Mozilla Thunderbird Configuration Guide

Mozilla Thunderbird is the official front end client of SOGo.

Mozilla Thunderbird version 2, 3.1, 10 ESR (Extended Support Release), 17 ESR, 24 and 31 are supported and it is recommended to use version 31 of Thunderbird.

In order to download and install Mozilla Thunderbird, please visit:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/organizations/all-esr.html

When using version 24 or 31 of Thunderbird, you can use the latest version of Mozilla Lightning. Use the Add-ons manager of Thunderbird or visit:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/lightning/

When using version 17 ESR of Thunderbird, you can use Mozilla Lightning version 1.9.1. In order to download the extension, please visit:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/lightning/versions/1.9.1

For Thunderbird 2 and 3.1, you need the _Inverse Edition_of Mozilla Lightning. It provides back ported features, bug fixes and security fixes from the current development version of Mozilla Lightning. For Thunderbird 2, it is based on release version 0.9 of Lightning. For Thunderbird 3.1, it is based on 1.0b2.

In order to download and install Mozilla Lightning – Inverse Edition for Thunderbird 2 or 3.1, please visit:

http://www.sogo.nu/downloads/frontends.html

The SOGo Connector and Integrator extensions are provided to perfect the integration of Mozilla Thunderbird 2, 3.1, 10 ESR, 17 ESR, 24 and 31 with the SOGo groupware solution.

First of all, the SOGo Connector extension transforms Thunderbird into a full DAV client for groupware servers such as SOGo, eGroupware or Citadel. It does this by adding support for remote DAV address books and by adding features to be used along with the Lightning calendar extension.

Among supported features of the SOGo Connector extension, we have:

On the other hand, the SOGo Integrator extension transforms Thunderbird into a pure "heavy" client for SOGo. Whereas the SOGo Connector is meant for portability (horizontal integration), the SOGo Integrator makes use of the features and layout only available from SOGo (vertical integration).

Among the supported features of the SOGo Integrator extension, we have :

In order to download and install the SOGo Connector and Integrator extensions, please visit:

http://www.sogo.nu/downloads/frontends.html

Prior to installing the SOGo Integrator extension, you should read the following chapter – SOGo Integrator Customization.

The customization steps described here involves understanding of XML and of text file edition. If you do not have those skills, it is recommended that you don’t try to use this extension.

There are actually two steps in the configuration of a working environment for SOGo Integrator. First of all, the Integrator will use the same user name used to connect to the first email server configured in Thunderbird. It is a current limitation but it will fit nearly all configurations out there.

For testing purpose, you are strongly recommended to create and configure an additional user profile for Thunderbird. This is for two reasons. The first is because of the limitation mentioned above. The second is because the Integrator will synchronize your personal address book onto the SOGo server and then remove it so that only your personal address book on SOGo will be available. If you are not able to do that, you may want to make a copy of that address book beforehand.

The second part requires editing one file in the extension file sub tree to specify where the SOGo server is located. This is done by hand. In an enterprise environment, this step is only required once per release since the updates are expected to propagate automatically. 

Uncompress (using a ZIP or jar tool) the SOGo Integrator XPI and locate the following file:

This file is used for locating the extension update server and the SOGo server, which we consider to be the same for the moment. There is a line starting with a "Seq" tag and with an attribute named "isi:updateURL". Replace the host part of that url with the SOGo server you want to connect to.

For example, one would replace:

by:

if the SOGo server is accessible from the following URL:

Note that if you changed the x-webobjects-server-url configuration setting from your HTTP server configuration file for SOGo, the value must match the one you specify in isi:updateURL – even the port number.

Moreover, you must change the value of the sogo-integrator.autocomplete.server.urlid preference from defaults/preferences/site.js to match the identifier of your SOGoUserSources. This source will be used by Thunderbird for autocompletion.

Once you’re done modifying the configuration file, save your changes and reconstruct the XPI file. 

Now start Thunderbird and install your newly modified extension.

Installation is relatively straightforward. You need to make the updates.php script available through your HTTP server at the URL you’ve specified from the extensions.rdf file. The updates.php script can be found in the SOGo sources, under the Scripts directory.

The updateLink section of the XML payload returned to sogo-integrator is built dynamically using the SCRIPT_URI variable, which is only available when running with mod_rewrite. It should work out of the box as long as the script is placed in the same directory as the xpi files.

If it is not the case, then the link should be adjusted to fit the actual file layout:

An http request similar to the following can be used to make sure that the generated link is correct:

Please refer to your HTTP server documentation for the installation and configuration of PHP.

To configure the SOGo update server, you need to modify the updates.php script directly.

Adding an extension to be pushed automatically by the update server require you to modify the $plugins array from updates.php and also adjust accordingly SOGo Integrator’s extensions.rdf file.

For example, to automatically install SOGo Connector, SOGo Integrator and Lightning, you would have:

The syntax is:

The path of the filename, specified in the filename parameter, is relative to the location of the updates.php script. For extensions that are dependant on the architecture and operating system (Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, etc.), they can be placed in subdirectories relative again to the updates.php script (but the filename must be identical in all subdirectories). For exemple, for Mozilla Lightning, we could have:

If you eventually want to disable an extension, that is, without removing it from your users' computers, you can specify disabled as the version number.

Next is to modify the extensions.rdf file. Again, to automatically install SOGo Connector, SOGo Integrator and Lightning, you would have:

Using SOGo Integrator, you can also push user-settings for any part of Thunderbird or its extensions. There are two kind of user-settings push:

Settings that pushed are pushed during initial configuration are controlled by the ./defaults/preferences/site.js file from SOGo Integrator. Here is an example:

Preferences that are forced upon every restart of Thunderbird are controlled from the ./chrome/content/general/custom-preferences.js configuration file.

Here is an example: