DavMail 7.0.0 puts most of its work into Microsoft Graph
Anyone who wants to leave Outlook but still has a mailbox on Exchange needs a translator. DavMail is one: a Java gateway that converts the open protocols most mail, calendar and contact apps speak (IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV and LDAP) into requests Exchange and Office 365 accept. “Ever wanted to get rid of Outlook?” the project page asks.
DavMail 7.0.0 removes the davmail.caldavImpersonate option, turns on a new sync method by default, requests an extra Microsoft permission, and forces a fresh sign-in after switching from EWS to Graph. EWS, or Exchange Web Services, is Microsoft’s older mailbox interface. Graph is the newer API, and this release concentrates on it.
Most of the work went into Graph
Seventy changelog entries carry the Graph label, against 18 for EWS. EWS still got attention: the older backend received reworked handling of attendees, organizers, shared calendars and exception occurrences, the single changed instances of a recurring meeting.
The largest change is folder delta sync. Instead of listing a whole folder each time a mail client checks it, DavMail asks Graph only for what changed since the last request and keeps a cached copy of the folder. The feature arrived as an opt-in under davmail.graph.deltaSync and is on by default. DavMail also caps retries when Microsoft throttles it and copes with a malformed Retry-After header, the field a server uses to say how long a client should wait. Messages appended over IMAP now keep their original date, headers, threading and read flag, and meeting responses can now target a single occurrence of a recurring event.
Contact users get distribution lists, returned to clients as contact groups. DavMail switches them off for Thunderbird, marking them not yet supported there. Thunderbird is the first client the project’s own description names. A new davmail.caldavReadonly=true mode lets clients read calendars without writing back, and DavMail now aborts a meeting response whose event has disappeared rather than writing a second, broken copy of the event.
Check these before upgrading
The davmail.caldavImpersonate setting no longer exists. DavMail now impersonates the shared mailbox on its own when sending a meeting response from a shared calendar. Graph users should know DavMail now requests the Calendars.ReadWrite.Shared scope to reach shared folders, and token validation fails outright if Mail.ReadWrite is missing. Admins in tenants that restrict app permissions should confirm the new scope is approved.
