Getting Things GNOME is a GNOME tool that takes the task list to the next level. GTG allows for tag-able task, add sub tasks, includes a plugin systems (with plenty of included plugins),  and more. And in this Ghacks.net article, I am going to show you how to install and use this helpful tool.

Installation

As you have come to expect, the installation of GTG is very straight forward. For just about any distribution that includes the GNOME desktop you can install with these easy steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “gtg” (no quotes).
3. Select Getting Things GNOME for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Once installed you will find GTG in the Applications > Office menu.

Usage

When you first fire up GTG you will see the main pane pre-populated with some very helpful tasks (see Figure 1). As you can see there is a primary task (Getting Started with GTG) with six sub-tasks. If you right click any of these tasks you can choose to:

• Add a subtask.
• Edit the task.
• Schedule the task.
• Mark as done.
• Dismiss.
• Delete.
• Add a tag.

If you select Add a tag a new window will open where you can add your tag. You can add as may tags as you like (separated by commas) as well as apply those tags to subtags.

Quickadd

Right under the menu bar you will see a text area where you can quickly enter a task. All you have to do is enter the task and then hit enter. You can also quick add a task with tags by entering a task with a syntax like:

task tag:tag1,tag2,tag3

The above will add a task called “task” with tags “tag1″, “tag2″, and “tag3″.

You can also include due dates with the quick add. For this, the syntax is:

task due:date

You could even include both tags and due date with:

task tag:tag1,tag2,tag3 due:date

Plugins

As I said, GTG has a number of plugins included. You will find:

• Tomboy/Gnote
• Notification area
• Closed task remover
• Hello World
• Send task via email
• Remember the Milk
• Import from JSON
• Evolution

Figure 2

There are also a number of plugins that are listed, but are still in development and are not usable. To enable a plugin click Edit > Preferences > Plugins. You will notice that some of the plugins, when enabled, will add menu entries to GTG. One such plugin is the Evolution plugin. When you enable this you will find a new menu entry called Plugins. Click that menu and you will see an entry Synchronize with Evolution. Also, the Notification area plugin will add an icon to your notification area. That new icon allows you to quickly add a new task by instantly opening up a new task window (see Figure 2).

Final thoughts

And there you have it…another task manager tool that does a fine job of integrating into the GNOME desktop. Although this tool isn’t going to change the way you work, it will actually make your life a little bit easier.

One such tool for Ubuntu Linux is Ubuntu One. UbuntuOne is not just a music store or a means to sync pictures and music. With UbuntuOne you can also keep your contacts in sync. This is especially easy when you are using Evolution (there is something to be said about using the default applications). In this article I am going to show you how you can keep your Evolution contacts in sync with UbuntuOne so you can use those same contacts on any Evolution groupware suite that happens to be connected to your UbuntuOne account.

First things first

The first thing you have to do is make sure you have yourself a UbuntuOne account. NOTE: For more information on UbuntuOne check out the UbuntuOne content on Ghacks. After you have your account set up make sure you add your machine to your account. To do this open up the UbuntuOne Preferences window (click System > Preferences > UbuntuOne) and then click “Manage account” from the account tab. This will take you to your UbuntuOne account page where you can then add your machine to the account. Leave the UbuntuOne Preferences Window open (you’re not done with it yet).

Once the machine is added click on the Services tab in the UbuntuOne Preferences window. In this tab you will see a few services that are available for the account (Bookmarks, Broadcast Message Archive, Contacts, File Syncronization). You will need to make sure Contacts is checked (You can enable any of those services you want of course).

Now that you have the service set up, let’s start working with Evolution.

Evolution

Click on the Contacts tool in Evolution. You should see two different sets of contacts by default:

• CouchDB (UbuntuOne)
• On This Computer (Personal)

CouchDB is a document-oriented database that UbuntuOne uses for contacts. Select that database (click UbuntuOne) and see if you have any contacts listed. If not you need to copy your contacts from Personal to UbuntuOne. To do this follow these steps:

1. Select the Personal contacts by clicking Personal.
2. Click Actions > Copy all contacts to…
3. Select UbuntuOne.
4. Click OK.
5. Walk through the various steps either adding or merging a contact to ensure you don’t duplicate your contacts.

