I'm sorry, I meant popup functionality like in Kopete. Also, the unified functionality I'd like would allow me to get rid of the taskbar item for Kontact. I think of Groupware as a more basic functionality of the computer for those who use it; much like an IM client or a battery monitor. In my mind, Groupware shouldn't work as if it were an application that you can open and close when you do or don't need it; if you need it, you'll almost always want it on, and performing all of its functions in the background just as any other basic piece of software.

+1 for this idea from me, kmail has this features already

any news on this?

*** Bug 75606 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 80620 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

see also bug 24298: Calendar organizer integration with clock

see also bug 84124 : integrate kickpim in kontact 

anybody working on this?

*** Bug 78186 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 81044 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I like the proposal a lot.
At the current state, I avoid using Kontact's organizer functionality because it always opens up the KOrganizer Alarm Daemon system tray icon. (I've got nothing against notifications, but I don't want a hundred system tray icons to fill up my panel.)

The other thing is that I don't want to have Kontact start up on every login, simply because it needs too much time and resources for starting. Maybe such a merged Kontact icon could provide some kind of basic functionality, like notifications and mail retrieval, without having Kontact actually running. You could then open the full application with an "Open Kontact" entry in the icon's context menu, or something like that.

I like the idea Jakob adds of having basic Kontact functionality load automatically as a tray app. I like it a lot! I'm guessing that, with the KParts arcitecture, it wouldn't be too difficult to have it act like the whole thing is open, but in all reality, have it only load the notification Kparts, then load the other Kparts on demand, silently, as if they'd been loaded the whole time. It'd basically make things seemlessly faster.

a nice idea! now i use the kmailicon to start and kontact fast in windowmode ;) but it have the problem, that witth every kdestart kontact starts as window, and i dont need it most. i have add the windows"bug" as a wish, but it means only that kontact with the kmailicon starts as windows. (Bug 90130)

regarding the popups for mail, it would be nice to see Kontact's mail summary as the tooltip of kmail/kontact, to repeat the number already that is already in the icon is not of great use, more something like the "new mail notification" popup.

I also like the idea of having two parts of kontact, one background (daemon-like) part for retrieving mails, alarming etc. and one part for the GUI

*** Bug 94125 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

When I use the aKregator Kontact plugin, aKregator also appears in the systray, and I can show/hide Kontact by clicking on the aKregator systray icon.

But when I hide Kontact using KMail's icon, I sometimes can't get Kontact to reappear using aKregator's icon.

All this would plea for one Kontact icon, and configure aKregator and Kmail so that they use the unified Kontact icon, and one (big) tooltip to display status information for all the running components(?)

Also an option to hide at startup (like kopete does, KMail does not have this) would help, I really hate kontact konquering my desktop when I log in.

That, or at least Kontact remembering it's state at logoff. If you had Kontact minimized to tray (i.e. no windows opened), reopen it with no windows at all (only trayicon).

I also vote for this bug. I would love to see a single Kontact tray icon, which could then spawn the Kontact summary window on click, or open a pop-menu with config options on right-click. Then, IMHO, Kontact would not only be a groupware-client replacement, but a superior solution that is always there and ready to go. 

Maybe we could even make the tray icon display information over the top of it, like the way the kmail tray icon displays the number of emails. The user might be able to configure it to display the time of the next appointment, number of new emails, number of new RSS news items, current temperature, etc. All of those items would be incredibly useful to business users of KDE (like myself :) ). 

I'm not sure a /single/ system tray icon makes sense.  I primarily use the system tray icons for message counts.  In this case it makes very good sense to have the icon for E-mails (KMail) separate from the icon for RSS feeds (aKregator).  I certainly put a higher priority on E-mail, but it's nice to have both counts.

What really bothers me, though, about the current implementation is that the behaviors of these icons are not at all unified.  Clicking on the aKregator icon toggles Kontact's visibility.  None of the other icons do this.  If I'm looking at E-mails in Kontact, and I click on the aKregator icon, I'd normally expect Kontact to switch over to aKregator (which I what I think is the right thing to do).  Instead, Kontact becomes invisible, and I have to click the icon again to get aKregator to come up.  

Toggling is nice, but if it's implemented, all the system tray icons should support it.  But such toggling should have precedence /behind/ the selection of the Kontact component.  If the component is already selected, /then/ toggle.

*** Bug 103103 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I just want to have the ability to minimize Kontact to System Tray icon so that I can quickly access it.

robert: this can be done by enabling the kmail-trayicon. however, it always opens the kmail-part when clicked.

