Upon visiting webmail.exa-networks.co.uk the user will be presented with this screen:

where they should follow the instructions.

Users familiar with the old Exa webmail will be used to seeing this Login box:

The new webmail login looks like this:

The user should enter their full e-mail address in the first box and the password provided to them by the ESA administrator at the user's company.

---

Once the user is logged in, they will see this screen:

...with the obvious difference that the user will see their own e-mail and not the examples shown here.

At the very top of the display there are four icons to gain access to the various sections of webmail. These icons remain at the top of the display throughout the webmail session:

After login to webmail this is the section that is shown on the rest of the screen below these four icons. It contains the elements that most users will recognize from other mail clients; the Folders Pane, Message List, Preview Pane, and the Toolbar of common e-mail actions.

Here the user's contacts can be found, added to and edited. Instructions here.

Webmail settings and customisations can be set in this section. Instructions here.

...will take the user out of webmail and back to the Login screen.

Here we see the Folders where all mail, sent, received or otherwise is stored.

• The Inbox is where all new mail arriving for the account will be stored. Notice that the number of unread messages in the Inbox is shown in brackets, and also in the title bar of the browser. See the full screen view.
• The Drafts folder is where unfinished e-mails may be saved, and the webmail will also save messages in progress there at a definable interval (see Personal Settings).
• The Sent folder contains all messages sent from the account via webmail, and also any that have been sent via other clients if they have been configured to use IMAP with the account.
• The Junk folder is created by webmail for the purpose of collecting Junk e-mail, also known as spam. This is incompatible with Exa's ESA spam filtering, and if account-local spam filtering is required, a folder called Spam should be created instead.
• Finally, Deleted Items: This folder contains all messages manually deleted by the user by selecting and clicking the icon in the toolbar.

Users may also add new folders to this list if they wish. See the Folders section of the Personal Settings for how to do this.

At the very bottom of the Folders Pane, notice the two links to Compact and Empty a selected folder. Compact will tidy up the way mail is stored on the Exa mailserver and is available for all folders; Empty is only available on the Junk and Deleted items folders, and with good reason - it will remove all mail in that folder.

In this example Inbox we can see all the elements associated with messages:

• Unread messages are highlighted bold and a blue star is shown to the left of the message subject.
• Read messages are unhighlighted and have a grey dot to the left.
• A paper clip is shown on the right to indicate a message has an attachment.
• Standard column headings are the Subject, Sender (or Recipient in the case of the Sent Items folder), Date and Size. Unlike some mail clients the columns can't be rearranged nor are extra information columns available, however, it is possible to sort these columns:

Here, by clicking the Sender column heading, we are able to change the sorting to that column instead. Clicking a column more than once will reverse the sort order, and also the direction pointed by the grey triangle - a reminder of the direction of the sort.

Selecting a single message is as simple as clicking anywhere on the line of the message. This also has the side effect of loading the message into the Preview Pane, which is expected mail client operation.

Beyond this however there are ways to select and choose multiple messages for deletion, moving to another folder or even simply searching for.

At the bottom of the Webmail screen can be found the preset selection options:

These options allow selection of All messages:

The Unread messages:

and of course None at all, which is how the initial screen would look on login.

• To select a range of messages, click a first message, hold down the Shift key and then click a last message.
• To select and de-select individual messages, hold down the Control key and click messages.

For example, the selection in the above image may have been arrived at by either:

1. Clicking the Select All option, holding down the Control key and clicking the second message;
2. Clicking the first message, holding down the Shift key, clicking the last message, then holding down the Control key and clicking the second message;
3. Holding down the Control key and clicking the first, third and fourth message

Once a message or messages have been selected it is possible to click and drag these messages to any of the folders in the Folders Pane. Here we can see the second message being dragged to the Junk folder:

To the right of the webmail screen is the search field . Typing in this field and pressing the Enter key will cause only those messages matching the entered text to show in the Messages List:

It is then possible to carry out the above selection options on just this subset of the messages in the current folder (Inbox, Deleted Items, etc.)

Selected messages may be deleted by either dragging them to the Deleted Items folder or by clicking the icon on the toolbar.

There is presently no method to completely delete a message from the outset. All messages must first go via the Deleted Items folder. Clicking the icon while in the Deleted Items folder will irretrievably delete a message. Please take care with this feature.

If a folder is particularly large in terms of the number of messages, webmail will only list a certain number of them in the Message List. To gain access to other messages, the user will need to change 'page' by means of the icons in the bottom right of the webmail screen:

The above searching and sorting features operate over the whole of the folder, and not just those visible on the current page.

By default the webmail is set to a maximum of 100 messages, but this may be changed in the Personal Settings section.

