Claris OfficeMail Overview
Claris OfficeMail was complete LAN and Internet email solution for small offices and schools sold by Claris (now FileMaker). It was designed for sites which do not have full or even part-time system administration help. As such, ease of configuration and use are its primary goals.
Configuring a traditional LAN email system for LAN and Internet use in the 1990's involves many steps:
- Selecting a LAN email system.
- Selecting an ISP.
- Purchasing an Internet Gateway (UUCP? SMTP? etc.)
- Configuring the LAN system.
- Configuring the Internet gateway
- Registering an Internet domain.
- And on and on..
Most small businesses did not have the time or expertise to tackle this job. OfficeMail put all of these pieces into a single box.
OfficeMail Configuration
The user first chose the kind of connection. ClarisLink connections were completely pre-configured. A generic UUCP configuration is available if the user already has a UUCP account.
Next, the user entered contact information.
Now the user entered in the names of all of the email users. OfficeMail automatically assigned email names and preliminary passwords. These could be changed at any time.
Next, the users selected a modem from the list.
Now things got a bit complex. In order for a customer to have "instant gratification" with the product, we needed to activate a domain name right away. To do this, we handed out domains from Claris' own "clrs.com" domain. The customer could request a personal domain and activate it later (like "foobar.com").
Finally, the users was prompted for billing information. When the "Sign Up Now" button was pressed, OfficeMail connected to ClarisLink, verified the registration information, and activated the account. The customer has setup a LAN email system with an Internet gateway and custom domain in six easy steps!
The last "step" really wasn't a step at all -- it just summarized the setup information so that the user could install all of the email clients on the LAN desktop machines.
For ongoing server administration, OfficeMail generally took care of itself. It monitored all important aspects of the email system, and sent the system administrator mail warning of impending or persistent problems. For day to day administration, OfficeMail had a couple of important screens. First, it summarized disk usage:
In addition, OfficeMail let the administrator control Internet mail exchange frequency.