Now you have to start using the UbuntuOne contacts as your default. If you do not do this you will continue to add contacts to your Personal contacts which will not be automatically migrated to your UbuntuOne contacts. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on the UbuntuOne address book.
2. Righ-click the UbuntuOne contacts and select Properties.
3. Check “Mark as default address book”.
4. Make sure Desktop CouchDB is selected under Server.
5. Click OK.

That’s it! You will want to do the same thing for all of your machines that use UbuntuOne and you want to keep your contacts in sync.

Final thoughts

Keeping your contacts in sync will go a long way to keep you from having to always take extra steps to make your work more efficient. If your machine is already attached to your UbuntuOne account, it’s a no-brainer to make the switch to syncing your Evolution contacts.

GBirthday is very easy to use and allows you to set up a blinking reminder that allows you to decide how many days +/- to continue reminding you that a birthday is either pending or missed. In this article I am going to show you how to set up and use this wonderful little tool that will keep you from having friends and family upset that you missed their special day.

Features

• Easily integrates into many tools.
• Blinking notification area reminder.
• Released under GPL v. 2.
• Written in python and pygtk.
• Tiny footprint.

Installation

The installation is simple. As GBirthday should be found in your standard distribution repositories, you can install GBirthday with the following steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “birthday” (no quotes).
3. Mark gbirthday for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Or, if you’re more fond of command line installation, you could follow these steps:

For Ubuntu:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install gbirthday.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. When finished close the terminal.

For Fedora:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Su to the root user.
3. Issue the command yum install gbirthday.
4. When complete close the terminal window.

Figure 1

After installation, you can start GBirthday by clicking Applications > Office > gbirthday. When the application starts you will see no splash screen or any window open. All you will get is a small icon now resting in your Noticiation Area (see Figure 1). The icon will show a small calendar page with a small orange birthday cake and candle below it (looks more like a pumpkin to me).  If, of course, there are any pending birthdays, that icon will immediately start blinking.

Usage

Let’s take a look at how this simple tool is used. I will illustrate GBirthday’s usage with the Evolution groupware suite. When you create a contact in Evolution there is a Personal Information tab. In that tab you will notice (under Miscellaneous) a section for Birthday information. Fill out the birthday in the form MM/DD/YYYY (or click the down arrow and select the birthday from the calendar that pops up). Once you have filled out all the information click OK.

Figure 2

Now, when there is a pending birthday that GBirthday icon will blink. If you click on that icon a popup window will appear giving you information on the days (or past or upcoming) birthday (see Figure 2).

As I mentioned you can configure GBirthday to remind you +/- any number of days. This means you can get a user-configured amount of days heads up before a birthday is coming or is past. To do this right click on the icon and select Preferences. In the Preferences window you can set 2 options:

Past birthdays: This is a negative number and represents how many days past will GBirthday remind you.

Next birthdays: This is a positive number and represents how many days in the future GBirthday will remind you.

Final thoughts

If your memory isn’t what it once was, or you have tons of birthdays to remember, a tool like GBirthday might be just the thing you need. It’s unobtrusive enough to not get in your way but persistent enough to make sure you remember those birthdays.

In this article I am going to show you how to take your encryption key and add it to your outgoing mail with Evolution. I will show you how to set up both signing and encrypting of email.

Your key

If you do not already have a key, I highly recommend you use Seahorse to create one. For more information on Seahorse you can read my article “Create, sign, and publish your PGP key with Seahorse“. When you create that key you will do so with a name associated with it. You will use that name for Evolution. If you don’t remember the name you used you can see it by opening up Seahorse, clicking on the My Personal Keys tab, and see the name as listed.

Once you have that key you are ready to set up Evolution.

Evolution

Figure 1

Once in Evolution click on Edit > Preferences. From the Preferences window select the account you want to associate the key with and click Edit.

