The compatibility test results for ORF 5 and the new Windows platforms are just in. We are happy to report that ORF 5.0 is fully compatible with Windows 8 (for ORF Management Tools) and it is also compatible with Windows Server 2012 (with IIS 6 SMTP).
However, Microsoft® Exchange 2013 introduced a few breaking changes, so ORF 5.0 will not install on this platform. We will address these changes in ORF 5.1, a release specifically dedicated to Exchange 2013 compatibility.
Planning ahead with your SMAs has just gotten easier. Thanks to our recent website update, adding the SMA renewal deadline to your calendar is just one click away.
Go to the Licenses page and under “License Summary” part choose “(add to your calendar)”.
Download the reminder in iCal format for Microsoft Outlook import, or add the reminder directly to your Google Calendar. Scanning the QR code with your smartphone will add the event to your phone calendar.
We just have released the third beta version of ORF 5, which extends the beta expiration from July 1 to September 15, 2012. If you already have one of the previous betas installed, be sure to upgrade in time to prevent the beta from expiring. The new release can be downloaded from the beta microsite.
It is a question that comes up frequently at our Tech Support – OK, the email was blacklisted by the Sender Blacklist, but which item triggered the blacklisting exactly?
The upcoming ORF release will offer three handy improvements to help answering these questions.
Predecessors of ORF 5 already support entering optional comments with IP, email, keyword, etc. expressions and these are logged on a hit. This can help identifying the expression in question. Due to a technical constraint, however, these comments were logged as “(Unicode comment cannot be displayed)” if they contained any characters outside the 7-bit ASCII table, which is pretty much the Latin alphabet and numbers only. We overcame this constraint in ORF 5 and now the logged comments are fully Unicode-compliant. Let you speak Russian or Danish, you can use your national alphabet without limitation.
Expression comments are sadly omitted in many cases, though, and ORF has nothing to log. Nothing is lost either; we have two features for these cases.
The first one is very simple: one-click sortable lists. Remember the Sort button next to the lists in ORF 4? It is gone. It really should not have been there in the first place. Bad, bad Sort button. Lists are ought to get sorted by one click in the header, because that is the maximum effort to be exerted to make order and find things.
The second one is a bit more exciting: the Test button that took over the place of the Sort button (which is, again, gone, forever) for every major list. Say you want figure out which Sender Blacklist expression blacklisted emails from my-bosses-best-friend@example.com (ouch!), but the log did not reveal any further information. Just click Test, enter my-bosses-best-friend@example.com and you will get a live, editable list of expressions matching that address. Like *@example.com. Turns out it was not the best.idea.ever, but hey, now you can fix it.
Stay tuned, we are coming back with more next week.
In this sixth article of our ORF 5 series, we look into two minor improvements the new ORF release will offer.
Noticed that blue thing below the menu? That is the brand new and shiny toolbar, implemented in all three administrative tools of ORF.
True to the role of toolbars, this one brings the most frequently used actions right under your fingertips (1). The dropdown design also acts as a secondary shortcut menu, making the tools more discoverable and faster to use (2).
You will find the the connection information here (3) which helps identifying which ORF installation your are currently working with.
The toolbar also hosts another new feature, the Notifications button (see screenshots below).
Basically, this is the entry point of ORF’s new asynchronous notifications system. This is meant to eliminate situations when you get interrupted by randomly popping up dialogs like “Hey there’s a new version available!”, “You really should do something about these waiting items!” or “Look, I can create dialog boxes out of nowhere HAHAHA isn’t it great?”. There are many background operations in ORF, from checking for updates, to querying the status of the Transport Agents. All these operations may required your attention occassionally but from ORF 5, they are all neatly line up here.