I am pleased to announce that ExQuilla, a Thunderbird addon that provides access to messages and contacts in Microsoft Exchange Server, is now available. This is a beta-quality release. ExQuilla is currently only available for Windows, in English, and supports Thunderbird version 9, 10, and 11. Linux and Mac versions are planned for the future.
The most current version of ExQuilla is available from the MesQuilla site here. A slightly older version (due to review delays) is available from Mozilla’s addon site here.
This version supports access to messages and personal contacts from a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 or 2010 using Exchange Web Services (EWS). Calendar support is not currently enabled, but is under development.
For an overview of ExQuilla, visit the ExQuilla support site.
Kent James
This is great news! Keep up the good work!
Great! I look forward to testing it out!
I’m hoping this will work with Hotmail ActiveSync http://windowslivehelp.com/solution.aspx?solutionid=46bd910c-ed99-497d-80d7-ab8b11237ed0 and I can finally have my Hotmail alongside my other email in Thunderbird.
ActiveSync is a different technology than the “Exchange Web Services” that is used by ExQuilla. ExQuilla will not do ActiveSync, nor will it really be of any help with HotMail. Sorry.
Also, ActiveSync has significant licensing fees associated with applications that use it, plus it is primarily focused on phone users, so it is unlikely to be a viable technology for a Thunderbird addon. Sorry.
Hy,
thanks for your efforts on ExQuilla
Unfortunately it stops getting mails from some folders of my Exchange Account – telling me the folder is “unavailable from server”.
Is there any limit on the number of mails which can be processed, those folders do contain mostly a large number of mails (from 300 up to 2400).
Is there a possibility to limit the download to a specific timeframe (month, days).
Anyway its really a good work.
Best regards
Rolf Buschmann
The “unavailable from server” message appears when the app thinks that the server is inaccessible. I’m guessing that your connection to your server is not 100% reliable, either because of internet issues or slowness of the server itself.
The initial download of message summaries from the Exchange server is the toughest part of getting started with ExQuilla. That download is done in many small pieces, and is supposed to start from where it left off if the complete download fails and you try again later.There is no capability to only download a limited number of message summaries. Once the initial download is finished though, then subsequent updates are quite fast.
Are you using the 11.1 version? That version has an extensive log that is kept all of the time, and is easily opened as a file by the user. I would be very interested in seeing a copy of that log file that shows the failed downloads.
Yes Version is 11.1
Do you mean the logfile which may be enabled in Exchange server settings menu –> soaprequests.log
This was deactivitated by default, but I might turn it and have a look whether it gives some helpful information.
If you have version 11.1 (which is the current version on my personal hosting at http://mesquilla.net/exquilla-currentrelease-tb-windows.xpi), but is not on the Mozilla addon site) then there is a new menu Tools/ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange/Open ExQuilla log file That is the log file I am talking about.
I added that because it is always available, and easier to work with (as well as more complete) than the previous log, which logs SOAP messages.
The
Need any help getting the linux version working?
The main thing that I would need for the Linux environment is a working VMWare image that can compile and run current versions of Thunderbird (preferably using CentOS). There are just some minor code fixes that I might need to do, mostly surrounding string handling, to work with Linux and Mac. If you had that available, I would try to use it. There is a fairly long list of prerequisites for the Linux builds on the Mozilla pages, and I just have not had the time to go through those.
Hy,
managed to identify the problem – that exquilla stops reading mails from exchange server.
Obviously calendar/event notifications or invitations (e.g. from google or outlook) prevent ExQuilla from loading mails and the “unavailable from server” message appears.
I removed these “mails” and ExQuilla continues reading mails.
Best regards
Rolf Buschmann
Thanks, this is enormously helpful. This current release is a beta release, where I am trying to get feedback from people who use different features of Exchange, so your identifying a specific problem like this is really valuable. I’ll try to get a fix for this in the next week or so.