In this tab you will see a section where you can enter your PGP/GPG ID. This is where you enter your name from you key (see Figure 1). Once you’ve done this, you have a few options to choose:

• Always sign outgoing messages: This means all outgoing messages (new messages, replies, forwards) will have your PGP/GPG signature attached.
• Do not sign meeting requests: Probably a good idea if you are going to using Evolution inside a company where others use Outlook – otherwise Outlook will see this as an attachment and add it to the invitation.
• Always encrypt to myself when sending encrypted messages: This will send an encrypted copy of the email to yourself when.
• Always trust keys in my keyring when encrypting: If you know your keys in your keyring are valid you can select this which will allow Evolution to skip the keyring check of those keys.

Once you have all of this set up, you are ready to go.

Sending signed and/or encrypted mail

When you create an email in evolution you will notice a Security menu in the menu bar. When you click that you will see four entries, of which only the top two (PGP Sign and PGP Encrypt) are of interest to you now. Say you want to sign that outgoing email with your key. To do this check the check box associated with PGP Sign in the Security menu. Say you want to encrypt that email. To do that check the check box associated with PGP Encrypt in the Security menu.

You must know, however, that when attempting to send out an encrypted email, Evolution will query key servers to see if there is an associated public key with the email address. If no public key is found on a key server then you will not be able to encrypt that email. You can, however, sign all outgoing email.

Final thoughts

If you are seriously concerned about your privacy, and you use Evolution, I highly recommend using this feature. Even if you are only signing your emails, those receiving your email will be far more secure in knowing that email definitely came from you.

So, in this article I am going to reveal some of the little secrets you may not have discovered with Evolution yet. Hopefully, after reading this, you will come away using one or two of these.

Assumptions

This article will assume you already have Evolution up and running and are familiar with it’s normal use. That is the only assumption made.

Search folders

Figure 2

Do you do a lot of searching through your email? If you do you might want to consider creating search folders. A search folder is a hybrid between a filter and a folder. Basically you set up a search folder and that folder will constantly be searching your mail for messages that meet your criteria. The main difference between a filter and a search folder is that the email that “lives” in a search folder isn’t actually moved there so you can have emails that span across multiple search folders (so long as they meet each folders criteria.).

To set up a search folder click Search > Create Folder From Search. This will start a filter-like “wizard” (see Figure 1) to walk you through the creation of the search folder. As you can see, in Figure 1, I am creating a search folder to contain search results of any incoming email with a subject that contains the phrase “Author notification”.  As soon as that wizard is finished the Notification folder is under Search Folders and contains 30 hits.

Saved searches

In the same vein as the Search Folders, you can also save a search criteria. To do this follow these steps:

1. Run a search as you would normally.
2. Click Search > Save Search.
3. In the new window give the search a name and click OK.

To use this search click the Search menu and select, from the bottom of the menu, the search you want to perform.

Mailing lists

Did you know you can subscribe to mailing lists or get information about mailing lists right from evolution? If you have an email from a mailing list, do the following:

Select that email (from the list).

Click Message > Mailing List and look through the sub-menu.

From that Mailing List sub-menu you can:

• Get list usage information.
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe to list.
• Post message to list.
• Contact list owner.
• Get list archive.

Very handy if you like your mailing lists.

Create from

From a simple email you can create an Event, Meeting, Task, or Memo. All you have to do is select the email, right click the email, and select any of the  Create entries from near the bottom of the menu.

Final thoughts

There you have it…a few lesser known features of Evolution. Although they are not show stoppers or deal breakers, these features do come in handy quite often. In future articles we’ll revisit this topic and come up with more lesser known features.

Linux, of course, has no shortage of tools to keep track of your tasks. In fact, one might say Linux has too many todo list tools. So I thought I would show off a few of the lesser known tools so you might expand your own repertoire. I will even show you an ncurses based todo list tool for those of you who prefer to not bog yourself down with GUI tools. Enough said. We all have too much to do, so let’s get on with the tools.

