Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

ActiveSync changes to help with stuck devices

Posted on: July 8th, 2025 by

ActiveSync is the protocol used to synchronize various mobile devices, desktop clients, as well as Outlook.

While mobile device synchronization works mostly without issues via this protocol, Outlook can get stuck in various, hard to diagnose, situations.
This is especially problematic as those situations often are caused by issues invisible to the user. Outlook will simply stop synchronizing partially or completely.

Today we deploy an update with two remediable measures.

1. We force various default folders to always be synchronized, because Outlook does not handle the absence of those folders well.
This is visible in the ActiveSync configuration UI in the webclient:

2. We mark devices that are detected to be stuck in a loop as broken. These devices have to be manually reset according to the procedure outlined in the knowledgebase.

For broken devices Outlook will now report the disconnected state, instead of showing connected while failing to synchronize. This should help to detect this situation and allow you to reset early.

As always, if you have questions or concerns, you are very welcome to contact Support.

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Refurbishing Kolab Now – enhancements on our website about to be launched

Posted on: June 30th, 2025 by

It is June again – the season of spring cleanup and refurbishment: prefect timing to also enhance the Kolab Now frontpage to give it more structure & clarity to communicate in a clear manner what makes us different and special.

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Incident report: 50% of ActiveSync connections failed..

Posted on: June 17th, 2025 by

On Sunday 2025-06-15 one of the Kolab now ActiveSync servers were getting overloaded and got stuck on failed jobs. In turn, about 50% of the ActiveSync jobs were failing – leading to some ActiveSync users loosing the connections to Outlook or to their mobile devices.

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Incident report: Some mails to Microsoft online services was getting blocked..

Posted on: May 7th, 2025 by

Yesterday we dealt with a spammer/phisher who specifically targeted the Microsoft outlook.com service (and it’s affiliates).  One of the Kolab Now MX servers was listed on the Microsoft throttle list (S3150). This meant that some users saw, that mails sent to recipients at ‘@outlook.com’, ‘@live.com’, ‘@hotmail.com’, and other Microsoft online services was bounced back.

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Service interruption

Posted on: March 23rd, 2025 by

Kolabnow is currently experiencing a service interruption which affects receiving of email as well as changes in the administration panel and payments. We apologize for the inconvenience while we investigate the issue.

We will update this blogpost as soon as more information is available.

2025-03-23 @ 14:15 UTC: This issue was triggered by an internal container-image storage issue which prevented services from restarting. The affected storage is unrelated to the storage used for customer payload data. The service interruption caused external emails to be temporarily rejected (as well as the above mentioned symptoms for administration of services). External email systems will re-attempt delivery, so no data should be lost, but some delays are to be expected.

2025-03-23 @ 14:25 UTC: Receiving of email as well as administration functionality has been restored.

Incident report: Some mails to Microsoft online services was getting blocked..

Posted on: February 13th, 2025 by

This afternoon earlier today one of the Kolab Now MX servers was listed on the Microsoft block list. This means that some users might have seen, that mails sent to recipients at ‘@outlook.com’, ‘@live.com’, ‘@hotmail.com’, and other Microsoft online services was bounced back with the message that looks something like this:

This is the mail system at host mx.kolabnow.com. 
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not 
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below. 
For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. 
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can 
delete your own text from the attached returned message. 
The mail system <some-email@outlook.com>: host  
outlook-com.olc.protection.outlook.com[x.x.x.x] said: 550 5.7.1 
Unfortunately, messages from [y.y.y.y] weren't sent. Please contact 
your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block 
list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to 
http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [Name=Protocol 
Filter Agent][AGT=PFA][MxId=<some long number>] 
[SG2PEPF03345FBECA.apcprd05.prod.outlook.com 2025-02-13T<timestamp>Z 
<another long number>] (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

Although the listing was fast discovered, Microsoft was contacted and the listing is reversed as soon as it is possible, it took a while. At this time emails should be delivered to the Microsoft online services.

A few users has misinterpreted the symptoms with error messages from missing the DKIM changes made on Monday (please read this blog post from December 2024 and the follow ups). If you are a group manager, then please make sure that you have the new DKIM related CNAMES added to your DNS zone.

If you have any questions or concerns in this context, then please contact support.

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Service Window: Change to DKIM-Signatures – domain alignment

Posted on: February 5th, 2025 by

On December 20’th 2024 we announced a change to the DKIM configuration on Kolab Now. The announcement described actions needed for users with private domains. We recommended that group managers (the owners of private domains) set the following CNAMEs (both of them) in the DNS of their private domain:

dkim1._domainkey CNAME dkim1._domainkey.kolabnow.com.
dkim2._domainkey CNAME dkim2._domainkey.kolabnow.com.

We also said in the announcement, that we would provide the actual update top the system in the end of January. Unfortunately the snow in the Swiss alps was so wonderful in the end of January, that our techies got a bit delayed.

However, it has now come so far that we announce a service window on:

Monday February 10’th, 2025 @ 08:00 UTC.  

The Service window will last for an hour, within which users might see a small bump in the performance.

If you are the owner of a private domain and you have not yet added the CNAME records to your domain, then your outgoing emails might be refused by the recipient servers after the change.

We will keep you up to date with the progress of the work via updates to this post.

 

– 2025-02-10 @ 07:59 UTC: The service window is now open and the work is in progress. As written, you should not see any big impact.

– 2025-02-10 @ 08:45 UTC: The change has been implemented, and the service window is done. The new domain alignment is tested and seems to be working as expected. If you have any problems with your private domain, then please contact support.

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Service Window: Update of Roundcube to v 1.6

Posted on: January 20th, 2025 by

The Kolab Now development team has been working on updating Roundcube to version 1.6 on the platform for a while, and we are finally ready to push it. Therefore we hereby announce a service window for:

Wednesday 2025-01-22 @ 08:00 UTC (09:00 CEST)

The service window will last for an hour. Users can keep working, but there may be brief webmail interruptions during the period.

Users using the old ‘Larry’ skin might experience some short-comings and problems with that skin. Users with such issues can switch to use one of the two Kolab Now skins (Settings -> Preferences -> User interface -> Interface skin).

If you are one such user and you really want to make use of the old ‘Larry’ skin, then please contact support.

In fact, Please contact support with any questions or concerns in this context.

Action required for Group managers!: Change to DKIM-Signatures – domain alignment – Errata

Posted on: December 24th, 2024 by

Due to the perils of simultaneous wordpress editing a crucial error snuck into the previous blogpost:

The newly required DNS entries are:


dkim1._domainkey CNAME dkim1._domainkey.kolabnow.com.
dkim2._domainkey CNAME dkim2._domainkey.kolabnow.com.

and NOT as the previous blogpost claimed


dkim1 CNAME dkim1.kolabnow.com.
dkim2 CNAME dkim2.kolabnow.com.

The previous blogpost has been corrected meanwhile.

Apologies, and merry Christmas!