This post was inspired by a comment from user Gregorio on a previous post.
Over the last few years, SherWeb has developed an exclusive Control Panel using unique proprietary .NET technologies. One of SherWeb’s most used web interface, it allows customers to easily and intuitively manage their Hosted Exchange, SharePoint, CRM, mobile and BlackBerry synchronization. SherWeb’s team of developers is always on the lookout to update and improve it. The original Control Panel was revamped this winter with a new interface and improved features.
So far, users have not been informed of updates made to the Control Panel, but from now on, we intend to regularly blog about new versions and updates. To make sure these posts don’t become confusing, we will identify them by version number.
The following features were added in version 2.10 published two weeks ago and in version 2.11 published this week.
- New distribution list features (2.11)
- BlackBerry wiping (2.11)
- SharePoint URL reminder (2.10)
- Organization summary page (2.10)
- Manager and direct reports (2.10)
- BlackBerry PIN message
New distribution list features (2.11)
You can now change the display name for all of your distribution lists, which will also change the name displayed in the Outlook address book. You also have the ability to grant or deny permissions on your distribution lists; allowing you to determine who can send messages to a specific distribution list. A select/deselect all checkbox has been added to the “manage members” page as well.
BlackBerry wiping (2.11)
This feature has been requested a few times by our customers. It has been added to the BlackBerry command list in a user’s home page and allows you to wipe a device clean.
SharePoint URL reminder (2.10)
Every user of an organization can now see the organization’s SharePoint URL on the Control Panel’s home page when they log in.
Organization summary page (2.10)
Want to know what’s going on with your organization? The summary page gives you a one-glance view of how many Exchange mailboxes you have, which plan they are using, and which mailstore they are on. It’s a quick way to make an inventory of your assets and a useful tool to understand what you pay for.
Manager and direct reports (2.10)
This handy feature allows you to set a user’s manager. The changes are reflected through Outlook’s user property page and through the Control Panel’s user property page.
BlackBerry PIN message
A very useful feature that has been on our Control Panel for a while but doesn’t get much attention. It allows you to send a PIN message to a user’s BlackBerry device. 
A PIN message has the same format as an email, the speed of an SMS message, but it doesn’t go through Exchange and doesn’t cost a thing. The BlackBerry server receives the message and immediately pushes it to the device. You can also send a message to an organization, through the organization’s main page, in the BlackBerry section.
Although it is only a few months old, SherWeb’s new Control Panel is already a mature project. It is developed and fixed as soon as feature requests and bugs come in. The development team works closely with the support team to ensure they can efficiently serve our customers and make sure our clients have the best user experience with our products.
by Christian Droulers. A software developer at SherWeb, Christian works mainly on the Control Panel. He has been with the company since April 2008.
Hi, now i see we are on Control panel v2.13, what are the upgrades?
Thanks,
Gregorio
@Gregorio
Version 2.13 only fixed a few bugs. 2.14 will probably be the same. It’s a stable product and new features are slower nowadays, since we are working on newer, more important projects.
Hope this helps!
Chris
Thanks!!!…
Hi guys,
I’m very new to your White Label Reseller program, but I’d like to give you some feedback as someone who’s very concerned about making sure my clients feel as though the service they’re buying from me, is actually a service from me. After all, that’s what a white label program is meant to provide.
I intend to persist with SherWeb, because your Control Panel is the cleanest and most user-friendly Control Panel available. This is a BIG bonus to me and my clients. However, there are a number of weaknesses with what is supposed to be a 100% white label service. The reality is, at present, it is not. But it could be, and here are some suggestions that I believe could help …
LOCALISATION
As I’m sure you’d agree, localisation is pivotal to making a service truly white or private label. But there are a number of simple, yet standout things, that you’ve missed.
• While your company is Canadian, there are more languages in the world than English and French. Having said that, if only English is chosen, it would be good to have the language changer tab disappear from the Control Panel.
• If a reseller chooses a default country, as in my case, Australia, it needs to be possible to have that default country be the first choice in the country drop-down when creating new users and entering their address details. So, in my case, instead of the default country always being the United States, we need it to be Australia.
• Even better than the above, would be to have the option to actually choose which countries we as resellers will service. So the ability to enable or disable countries at the discretion of the reseller would be an excellent white label feature.
OUTLOOK WEB ACCESS
• In OWA, by default, the first language is currently English (Canada) and the first Time Zone is (GMT -5:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada). I understand that Microsoft products have certain localisation limitations, but again, this is a another giveaway that I am not actually the provider of the service and that the service is not hosted in Australia, but overseas. Surely there must be a way to set a default country and a default time zone in OWA that is based on the reseller’s default country, and not that of SherWeb’s geographical location.
• Even if I set up CNAME records to point “webmail.ezyexchange.com.au” to your OWA, the redirect URL still comes up showing the generic “webmail.ihostexchange.net” address. Again, this is not truly 100% white label and gives away that I am not the actual provider of the service. There also needs to be a way for me to buy an SSL certificate in order to make OWA work exclusively with my domains only, as is presently available from the likes of groupSPARK.
MX CLUSTER ADDRESSES
• Again, even if I set up CNAME records to mask the spam1, spam2, spam3 and spam4 addresses, if I ping, eg, spam1.ezyexchange.net.au the first result comes up as spam1.ihostexchange.net, before the IPs then show. Again, another giveaway that I’m not the provider . Is it possible to also give us the IPs of the MX addresses, instead of just the URLs?
AVAILABLE PLANS
• All available plans are labelled as “iHostExchange 3Gb” etc. We really need the ability to call the plans whatever we want, and if we can’t have that, then you really need to lose “iHostExchange” from the plan names. Again, leaving these as they are is a giveaway that I don’t have control over the plans that I’m supposed to be providing.
• Can we have detailed reseller pricing on all of the available size plans? There’s no point providing them as options if we can’t safely price them to our clients without losing money.
AUTOMATIC PROFILE CREATOR
• While I understand that SherWeb is a Canadian company, it is not truly white label to offer a product that only offers English and French as the available languages. My suggestion here is that you need to provide a version of the Automatic Profile Creator that is just exclusively in English for International countries that only speak English.
In Australia, for example, we would never offer French as the only alternative language. Thus, this is another giveaway that I am not the actual provider and that the providing company is most likely in Canada, France or Belgium, since these would the only countries that could provide a service like hosted Exchange, and would who provide English and French as their only two language choices.
Likewise, when the profile is created, can the GUI just say something like “Your new Outlook profile has been created”, instead of “Your new ihostexchange profile has been created”.
FAQs
• There don’t appear to be any populated FAQs in the Admin Control Panel. With the wealth of information available on sherweb.com, surely it would make sense to make this information available in a generic form that can be edited from within the Control Panel. Or am I missing something?
WHOIS
• Doing a search of “ihostexchange.net” reveals that the domain name is registered in Canada. Again, a giveaway that I’m not the provider of the service. Is there a way to disable even more of the registration information than is blocked/masked at present?
• Again, surely there must be a way to mask all URLs with my own, even if it means having to buy SSL certifcates to do so like can be done at groupSPARK. If this is possible, can you please provide the information on how to do this.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I hope these comments are helpful.