Figure 1

tudu

I have to show this one off first. The tudu tool is the ncurses based to do list that will make any Alpine/Nano lover happy as a clam. This tool is very simple to use. You can install it with a command like apt-get install tudu , or you can find it in your Add/Remove Software tool. Once installed, you use the tool from a terminal window and issue the command tudu. When you open the tool you will see a single task that you can delete and then start adding your own. You add/edit tasks with commands.

tudu has a very unique command structure. The more handy commands are:

• f – Set the prioroity of a task.
• h – Move the cursor one level out in the tree hierarchy.
• l – Move the cursor one level in in the tree heirarchy.
• j – Move to the next task.
• k – Move to the previous task.
• J – Move to one position down.
• K – Move to one position up.
• m – Mark a task done.
• dd – Delete a task.
• o – Add a new task.
• t – Set the priority of a task

You can lean many more commands from the man page for tudu. Now let’s go back to GUI.

Figure 1

Tasks

It doesn’t get much more simple than the tasks tool. You will find this in your Add/Remove Software tool (and most likely it will be labeled tasks-hildon). What you can do with this tool is simple: You add and remove tasks. Oddly enough, it doesn’t have all the “bells and whistles” that tudu has, but it will be easier for many to use. There are some quirks involved with this tool.

Although you are able to create Categories, the only way to do so is after you have created a task. To create a task you enter the text in the New task… text are and hit Enter. Once you have done that double-click on the task you created to open up the task properties. Within the task properties you can click the Category drop-down and select New Group. This will allow you to create a new Category. There is one problem. As of this writing, as soon as you create the new group, Tasks will segfault and close. You can open it back up and everything you just created will still be there.

Outside of that odd segfaulting, Tasks is a nice little application. You can prioritize your tasks, give them deadlines, and even add links and notes.

Other task tools to consider

Of course you can’t think about todo/task tools without looking at your integrated groupware tools. Both Kontact and Evolution have outstanding task tools. You can even look at the Thunderbird plugin Sunbird which has a good tasks tool. There are so many of these tools to choose from. So if you’re looking to keep your tasks organized in Linux, you might need a todo list to help you decide with todo list to choose!

This task isn’t terribly difficult, but does require a bit of setup in order to get the system working properly. But once you have this up and running, you will find Evolution to have one of the more reliable junk filters around.

What you will need

Obviously you will need a working installation of Evolution. For the purpose of this article, the release of Evolution is 2.28.3. The junk system I will be using is Bogofilter. So let’s first make sure we have everything installed. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool and do the following:

1. Search for “bogofilter” (no quotes).
2. Mark Bogofilter for installation.
3. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. You are now ready to set Evolution up to start keeping Junk mail from that Inbox. Let’s do just that.

Configuring Evolution

Figure 1

Open up Evolution and then click Edit > Preferences and then click on the Mail Preferences section. Here you will find the Junk tab (see Figure 1). Here are the settings you need to make sure are set:

Check incoming messages for junk: Make sure this checkbox is checked.

Check custom headers for junk: Make sure this is checked and looks similar to that you see in Figure 1.

Do not mark messages as junk if sender is in my address book: This will prevent false-positives for known safe addresses.

Default junk plugin: Set this to Bogofilter.

Bogofilter Options: Make sure Convert message text to Unicode is set.

Once you have these options set you should be good to go….almost. As with any junk filter, it is best to train the system before you try to rely on it. To do this I like to keep a folder of known junk to ease in the training. To do this, follow these steps:

• Import the junk folder into Evolution
• Open up the Junk that folder
• Highlight all of the email in that folder.
• Mark of that email as junk.

Now go back to your Inbox and follow these steps:

1. Make sure there is zero junk left in your Inbox.
2. Highlight all of the email.
3. Mark of this email as Not Junk.

Now your Bogofilter is close to being trained. As it works it will continue to train. You might want to go through the Junk filter every once in a while to make sure there were no false-positives that slipped through the system. If you do find one make sure you mark it as not junk.

The nice thing about Evolution and Junk mail is that it defaults to placing junk mail in the Junk folder. This way you always know where junk has been sent and you don’t have to worry about creating a new junk folder.

Final thoughts

Junk email has never been easier to handle than it is with Evolution. With the help of Bogofilter, your Evolution groupware Inbox will be Junk-free in no time.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The Evolution groupware suite has a built in backup/restore system that will amaze you how how well (and quickly) it works. We’re not talking about the time consuming back up and restore of Outlook PST files. It doesn’t matter how large your Evolution folders have grown, this backup/restore is fast and painless. And in this article, I am going to show you just how easy this task is.

