I'm watching a presentation on Zimbra, and I'm noticing that the interface is really busy. I can begin to see why it must be a pain in the ass to set up and maintain (as I've heard). I know I'd hate to have to use it. Where I currently work, as I would imagine is the case at most large businesses, you have a million different services that you can use, a couple of which you have to use, and a couple which you may want to use (the latter group will vary by person or group). A whole lot of things just don't get used by your group, but you keep hearing about it from the company above, it keeps showing up in your web interfaces, and it's just annoying.
A couple posts ago I mentioned an idea of a "rabbithole paradigm" for configurations. What if you did the same thing for your whole GUI?
You start with a big button that says Zimbra. You click on it and get three buttons called Communication, Collaboration, and Settings. You click Communication and you get your email, chat. Click Collaboration you get file sharing, Wiki, etc. Settings gives you GUI settings and Account Settings, each of which gives you more things. Everything is completely straightforward, if cumbersome, as to where you should find them. Certainly no settings or shortcuts that you don't need are in your main interface.
Well, that would make things a lot less confusing, and a pain to get to the services you need, because you have to go all the way down the rabbit hole to get to them. But, as you decide to use them, they would get added to your front page. This includes configuration too, I suppose, as I mentioned in my other post. That way, you always have exactly the services and settings you need and know how to use on your front page and in your menus.
