Announcing Service Window: Improving Authentication

After much work we are now ready to switch over to a new authentication system based on laravel passport. The switch over will happen on Saturday, August 21st starting at 09:00 UTC. Short periods of downtime might occur, but we will of course keep it to a minimum.

Users can follow the status of the update via the Kolab Ops Twitter account. They can keep working and collaborating online as usual. Should you have any issues in this or any other context, then please contact Kolab Now Support.

The new authentication system is a step in preparation for us to implement some much requested features in the near future. Among them:

• Second factor authentication with external apps – you will finally be able to use your favorite email client without compromising on security (take a look at our early prototype for a teaser)
• Filtering folders with groupware content – opt-in to your Calendar, Address Book and other such folders getting filtered out so you don’t see them in Thunderbird and the like
  
• Locations based authentication – create a whitelist of countries that you can login from, all attempts from other locations will get denied
• Seamless switching between Kolab Now dashboard and the webmail – login once, be authenticated everywhere

New features will become available to our beta program users over time and subsequently be enabled for all users once we feel that they are stable enough.