way you won't lose them.

Religious wars are USELESS and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE in business...

@Gerardo Altman

I agree with you...

@Derek Curtis
Are you going to integrate with Nextcloud ?

It appears that Chat GPT integration is not working. If I had to guess, I would say it's because the GPT-5 model is out now, and the other models are no longer selectable on ChatGPT.

Brought this up a couple of years ago.., 
But for our purposes.. being able to change the SM interface.. to have a couple of custom links inside the SM webmail - to link off to our own processes - would be fabulous.  Now, it could be .. that this has been implemented in the last couple of editions.. but that would help us GREATLY compete.

Just my two cents :)

@Russ Thanks for bringing this to our attention. The OpenAI APIs should still support those deprecated models; however, to make this more future proof, we shouldn’t rely on a static list of models. I’ve created a task to update our integration so it dynamically retrieves the available models from OpenAI. This should ensure it continues to work long term, unless OpenAI makes breaking changes to their API.

Thank you,