Messaging Server's use of LDAP-based management tools is in contrast to its competitors, such as Exchange and Domino, which provide LDAP lookups only to their proprietary address books from LDAP clients coming in from outside. Despite its shortcomings, the updated Messaging Server has several innovative administrative tools that simplify management. Noteworthy features include dynamic grouping, which allowed PC Week Labs to create a group based on an LDAP query. Rather than requiring us to enter user names into a group list, the dynamic group query let us create a stored LDAP query that searches the LDAP directory for all users who match the query. This capability will make it easier to keep a group list more current.
Messages also can contain digital certificates to authenticate a message sender's identity.
Collabra simplifies searches Netscape requires non-SuiteSpot servers to implement the Internet messaging standards found in SuiteSpot. The company has offered these enhancements to standards groups working on the NNTP protocol, but until those changes are implemented in non-Collabra clients, those clients might be precluded from using Netscape's NNTP enhancements on the Collabra Server. Nevertheless, the Collabra Server's enhanced search functions were extremely useful in PC Week Labs' tests. The server permitted us to search across several discussion folders and let us store these search queries in virtual discussion folders for easy access. Collabra 3.0 allows detailed control of access to discussion folders, using SuiteSpot's centralized LDAP directory server.