The Preview Pane comprises two main sections; The header section and the message section.

• The header section shows the message subject, the sender and recipient and the date the message was received. The small icons place the e-mail address of the sender or recipient respectively to the Address Book. If there are attachments they will be shown under these entries like so:

  

  Clicking on an attachment with the left mouse button will open the attachment within webmail and does not always produce desirable results. Instead, click an attachment with the right mouse button and select 'Save Target As...' or the equivalent function in the user's web-browser. Please bear in mind that the webmail user is solely responsible for ensuring an attachment is trustworthy before clicking or opening it.
• The message section shows the content of the message. There are no special features for this particular section.

Clicking on the element, holding the mouse button and moving the bar up enables the user to take space from the Message List to see more of the message. Naturally, moving it downwards will do the opposite.

The Toolbar consists of seven icons for the handling of e-mail. These are:

Refresh Inbox; This icon causes the webmail to check the mail server for new mail.

Compose Message; Create a brand new message. See below for more.

Each of the next three options also go to the message Composition screen:

Reply to Message; Click this when a single message is being viewed to respond to the person who sent it.

Reply to All; Use this to respond to the person who sent it and all other recipients of the original message.

Forward Message; Click this to pass a message on to someone who was not in the original list of recipients of the e-mail.

Also:

Delete Message; See above

Print message; This option will automatically generate a printable version of the e-mail and start the 'print' function of the user's browser so that they may select a printer (and so on) through their operating system (i.e. Windows, MacOS, etc.). The printable e-mails look something like this:

The user will need to refer to their operating system manual, or in-house technical support team if they are unsure how their computer's print function operates.

Double-clicking a message in the Message List will open the message as large as possible in the main section of the screen, adding a few extra options to the toolbar at the same time:

Notice that the header and messages sections are effectively identical to the basic Preview Pane further above with exactly the same features.

In this view, attachments will show as part of the message, much like other mail clients are able to do, though the same clickable link is provided as documented above.

Three new features are available on the toolbar. For those not shown here, see the main toolbar documentation above:

Back to Message List; Returns the view to the enlarged message list or standard view, depending on the current settings.

Show Source; This allows the curious and technically adept to be able to see the raw format of the e-mail as stored on the mailserver underlying the webmail client.

This drop-down shows the list of folders that the current message can be moved to. This is available because Drag & Drop is not available from this screen.

By changing the 'Show preview pane' option in Personal Settings, the E-mail screen will consist only of the Folders Pane and the Message List. The resize bar is completely removed, but all other elements remain in place, such as the Search feature and the Toolbar.

---

Much like the Main Screen there are various elements here that may be familiar from other mail clients:

The section comprises the Sender's e-mail address, and spaces to put the list of Recipient e-mail addresses and Subject of the message. If this screen has been reached by selecting a Reply or Forward option on the main E-Mail screen, some of these fields may be filled in already.

Optionally, by clicking any of the links beneath the recipients field, extra Carbon Copy, Blind Carbon Copy and e-mail addresses may be added as well as a single Reply-To address:

By default, only the e-mail address of the main account is found in this control, but other e-mail addresses, with their own underlying settings, may be added to this. See the Identities (Tab) documentation below.

Taking up the major part of the composer screen is the message pane. Here the main work of writing and formatting the e-mail may be done.

In the standard view (above) the HTML setting is active, meaning that e-mails may be composed that contain coloured text, images and so forth. The formatting toolbar is provided for changing these settings, and users may recognise most of these options from word processing packages as well as other e-mail clients.

The recommended alternative is to send messages in plain text, reserving HTML formatting for web-based media. To change between HTML and Plain formatting, click the relevant option in the control, then click the text to the right of the option to make it take effect.

The plain text editing field looks like this:

• Some recipients' mail clients will be capable of showing the priority of a message, and the field near the top of the display can be used to change this.
• If the option is selected, the recipients' mail client(s) will be asked to send an automated response when a recipient reads the e-mail. A user's recipients' mail-clients are not required to honour this request, and many recipients will have this feature disabled at their end. As such, the use of this feature is not recommended.

Files can be attached to an e-mail by use of the icon in the Toolbar or with the Attachments Pane:

By either clicking the icon or the Toolbar icon, the file upload popup will appear over the attachment pane:

The Browse... button will open a file selector box from the user's operating system where the user can navigate to the location of the required file.

Once a file has been selected, it may be Uploaded to the webmail server to be attached to the e-mail or simply Closed to cancel.

Uploaded files appear in the panel like so:

Clicking the icon on an attachment in the panel will remove it from the message.

The Composer Toolbar consists of five icons. These are:

Back to message list; Cancels the composition of a new message and takes the user back to the main E-Mail screen.