*** Bug 92846 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

A single notification icon was a good idea. I'm really irritated of having akregator, korganizer and kmail. It there not be a single icon counting everything, and if i.e. middleclicked it pops up the list of modules with new items. Then you click on the one you want to activate, kontact opens and displays the selected module. 
 Like the device monitor :-) 

I don't know what you think of the following idea:

Bug 46262 suggests the clock's calendar applet to integrate neatly into KOrganizer. Since all our daily PIM tasks deal with date/time/mail/messages/etc. why not have a - ideally, configurable - applet that shows up when you click on the clock in the task bar?

I think that would be very nice. By default it may just be an integration into KOrganizer (showing dates with appointments in bold, for example), but at the user's option it could integrate into the whole KDE PIM suite!

With a unified kontact icon, kmail adnd akregator icons can be configured to only show up when there are new mails or articles.

The respective part icons should then only activate the part and bring the window to front if it is not currently and only minimize to tray if the previous two are not true. Something like:

if(!is<PART>Active())
{
	make<PART>Active();
	bringWindowToFront();
}
else if(!isWindowAtFront())
{
	bringWindowToFront();
}
else
{
	minimizeToSystray();
}

Would like this Icon too, as it would keep the tray clean (RSS checking + mail checking + KOrganizer notification).

Both ideas like a popup or a extra icon appears in times of a new/unread event have their advantages.

A popup would probably get more attention than a another icon in the systray. But if you keep some RSS feeds or mails unread it would be nicer if you're continously remebered by the icons.

I would prefer the idea of letting appear the aKregator icon if there's a new message. Same for Kmail and KOrganizer.

Locking forward to this feature.

I think it will be good to use unified tray with specified notification areas. Something like if you get new e-mail, then small mail icon in corner have to get displayed on these unified tray. Or use plasmoid (in KDE4).

I think one unified systray icon is the best. It can have two views - no new messages, there are new messages (mail/news/event/etc.). In case of new message arrives icon should show popup saying "new X rss feed(s) and Y mail(s) received." Popups can be the same as in kopete, with tunable display time, display them or not, show first NN chars of header/message, etc. I will try to create mockup later and attach here.

Alex, I believe notifications should not be pop-ups, they should not enforce user interaction.

For systray icon events a speech bubble (balloon) would be the most appropriate which fades away if the user does not click on it within a certain amount of time. After that the icon should reflect the changed state.

I have been playing around with the kde 4.2 beta version and I think the tray icons have a bit more consistent behaviour across parts than the 3.5 or 4.1. In the meantime, we now have akonadi which pretty much handles contacts and calendar nicely but is not yet integrated to kmail or akregator. When it does as it also has the ability to handle mail and feeds (amongst other) I think the akonadi tray icon and the new and improved system notifications should be the centralized way to do this. That is, the akonadi tray icon should open the default pim application when clicked and handle the new arrival notifications without the need of any specific client.

Created attachment 29234 [details]
Notification ballon for Kontact

Peter, i meant exactly what you said. Please find mockup attached (made with KDE3 widgets since i have to use kde3 now).

Voting for this too. All I want really is the same functionality I get with other groupware clients (eg it's the only good thing about Outlook, for example) - a taskbar icon that starts up without opening windows on my desktop, shows me a summary (eg number of unread mails/appointment reminders/feeds etc). I don't care how may of them there are, I just don't want the current situation where I have to minimize a kontact window every time I log in... at least I used to be able to automate this with DCOP but now I can't do that either.

I would just like to "vote" for this feature too. It would be great if kontact had a single system tray icon that alerted me of any mail, news feeds and events. I would also love to have kontact open up in the system tray without opening any windows. I would also like better intergration into google servies but thats another matter :P

Please, add this feature to Kontact... I tried a hack by myself trying to run kontact via ksystraycmd, but this gives errors and the icon does not appear:

mwojc@evo ~ $ ksystraycmd kontact
Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown - The name org.kde.nepomuk.services.nepomukstorage was not provided by any .service files"
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown - The name org.kde.nepomuk.services.nepomukstorage was not provided by any .service files"
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown - The name org.kde.nepomuk.services.nepomukstorage was not provided by any .service files"
"/usr/bin/kontact(4734)" Error in thread 140317757917056 : "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"
kontact(4734)/kdecore (KConfigSkeleton) KCoreConfigSkeleton::writeConfig:
kontact(4734)/kdecore (KConfigSkeleton) KCoreConfigSkeleton::writeConfig:

Greetings, and i hope the request will be solved...

*** Bug 179392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Since this bug seems to also solve the problem of launching kontact at login without displaying the window (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265976), I'm also voting in favor of having it resolved.

(In reply to comment #39)
> Since this bug seems to also solve the problem of launching kontact at login
> without displaying the window (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265976),
> I'm also voting in favor of having it resolved.

Sorry, my fault: I meant to cite https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260315

*** Bug 280238 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Any updates on unified tray situation?

I use Kontact, but I preffer to have separate icons for kmail, korganizer and akregator. Unified tray icon should be optional.