Sorry but there seems to be another problem
Thunderbird displays messages in list, but it won’t show the message contents – just a blank white field.
The other accounts do display mails.
Any suggestion how to solve this ?
This particular issue I have had reported before, but have not pinned down. One question though – did you change the username, or are you using a username that is different from your email address?
In the 11.1 version, which is released here but not on the Mozilla site, I have added additional logging specifically to catch this issue. If you could install 11.1, and then send me portions of the log file that you can open with Tools/ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange/Open ExQuilla log file that would be very helpful. I would like to see the log messages that appear when you click on an email, and nothing appears.
Hy,
here are the log messages which appear by clicking on emails.
Best regards
—>
2012-02-13 12:42:36 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG Response type is FindFolderResponseMessageType
2012-02-13 12:42:37 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG URI of selected message: exquilla-message://mail%40rbuschmann%2Ede@profimailer.de/Posteingang#1568
2012-02-13 12:42:37 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG FetchMessage for uri
2012-02-13 12:42:37 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG Failed to find EWS server with URI
2012-02-13 12:42:37 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG FetchMessage for uri
2012-02-13 12:42:37 extensions.exquilla.base DEBUG Failed to find EWS server with URI
<—
Thank you very much Kent,
I have managed to solve my issues with making the plugin work with Exchange.
I do have one challenge when it comes to Username & Password.
The Exchange provider is using a format of
Username: firstname.lastname
Password: 12345678
Opposed to (I update this method to login with the above format)
Username: firstname.lastname@domain.com
Password: 12345678
OR (This Domain method is not working at all for me)
Username: firstname.lastname
Password: 1234568
Domain: domain.com
And therefor Thunderbird is requesting username and password every time it’s loaded for the first time.
THINGS I DID TO MAKE IT WORK
OS: Win7
TB: 10.0.2
Plugins:
- Lightning (1.2.3)
- Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar and Tasks Provider (1.7.13)
- ExQuilla (11.2)
I had to change my path to
https://webmail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
The Exchange setup we are accessing required the “Email Login” method, but with a username, not email address.
I hope this is helpful to the development of a great plugin.
Thank you,
James
Actually, I have just solved my login issue above.
Tools > Account Settings > Microsoft Exchange Server > User Name: firstname.lastname
I changed it from the email address that was entered using the wizard to the format I required and now it is automatically logging in when I restart TB.
Thank you for this fantastic plugin.
James
Thanks for your comments. I’m still trying to get a handle on the variety of configurations that people are using.
Hello James,
When is the MAC version expected to be releases?
Thanks,
Right now my priority is to get the messaging and address book portions reliably usable (though not free of UI blemishes), and after that get the Linux and Mac versions working. My current best guess is that either version 14 (which I should release in about 4 weeks) or version 15 (which would be in about 10 weeks) should have Linux and Mac support.
I just want to say that I really appreciate this plug-in! You can count me in the list of people who would be willing to pay for this when you feel it is ready.
Thanks for the words of encouragement. My daily development focuses on the things in the addon that are not working well, so it is easy for me to mostly see the problems (of which there are still quite a few unfortunately, though I am committed to solving them). It is great to hear it is helpful to you!
Thank you very much rKent , ExQuilla very helpful to me .
When is the linux version release ?
I expect Linux and/or Mac version is 4 – 10 weeks.
rkent
This is very nice! Hoping for a Mac build soon
Is there anything I can do to help? I know this is probably closed source, but perhaps you can fork off/create small test cases for the parts/libs that you suspect will be troublesome, and the “community” can help out porting those?
Since I also have done some work in the TB core code, I routinely use a style that normally does not need much “porting” work. Yet it also does not just work with investigation, either. The C++ code, with its strong type checking, tends to just work once you get it to compile and link at all. The javascript side so far has caused more issues, which seems a little odd. Like XUL code that worked just fine in Windows did not work in Linux.