Send the message now; This is equivalent to the button by the same name at the bottom of the webmail screen.

Check Spelling; This feature is not enabled at present

Attach a file; Documented above.

Save this draft; Save the message to the Drafts folder on the main E-Mail screen. This enables the user to come back to editing the message at a later time, say perhaps during a later webmail session.

---

Here the user's contacts can be found, added to and edited, all through this simple interface:

To the left of the screen is the list of contacts in the user's address book. Selecting one of these will bring up the information in the Information Pane to the right:

Much like the messages in the E-mail view, various selection options are possible:

• To select a range of contacts, click a first contact, hold down the Shift key and then click a last contact.
• To select and de-select individual contacts, hold down the Control key and click messages.

For instance, the selection in the above have been arrived at by either:

1. Clicking the first contact, holding down the Control key and clicking the last contact;
2. Clicking the first contact, holding down the Shift key, clicking the last contact, then holding down the Control key and clicking the middle contact (deselecting it).

To the upper right of the screen is the search field . Typing in this field and pressing the Enter key will cause only those contacts matching the entered text to show in the Contacts Pane.

It is then possible to carry out actions on just this subset of contacts. At present the only option, other than to cancel the selection, is to delete them.

Once selected, a contact or contacts may be deleted by clicking the icon in the Toolbar. The user will be asked if they are sure they want to delete the messages, as there is no 'Deleted Items' folder for contacts, and they will be permanently removed.

If the addressbook folder is particularly large in terms of the number of contacts, only a certain number of them will appear in the Contacts List. To gain access to the other contacts, the user will need to change 'page' by means of the icons in the bottom left of the webmail screen:

The search feature operates over the whole of the Contacts List and not just those visible on the current page.

By default the webmail is set to a maximum of 100 contacts, but this may be changed in the Personal Settings section.

Clicking on the resize-bar in the middle of the Address Book screen (shown right), then holding the mouse button down, space can be taken from the Contacts Pane and given to the Information pane by moving the mouse to the left, and vice versa if moved to the right.

When a single contact is selected in the Contacts Pane, the associated contact information is displayed on the right of the screen. Clicking the e-mail address will start composition of a message to that contact.

Clicking the Edit Contact button will change the Contacts Pane so that individual elements of the contact's details may be changed:

The toolbar consists of five icons for the handling of Address Book Contacts:

Create new contact card; This feature enables the addition of new contacts to the user's contact list. This action changes the Contacts Pane in a manner similar to Editing Contacts above.

Delete selected contacts; See above.

Compose mail to; Much like clicking the e-mail address in the Contacts Pane where only one Contact is selected, this feature will begin composition of a message to all currently selected contacts.

Print; Print the selected Contacts. This feature is presently not available.

Export; Export the selected Contacts to a file on the user's computer. This feature is also not available at present.

There are several places from which users may wish to import contacts:

Users of Exa's previous webmail client may notice that their contacts have not been moved into the new webmail as yet. We intend to copy these contacts across at some point in the near future, but in the meantime users should use the old webmail if their contacts list is important.

There is presently no method of importing contacts automatically from a user's computer into the webmail Address Book. Provision may be made in future for the importing of a basic text file contacts list but there are presently no plans to implement this.

No method at all exists for importing contacts from external sources as this would be extremely difficult to implement.

---

This section allows for several customisations to the way webmail works. There are three subsections accessible through tabs at the top of the display:

Note that in the title bar of the browser, the e-mail address of the account would normally be displayed.

When the Personal Settings section is first opened, this section is already active and shows on the screen. There are nine settings that can be changed here:

The user may change the language of webmail's interface through this option. All messages, text and icons will show in the chosen language.

This option enables webmail to determine universal time so that those recipients elsewhere in the world will know, relative to their time-zone. Users should set this to the closest geographic location to where they are.

Most Exa Networks users should leave this set as "(GMT) Western Europe, London..." unless the user is outside the UK for some reason.

This tick-box is used to signify whether the country where the user is presently located uses Daylight savings, also known as 'Summer Time'. For instance, in the UK this should always remain set, even if the current month is outside the British Summer Time period.

This controls the number of messages accessible at one time in the Messages List of the E-Mail screen, and also the number of contacts accessible in the Contacts Pane of the Address Book screen.

On those screens, the and features may be used to move on to the first, previous, next and last group of messages/contacts that are not presently visible.

The default setting is 100 rows.

In the Messages List the date, by default, will show something along the lines of Today 10:41 or Thu 22:06, only showing the day of the week the message arrived and the time in 24hr format.

