IMAP vs Outlook Integration

[fstnboy]

Hi all,

We've got a requirement to Integrate Alfresco with Outlook for dragging and dropping emails and attachments.

We are looking at the IMAP vs Outlook Integration options. One of the key requirements will be to search for a specific folder instead of browsing into it, because our repository will be pretty big and would be quite difficult for users to browse into the folder they want.

Is it possible to search for folders within Outlook with IMAP protocol? If possible, I guess this would be limited to free text search queries (cm:name, cm:content, cm:description, cm:title), right?

Thanks.

[afaust]

IMAP protocol can be very problematic with very large repository structures as the mail client (Outlook) typically looks up the entire folder structure during initial connection. This can put a significant amount of strain on the system and the client. Technically, IMAP provides the ability to search for folders by name, but it isn't necessary because the Outlook client always syncs the entire structure. Then you only may need to search for mails / content, and this is a whole other beast as Outlook (to my knowledge) only supports searching for mails that have already been retrieved / synched from the IMAP server (Alfresco).

If you really must provide an Outlook integration and have the entire repository accessible, you likely won't do without the Outlook integration. If you can restrict the necessary access to a few folders / locations, then IMAP is the simpler / cheaper solution.