But really the main thing that I need are answers to stupid questions, since I have so little experience in the OSX world. Like, are both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of OSX commonly in use? Is it more typical to see separate 32 and 64 bit versions, or are universal binaries the expected packaging method?
AFAIK, most of Mac OS is now 64-bit (kernel, most libraries, except legacy stuff like Carbon); but many apps have not yet been ported. That’s not really an issue though, as you can run 32-bit apps just fine on a 64-bit kernel. I think Xcode by default sets up your app to build 64-bit, but if you want to you can easily enable fat binaries or do 32-bit instead. I would go with whatever is easiest for you, 32-bit only, or universal binary with both (if that buys you anything).
Just as a FYI, as I investigate this more I realize that the norm is to provide both 64 bit and 32 bit OSX libraries when packaging the addon, but you use the Mozilla extension chrome manifest packaging and not the “universal binary” packaging that an App would use. Anyway, I expect next week to submit an update of my “New Account Types” addon (which is a precursor to ExQuilla) to AMO, and hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll release ExQuilla 14 to AMO and at my ExQuilla site (https://exquilla.zendesk.com/home) with Windows, Linux, and OSX support.
Hi rkent! Thanks for your great work on this plugin. It will be great free alternative for Microsoft Outlook
Now we are having issues with the connector. Server unavailable
Here is the log :
request at 10c14c40 time 2012-05-24 19:24:26.267000 UTC – SOAP call envelope URI: https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa
AllProperties
request at 10c14c40 time 2012-05-24 19:24:27.200000 UTC – response document (envelope missing)
Error de lectura XML: error de sintaxis
Ubicación: https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa/auth/logon.aspx?url=https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa/&reason=0
Número de línea 6, columna 62:<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
————————————————————-^
request at 10429d60 time 2012-05-24 19:26:33.426000 UTC – SOAP call envelope URI: https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa
AllProperties
request at 10429d60 time 2012-05-24 19:26:34.577000 UTC – response document (envelope missing)
Error de lectura XML: error de sintaxis
Ubicación: https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa/auth/logon.aspx?url=https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa/&reason=0
Número de línea 6, columna 62:<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
————————————————————-^
Do you find something suspicius here?
The URI:
https://correo.habitatsoft.com/owa
is the address to the web interface, not the Exchange Web Services connection. Did you use autodiscover in configuring?
Hello rkent,
Thank you for this excellent extension.
I have installed ExQuilla on MAC and it is working fine except that I can’t access exchange Global Address List (GAL) as well as the calendar. Is there any plan to support Global search?
Thanks for your kind support,
Hussein
Several people have mentioned the issue with the GAL, so that is now a high priority addition that I intend to add, probably either in version 15 (due in a few weeks) or version 16 (due in about 2 months).
What I can add easily though is to search the GAL when you enter an email address. What I cannot do, because it is not supported in Exchange Web Services, is to show a browsable list of the full GAL.
The calendar is a bigger issue. There is the beginning of support for calendar in the existing code, in fact you can enable calendar by setting the following hidden preference to false: extensions.exquilla.disableCalendar But it is quite buggy and has many missing features, which is why it is disabled currently. It will be many months, probably toward the end of the year, before there will be additional work on the calendar, but that is intended eventually.
Hi,
First of all thanks for creating this add-on – I really don’t want to be forced into using Outlook just to use the companies email system, this is just what I wanted!
I do however have 1 minor issue – if I have more than one ExQuilla account on the system it seems to get really confused between the two accounts – for instance sometimes folders of one account will show as being present on the other account. Also, if you move messages into ExQuilla accounts then they end up being randomly put in one of the 2 accounts I have setup.
This is, unfortunately, a well-know problem with the Mozilla core code. (See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=654348 if you are interested). I have a partial workaround in my existing code, but I know it is not working perfectly. I have some ideas about what else I might do to work around this, but I have not get around to it yet – and this will not be fixed in ExQuilla 15 which will be released in a couple of weeks.
@James,
Thanks for the input. After many unsuccessful attempts, tried your steps, and it works.