Assumptions

It should be fairly safe to assume that you will backing up and restoring from and to the same release of Evolution. I have not tested this, but you might be safe to do so only if the releases are not far apart. To be safe, however, you should make sure both source and target are of the same release. You will also have to have the means with which to copy files back and forth. If you are restoring to a new machine it would be safe to say that you have either placed these files on a backup drive. This article will also assume you have not already set up Evolution. You can restore over a currently configured Evolution, but we don’t want to do that. With that said, let’s begin the backup/restore.

Backup

If you open up Evolution click on File > Backup Settings. When you do this a new window will open asking you where to save the file and what name to give the file. The default filename is evolution-backup.tar.gz. If you do change the name, make sure you do not change the extension .tar.gz as that is the extension the Evolution restore system will need to see.

Believe it or not, that is all you need to do for the restore. The size of your Evolution folders will determine how long the backup process will take. I’m fairly confident you will be surprised how quickly this backs up.

Restore

Figure 1

Now for the fun. The restore process is just as simple. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will see the Welcome window.  After the first Welcome screen (just click Forward to get past that) you will see the only screen you need for the restore (see Figure 1).

The first step is to check the box for Restore Evolution from backup file. Once you have done that click the Folder button and then navigate to where you have your evolution-backup.tar.gz file saved. Once you have located that file click Apply and the restoration will commence.

When the restore is complete the only thing you will need to do is to enter your email password(s) in order to download the mail you’ve missed during the process.

If, like me, you use scripts for your signature, you will have to make sure those scripts are on the new machine (as well as in the same place).

Final thoughts

The backup/restore of the Evolution groupware suite is one of the most painless I have come across. It’s fast, reliable, and requires very little work.

You will be surprised to see how simple this set up is…as I will show you in this article.

Assumptions

Obviously the main assumption here is that you have an account already configured on your Exchange server. I will also make the assumption that you have added your machine to your domain. If you have not added your machine to the domain, check out my article “Join a Ubuntu machine to a Windows domain“. Having your machine on the domain will make life a lot easier for you. Finally, I will also assume you have Evolution already installed on your machine.

What you need to install

There is only one missing piece you need to install on your Linux machine. To do this follow these steps:

1. Open up the Synaptic package manager.
2. Search for “mapi” (no quotes).
3. Mark the package evolution-mapi for installation.
4. Allow Synaptic to pick up all of the dependencies.
5. Click Apply to install.
6. Wait for the install to finish.
7. Close Synaptic.

You are now ready to configure Evolution for your Exchange 2007 server.

Configuration

Figure 1

Open up Evolution then click Edit > Preferences > Mail Accounts > Add. This will open up the new account wizard where you will need to walk through the steps of adding an Exchange MAPI account. Most of the steps are fairly straight-forward. In fact, there is only one step where you might need a bit of help. Once you get to the Receiving Email step of the wizard you will want to set up the following:

• Server Type: Exchange MAPI
• Server: It will be preferable to use the name (and not IP address) of your server. If this is on the domain, just use the name of the server.
• Username: Your username for your Exchange account.
• Domain name: The domain name you are on.

Once you have configured this it is very important that you click the Authenticate button. This will test your configuration. You will be prompted for your password and, upons success, will be brought back to this same screen (see Figure 1). Now click the Forward button and you can continue on. The rest of the set up should not be a problem.

After configuration is complete Evolution will then want to sync with your Exchange server. Upon completion of the sync you will find all of your email as well as you calendar and contacts available. You will notice both your Local inbox as well as your Exchange inbox are available!

Final thoughts

If you have been following closely, you will most likely notice how the argument against Linux in the buisness world is becoming less and less valid. Being able to connect to your Exchange server with Evolution makes that argument even less relevant.