This setting can be turned off by un-ticking this box. All dates in the Messages List will then show in the form dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm format, e.g. 19.06.2007 22:34 meaning the 19th of June, 2007 at 10:34pm.

Messages older than one week are shown in the longer format regardless of this setting.

People e-mailing the user may choose to send their e-mails HTML formatted or in plain text, just as the user has the same choice when creating or returning a message. If this option is unset, HTML messages sent from the user's correspondents will be shown as plain text in the Preview Pane rather than the original HTML. Often this can make a badly formatted HTML message easier to read.

This option sets the inital state of the Message Pane in the Compose screen, which can also be changed in situ with the feature on that screen. The user should unset this option if they prefer to send most of their messages in plain text.

Un-ticking this option changes the appearance of the E-Mail screen so that only the Message List is visible. See Alternate Appearance above for more on this.

When composing a new mail to a recipient, webmail will periodically save the user's work-in-progress to the Drafts folder as a precautionary measure. The save interval can be set to every 3, 5, or 10 minutes, as well as switched off entirely.

The default setting is 5 minutes.

By default, this screen shows only the main five folders of the Folders Pane. These folders are required by webmail and so nothing can be done to them.

Folders other than the default five have to their right a checkbox, a rename () and a delete () icon like so:

Unticking the tick-box will cause a folder to become invisible to all parts of webmail except this screen. Conversely, all ticked folders, as well as the main five, are visible elsewhere.

Clicking the icon will change the folder name into an editable field like so:

To cancel any changes in progress to the folder name, click the icon again. To save the changes, press the Enter key on the keyboard.

In the present version of webmail users may find that after pressing Enter, some of the elements disappear or act strangely on the Folders tab:

To rectify this, click onto one of the other Personal Settings tabs and then click back to the Folders tab.

This is as simple as clicking the icon and confirming that this action is correct. All mail in the deleted folder will be lost.

Users of Exa's old webmail client may find that they have two unsubscribed folders, one called 'omail' and a subfolder of that called 'log':

Since we have not yet decomissioned the old webmail, we ask that users leave these alone, though attempts to delete them will be unsuccessful (they will re-appear after apparently being successfully deleted).

At the bottom of the screen is the 'Create new Folder' panel. To create a new folder simply enter the new folder's name and click create. Newly created folders are automatically subscribed and can be used to store mail on the main E-mail screen.

As with the folder renaming above, newly created folders are missing their rename and delete icons. Clicking away and back to the Folders tab will work around this.

Subfolders of existing folders can be created by creating a new folder with a name that begins with the full name of the parent folder followed by a dot. e.g. if the above 'Family' subfolder exists, a 'Sister' subfolder to this may be created by creating a folder with the name 'Family.Sister'. One could then create other subfolders; e.g. 'Family.Brother' would be another subfolder of 'Family' and 'Family.Brother.Pictures' would be a sub-folder of the Brother subfolder of 'Family' etc.

Should these be created, the Folders Pane the main E-mail screen would appear something like this:

Identities allow (within reason) the user to configure webmail to send mail from e-mail addresses not necessarily directly associated with the account, each with their own mail composer settings.

By default, the screen will look like this:

i.e. only the main account settings will be listed.

By clicking once on one of the identities in the panel, an Edit panel will appear lower down the screen:

There are eight options here:

By default this field is blank, but if filled in, the Sender drop-down on the Compose screen will contain this alongside the e-mail address.

If this is the main e-mail address for the account, it is inadvisable to change this to something else. Otherwise it can be used to modify another Identity's address.

This will show up in the headers of the user's e-mails as an identifier of their company from where it was sent. Business users may like to set this to the name of their company.

Entering an e-mail address into this field will cause the user's recipients to reply to this address rather than the from which it was sent. e.g. if this is a secondary identity, it would be possible to set this to the e-mail address of the main account so that all responses come back to that account.

Users whose e-mail addresses are added here will receive a copy of the e-mails sent via this profile. Standard e-mail blind carbon copy.

The signature is a piece of text that is appended to all messages sent from this identity. It is useful for including 'boiler-plate' message information such as confidentiality messages and contact telephone numbers.

Ticking this box adds a formatting toolbar to the above Signature box, much like the Message Formatting from the Compose screen in HTML mode, so that users can add colour and so on to their signatures. This is not recommended.

This tick-box will set this account to be the first selected in the Sender drop-down on the Compose screen. Only one profile can be set as default at any one time.

By clicking the New identity button, a panel exactly like the above Edit screen will open. Once details are entered and saved, the new identity will appear alongside all others in the upper panel.

---

Clicking this will immediately log the user out of webmail, without confirmation or saving existing work. The user should ensure that they have saved all work before logging out.