Regards,
Bhaskar
Hello,
This is truly a groudbreaking link in the chain of escaping microsofts hold. It works great, and while thunderbird still seems to need a bit of work, is awesome. Great work. I tip my hat to you
Pete
Hello. Unfortunately the plugin gives still now stops with “server unavailable” after trying “Updating subfolfers” for some 20seconds.
I tried all suggestions below (w/o http(s), /EWS…, usernames etc) with no success.
Via android-smartfone I can synchronize this account without any problems. There is a username different from the email-address, a domain-entry ans SSL.
Why do the same settings not work on ExQilla…?
uro
“Why do the same settings not work on ExQilla…?” – phones usually use ActiveSync, which is a different Microsoft technology than Exchange Web Services.
It is possible that your Exchange Account has disabled web services, if so then ExQuilla won’t work. Really the best thing to do though is to try to use autodiscover when you setup the account. If that fails, then it is likely that your server does not support web services.
After the recent updates, I can send but not receive messages via ExQuilla. Checking the log file, I see the following:
INFO Message disposition not set, defaulting to SaveOnly (in file c:/tb/aurora/src/mailnews/extensions/exquilla/native/src/msqEwsSoapRequest.cpp line 2929)
But I have no idea how to set the message disposition. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Jeff
Sorry to hear you are having issues.
The log message that you showed is fairly normal as a part of sending messages, but not receiving. It would help if I had a much longer section of the log file to see. Could you create a ticket at https://exquilla.zendesk.com/home and post there a longer portion of the logfile? That will be more private than the here, which is not really intended as a support channel.
Exquilla doesn’t work with TB12:(
The latest version of ExQuilla will work with the current version of Thunderbird (15 at the moment) and 2 others. “ExQuilla 16″ works with 14-16. You would need to use an older version (ExQuilla 14) to work with Thunderbird 12, which you can get from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/exquilla-exchange-web-services/versions/
But I would not recommend that. This is in a fairly early stage, so each newer version has a number of important bug fixes.
Hi. I was just wondering if there were any plans to support the postbox email client?
thanks
Not at the moment. It is not currently possible to do binary addons with PostBox without some sort of NDA agreement with them. Perhaps in the future this might be of interest.
Hi rkent – great work on this!!
Wondering, do you have a trac or bugtracker site, or some other method for providing feedback/reporting issues? Or should I just do it here?
I have 2 issues I’d like to report, both relate to the address book functionality (GAL). One being able to force/schedule download to cache/offline access the whole GAL (which currently only seems to cache the entries you have previously searched for and surrounding matches, so there’s no way of calling up the full GAL or a specific AB and browsing it) and the other, a bug in calling up AD entries for addressing emails or scheduling events. It seems that many GAL entries do not work (depending on the UI element, either don’t appear at all, or appear but you cannot select them, both for the same reason). The criteria always seems to be the same – the entry doesn’t appear to have an email address. If that were true, it would make sense, as there’s no point trying to address an email or event to someone that you cannot reach by email. However, that is never the case here. They all have email addresses. The ones that appear to be blank in that field, and so do not work, look like they may be a multi valued proxyaddresses field in AD. So if the entry only had one proxyaddresses value, it works. But if there are more than one (which is pretty much the usual except in a brand new Exchange implementation) it doesn’t seem to parse the main SMTP. Can it not simply use the ‘mail’ attribute instead? This is single valued and should always equal the main SMTP address.
Rgds
Col
Support is normally done at the ExQuilla support site here: http://exquilla.zendesk.com/home The bug tracker that I use is not currently publically viewable.
Issue 1: “the whole GAL”. I would like to be able to do this, but Microsoft does not provide any ability to access the GAL through Exchange Web Services except by search. So I would have to search through the alphabet one letter at a time, and reject duplicates. Once done, there is not method available to keep that up to date, so it would have to be redone periodically. So this would be unworkable for a large GAL, but might be manageable for a smaller GAL of no more than a few hundred entries. Do you think it would be worth it, given those constraints?