What I like most about gdeskcal is that it can always reside on your desktop, taking up very little resources, and staying out your way until you need it. Gdesktop doesn’t hover over your application windows or demand your attention unless it is giving you a reminder about an appointment. And gdeskcal is easy to install and configure. So let’s take a look at gdeskcal.

Installing

Most likely you will find gdeskcal in your distribution’s repositories. If you’re using Fedora, and you can not find them in your repos, you can always download the rpm file from pbone.net and install the gdeskcall associated with your release. You can also find the gdeskcal-skins package from pbone.net as well. The gdeskcal-skins package will be necessary if you want to use different themes.

To install gdesktop using your Add/Remove Software utility follow these steps:

1. Open up the utility from the Applications menu
2. Do a search for gdeskcal
3. Select both gdeskcal and gdeskcal-skins (the latter may not show up in your repos)
4. Click Apply to install

If you’re not a fan of the gui tools you can always run the command line installation like so:

sudo apt-get install gdeskcal

which will do the installation for you.

Running gdeskcal

Figure 1

You will find a menu entry for gdeskcal in the GNOME Accessories submenu of the Applications menu. When you click on the gdeskcal will open, revealing an elegant, simple calendar desktop applet (see Figure 1).

When gdeskcal opens you will be treated to the default theme. Most of the themes are transparent in nature so, depending upon your background, you might have to change themes so gdeskcal is easily viewable.

Changing your theme is quite simple. If you right click the gdeskcal applet a menu will appear with an entry “Change Skin”. When you select that entry a new window will open where you can select a skin. Now if you had to install gdeskcal via rpm you most likely will notice a lack of different skins to choose from. Even if you installed the gdeskcal-skins rpm file you still may not see any. The reason for this is that, for some odd reason, the gdeskcal-skins rpm installs the skins in the wrong directory. The default directory for gdeskcal skins is /usr/lib/gdeskcal/skins but the rpm installs them into /usr/share/gdeskcal/skins. In order for gdeskcal to see these skins open up a terminal window, su to root, and issue the command:

mv /usr/share/gdeskcal/skins/* /usr/lib/gdeskcal/skins/

Now all of the skins will appear in the gdeskcal skins window.

Adding an event

Upon first glance you will not see any obvious means to enter an event. Don’t worry, it’s a simple task.

Enter an event

Figure 2

Double click on a date and a new window will open. This new window is where you add events. As is you can not do anything in this window until you click the “New” button. Click that button and the window widow will change so that you can enter the details of the event (see Figure 2).

It should be obvious what you need to enter for an event. After you enter a date you won’t see anything change on the applet. If you hover your mouse over a date, however, a small popup will appear showing you the details of the event.

Final thoughts

Gdeskcal is one of those applications that you will come to rely on – especially if you are en Evolution user. It is a seamless application that takes up little space and little resources.

With a little preparation this setup will go quickly. Without preparation, it will take some time for Bogofilter to learn SPAM/HAM.

Your preparation

The easiest way to train Bogofilter is to have a collection of SPAM and HAM ready (approximately 200 each for training purposes) for it to use in the training process. These will be placed in SPAM and HAM folders (respectively) to be used once Bogofilter is installed and ready. But before you get to that point, you need to install Bogofilter and the Bogofilter Evolution plugin.

To install the necessary items open up your Add/Remove Software tool. Within this tool do a search for “bogofilter” (no quotes). You should see two particular pieces of software to install: bogofilter and bogofilter-evolution. Mark both of these applications for installation and click Apply to install them.

After they are installed you are ready to set up Bogofilter.

Bogofilter setup

The first thing to do is to enable the Bogofilter plugin in Evolution. Click on the Edit menu and select the Plugins entry. In this new window that opens click the Bogofilter check box to enable to plugin and then close the window.

Figure 1

Now that the plugin is enabled, it’s time to configure it within Evolution. Go back to the Edit menu and select Preferences. When the Preferences window opens up click on the Mail Preferences button and then the Junk tab (see Figure 1).

From within the Junk tab the first thing to do is to select Bogofilter from the Default Junk Plugin dropdown. Now go back to the top and make sure “Check incoming messages for junk” is checked. Close this window after you have completed these steps.

Now you are ready to train Bogofilter.