Issue 2: “many GAL entries do not work”. I would be helpful for me to see the raw SOAP response that you are seeing when you do the search. You can get this by going to Tools/Account Settings/Microsoft Exchange Server/ and enabling “Log Server Interactions” right before you do a GAL search, search, then disable it and Open Log File. Of course feel free to anonomize the data if you feel that is needed. You can attach that to a support ticket, or email to me at rkent@mesquilla.com
Thanks for you interest and feedback.
Eager to see the Linux version coming!
The Linux version has been out for awhile now.
I know it’s counter-intuitive, but Is it possible to suppress the GAL? I have some contacts stored in an school account and I would like to make them available to my family. Unfortunately, hundreds of unnecessary email addresses are then popping up every time they compose a new message!
Thanks for a GREAT plugin, I use it all the time.
It is not currently possible to disable this for GAL only, but it is a feature that I need to add.
It is however possible to turn off all autocomplete for all exchange address books. There is a hidden boolean preference “extensions.exquilla.doAbAutocomplete” that if set to false, will stop ExQuilla autocomplete. (Use tools/options/Advanced/General/Config Editor to set hidden preferences).
I’m quite excited about being able to use Thunderbird at work, thank you!
It doesn’t seem to work with my company’s Exchange though; I keep getting the login/password dialog. The log says:
request at 1028ec90 time 2013-03-07 18:34:55.015409 UTC – SOAP call envelope URI: https://mail.company.com/EWS/Services.wsdl
AllProperties
request at 1028ec90 time 2013-03-07 18:34:55.385660 UTC – response document (envelope missing)
XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: moz-nullprincipal:{5187dd71-0097-674d-bb6e-e1693e737dfc}
Line Number 1, Column 1:
^
The server redirects /EWS/Exchange.asmx to /EWS/Services.wsdl which, I assume, doesn’t have what Exquilla wants. Googling only found this comment thread
.
What am I doing wrong?
/EWS/Exchange.asmx is redirected to EWS/Services.wsdl when you enter /EWS/Exchange.asmx as a simple URL in a browser, but that should not happen when a correct SOAP message is sent to the server by ExQuilla.
However, one feature that I do not support is form-based authentication, though I am currently working on it and expect it will be supported in the next version. Perhaps you are using that?
What happens when you enter https://mail.company.com/EWS/exchange.asmx into a browser? If you get a simple name/password login popup from the browser, then you are using standard authentication, and ExQuilla should be working. If you get a login web page (such as from Forefront Threat Management Gateway) then you are using form-based authentication, and ExQuilla will not work for you until the next version. If that is your situation though, I am actively looking for sites to test form based authentication, and I would appreciate your involvement.
This conversation would be easier if you created a support request using http://exquilla.zendesk.com/requests/new
Hy
I’m wondering if FiltaQuilla also runs when my PC is shut down. I need to detach attachments to a file on the harddisk, where another programm runs trough them. Unfortunately this has to be done also on weekends and trough the night.
Thank you
FiltaQuilla is a Thunderbird function, so it only runs when Thunderbird is active. So it does not run when your computer is shut down. You need server filters for that.
I’m not sure though how you expect a program to run on detached attachments when your computer is shut down. Maybe I don’t understand your question properly.
I have installed ExQuilla has directed. Our server requires that you supply a password everytime you add on. I never get a message requesting a password. What can I do.
Version 21.0 of ExQuilla that I just released yesterday has some support for that scenario. Could you try that and see it it works for you? You’ll need to download this from my site instead of the Mozilla site, as it has not gone through review there yet.
Download and install using the links from:
https://exquilla.zendesk.com/entries/23609536-ExQuilla-21-0-Released
Also, if you want to follow this up, I would prefer if you start a support ticket on that site, or add a forum topic there, rather than use comments to old posts like this.