Training

A lot of people complain that Bogofilter doesn’t work well. The main reason it doesn’t work well is because it hasn’t been trained. Remember those SPAM and HAM emails you collected in the SPAM and HAM folders? Now you are going to use them. First click on the HAM emails. These are all good emails (not SPAM). Select all of these and mark them as Junk. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s necessary. Now click on the Junk folder and you should see all of those emails you just marked as SPAM. Select them all again and mark them as Not Junk. Bogofilter just learned what you consider to not be junk.

Now click on the SPAM folder, select all of these messages, and mark them as Junk.

That’s it. Bogofilter should now be trained properly. And remember the more training you give Bogofilter, the smarter it will be.

Final thoughts

Bogofilter is a great tool for keeping SPAM out of your inbox. And best of all, it doesn’t require you to open up a terminal and issue a bunch of commands in order to get it working properly.

In this article you will learn how to configure the open source groupware client, Evolution, to sync to your Google account so you can keep track of all of those calendars in one, easy location.

I am going to assume you already have Evolution installed. You will need an Evolution installation >= 2.12 in order to have both read and write access to your Google calendar. If your Evolution installation is pre-2.12 you will only have read access to your calendar. This does little good because you will not be able to add events to your Google calendar through Evolution. So if your installation is < 2.12 you will need to upgrade.

Setting up Google

Before you get into configuring Evolution, you have to make a small change to your Google account. You will first need to log onto your Google account (or Gmail account). Once logged in click the Settings link. Within the Settings window click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. For Evolution to be able to retrieve your email you are going to use IMAP to connect. Enable this by clicking the check box for “Enable IMAP”. Once that is finished click “Save Changes”. Now you’re ready to move onto Evolution.

Setting up Evolution for Gmail

We will first set up evolution to connect to your gmail account. Go to the Edit menu and click on Preferences. From within this window you will see the Mail Accounts “tab”. Click this tab and then click the “Add” button, which will open up the mail account wizard. This should be fairly straight forward. Here is the pertinent information you will need to configure for Evolution to be able to work with your Gmail account:

• incoming server: imap.gmail.com
• outgoing server: smtp.gmail.com
  
• username: use your full gmail address
  
• outgoing serer authentication type: Login

Outside of the above configurations, everything else will be configured as you would for your standard account. Once the wizard is complete you can make your Gmail account your default if you choose. By doing this, all outgoing email will default to this address (unless you select a different email address from the From dropdown.

Setting up Evolution for Google Calendar

Figure 1

Configuring a Google calendar is just as simple as is the email account. The first thing you need to do is right click the area that contains the listing of your calendars. When you do this you will see a new pop up menu.  Click “New Calendar” from this menu (see Figure 1) will open up the calendar wizard.

The first thing you will want to do is select Google Calendar. In this same window there are a few items to take care of (see Figure 2):

Name: Just a name for this calendar.

Username: Your Gmail address.

Calendar: Here you will want to click the Retrieve List button to get a list

Figure 2

of your available Google calendars. You will need to supply your gmail password for this to complet. Once it is complete you can select which calendar you want to add from your list of Google calendars.

After you complete the configuration click OK. You should, almost immediately, see your Google calendar populate your Evolution calendar.

And that’s it. You are now ready to interact with Google mail and calendar with Evolution.

Final thoughts

Evolution is one of the finest PIMs available. And if you are a Gmail/Google Calendar user, Evolution is just the solution to keep all of your accounts easy to manage.

Kontact is the KDE entry in the groupware client race. It is the proverbial tortoise in a race with one giant hare, but as the race continues, Kontact improves and evolves at a faster pace than any of its competition. Does that mean Kontact is ready to usurp your current groupware client? Probably not, but it is definately worth a long, hard look. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the features it offers.

Tools and features

Kontact has the usual suspects when it comes to groupware clients: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and todos. But along with these tools are a few surprises you might not expect but will gladly welcome.

• Summary: Overview of everything happening in your Kontact including: Upcoming events, new email, news feeds, etc.
• Notes: An infinite book of digital sticky notes. You can also drag and drop your notes into emails!
• News: Collect your RSS feeds in one place.
• KitchenSync: The universal syncing component.
• Journal: Keep your own digital journal within the confines of Kontact.
• Time Tracker: Keep track of time spent on projects and work.

Kontact can also communicate with many groupware servers. The list includes:

Kolab

SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server

eGroupware

OpenGroupware

Citadel

Microsoft Exchange*

* Support for Exchange is only partially implimented at this point.

Novell Groupwise

Obviously the single most important groupware server work must be done on Exchange. Once Kontact can fully commnicate with an Exchange server, Kontact will find far more support in the Enterprise level.

As far as features are concerned, the list is impressive. Outside of the usual groupware client features, Kontact also includes:

Mail

• GnuPG support built in
• Out of office replies
• Favorites folder
• Certificate manager
• Anti virus/Anti spam/Filters managers built in

Calendar

• Publish calendars
• Timeline/Time spent/What’s next views

Contacts

• Distribution lists
• Crypto settings for individual contacts
• Custom fields

Why you should use Kontact

If you are looking for a groupware client that offers more than the standard features, enables you to keep your life well organized (and Thunderbird isn’t enough for you) then Kontact is for you. You will enjoy the stability Kontact offers as well as the outstanding anti-spam tool (SpamAssassin) and anti-virus tool (ClamAV).

Why you should not use Kontact

Figure 1

If you need full Exchange support look the other way. It will be a while before the Kontact team manages to pull off full support for the most-deployed groupware server. You should also avoid Kontact if you prefer a less-is-more approach to your tools. You will understand completely when you first open up Kontact and see it’s “tools aplenty approach” (As you can see in Figure 1 to the left.).

Final Thoughts

I have used Kontact on and off for a number of years. I’ve seen it grow from an unstable, barely usable afterthought to a full-fledge, business-ready groupware client. Until recently I wouldn’t have recommended Kontact to anyone but the biggest KDE afficionados. Now, however, I think most people will find Kontact on par with most groupware clients. Outside of the lack of Exchange support (which is a deal breaker for many) I can’t see a reason not to give Kontact a try.

Evolution offers the following features:

• Email
• Shared (and private) calendars
• Tasks/Todos
• Contact management
• Support for S/MIME
• Pidgin integration
• SpamAssassin integration
• Fully GNOME integration
• Offline IMAP support
• Integrated GPG
• Support for Groupwise and Evolution built in
• Multiple account support

As you can see, Evolution offers everything you would want/need in a groupware suite. To top that off, the interface is very user-friendly.

To open up Evolution look in the Internet entry in the GNOME start menu. In that entry you should see the Evolution shortcut. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple setup wizard. This wizard will set up your default email address. Don’t worry, once you have completed the set up you can go back into accounts and set up as many email accounts as you wish.

Evolution Mail client

Evolution will default to the Mail application. As you can see, in the image to the right, The Evolution Mail client looks very familiar. The Evolution UI was created in such a way that users would have an instant familiarity. If you have used Outlook, the learning curve is practically /dev/null.

And Evolution is very easy to configure. From the Edit menu you will find the Preferences entry. Click that and the Preferences window will open up offering you every possible configuration you will need. The Preferences window is also where you add new accounts.

Evolution Preferences Window

In order to set up a new account you only have to click the Add button and proceed through the setup wizard again.

Another feature unique to Evolution is the plugin system. If you open the Edit menu you will see the Plugin entry. When you click on this entry you will open up the plugin window where you can enable/disable various plugins included with Evolution. But don’t think you are limited to only the included plugins. Doing a Google search you will see that there are quite a few worthy plugins to add. One such plugin is an RSS reader for Evolution. Some of these plugins (like the RSS reader) can be installed easily. In Fedora I simply run yum install evolution-rss and the plugin is automatically installed.

RSS Reader

The image to the left shows the gHacks RSS feed in Evolution. An outstanding news feed read in an outstanding groupware client.

Final Thoughts

I have been using Evolution since it’s beta release days. It was an incredible piece of software from the beginning and remains an incredible piece of softare. If you are looking for an open source groupware suite, it is time you evolved.