The Kolab skins

Posted on: September 11th, 2023 by

Some users probably remember when we first released the new Responsive skin back in 2018. Since then, the responsive skin has been developed further, some improvements were made, and the skin was promoted to be the default skin for new Kolab Now users.

We in the Kolab Now team love the Responsive skin, and we were not going to miss the old static skin when it was not deployed during the update to the latest version of the webclient. We had only received positive feedback about the responsive skin so far, but it turned out that some users still were very fond of the old look and feel.

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Incident report: “Stability!”

Posted on: September 1st, 2023 by

Welcome back!

We were finally able to bring our blog back. During the past 2 weeks we had a long lasting incident. We did what we could to make sure that users could use their primary services during our work on the systems, but we know that there was unplanned downtime. As the blog was a victim of the situation, we couldn’t inform users as well as we wanted (we really do not like X (‘formerly known as Twitter’)), so here is finally the incident report from the beginning to the end.

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Service window postponed – Due diligence..

Posted on: June 23rd, 2023 by

Last week we announced a service window that was supposed to start and be in session about now. However, following due diligence we went through the list of activities last night and found that we had overseen an important step in the plan. The operations that are going to happen are on the backend servers, are quite sensitive, and we would like to avoid any problems. We therefore suspend the current service window and hereby declare it for the coming Friday:

Friday 2023-06-30 at 08:00 UTC until 13:00 UTC.

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Announcing Service Window Friday 23rd of June: The everlasting race to get rid of old infrastructure..

Posted on: June 16th, 2023 by

The Kolab Now Staff is going to update parts of the platform to get rid of even more old infrastructure, and to ensure the best possible solution for users. Therefore we declare a service window on:

Friday 2023-06-23 at 08:00 UTC until 13:00 UTC.

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Announcing Service Window Friday 9th of June: Getting rid of even more old infrastructure..

Posted on: May 31st, 2023 by

The Kolab Now Staff is going to update parts of the platform to get rid of even more old infrastructure, and to ensure the best possible solution for users. Therefore we declare a service window on:

Friday 2023-06-09 at 08:00 UTC until 12:00 UTC.

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What are the strengths of Kolab Now – according to ChatGPT

Posted on: May 12th, 2023 by

Hello again everyone! We made a funny experiment to find out what ChatGPT thinks about Kolab Now 🙂

Here are some answers:

What is Kolab Now?

“Kolab Now is a secure, private, and open-source email and collaboration platform. It is a cloud-based service that offers a range of productivity tools, including email, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, and file storage. Kolab Now is designed to be easy to use and accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, making it an ideal choice for individuals and businesses that value privacy and security.

Kolab Now is built on top of the Kolab Groupware platform, which is an open-source collaboration software suite. The platform offers a range of features, including advanced security and encryption, collaborative editing, and support for multiple devices and platforms. Kolab Now takes care of hosting, maintaining, and updating the Kolab Groupware platform, allowing users to focus on their work rather than the technical details of running a collaboration platform.

Kolab Now is particularly popular among users who are concerned about data privacy and security. The platform uses end-to-end encryption to protect user data, and the company is committed to protecting user privacy. In addition, Kolab Now is based in Switzerland, which has some of the strongest data protection laws in the world.”

What are the strengths of Kolab Now?

“Kolab Now is an open-source, secure email and collaboration suite that offers several strengths to its users. Some of its strengths include:

  1. Security: Kolab Now has a strong focus on security and privacy. It uses encryption to protect users’ data both in transit and at rest, and also offers two-factor authentication for added security.
  2. Open-source: Kolab Now is built on open-source software, which means that users have access to the source code and can modify it as needed. This gives users more control over their data and can also lead to faster bug fixes and improvements.
  3. Collaboration: Kolab Now offers a range of collaboration tools, including shared calendars, address books, task lists, and files. This makes it easy for teams to work together and stay organized.
  4. Cross-platform support: Kolab Now can be accessed from a wide range of devices and platforms, including desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. It also supports a range of email clients, including Thunderbird, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
  5. User-friendly interface: Kolab Now has a modern and intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. It also offers a range of customization options, such as themes and language support, to suit different user preferences.

Overall, Kolab Now’s strengths lie in its security, open-source nature, collaboration tools, cross-platform support, and user-friendly interface.”

If Kolab Now would be a person, how would you describe it?

“If Kolab Now were a person, I would describe it as a highly organized and security-conscious individual who values privacy and effective communication. This person would be diligent and detail-oriented, with a strong focus on getting things done efficiently and effectively. They would prioritize security and privacy, making sure that all of their communications and data were protected from prying eyes.

At the same time, this person would also be collaborative and communicative, always looking for ways to work together with others and communicate effectively. They would be open-minded and adaptable, able to learn new tools and technologies quickly and use them to improve their workflows and productivity.

Overall, this person would be a reliable and trustworthy partner for anyone looking to work collaboratively and securely, with a focus on getting things done efficiently and effectively while also prioritizing privacy and security.”

The Kolab team says: Thank you very much ChatGPT for the nice words – we hope our users agree with you! For any feedback please do not hesitate to contact us

 

Announcing Service Window: Caching infrastructure..

Posted on: April 17th, 2023 by

Lately we have had reports from users of the Kolab webclient who saw a variety of issues such as: login issues, some data entries being hidden and showing up again and folder creations failing. As this was seriously affecting the reliability of the webclient, we put the deployment of new features on hold to investigate the root cause of those issues.

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How to prevent deleted e-mails from disappearing permanently

Posted on: March 27th, 2023 by

Last week our support team reported interestingly some similar questions from unrelated users circling around the topic: “I accidentally deleted some e-mails. Can I get them back?”

As often in complex support situations, the answer to this question is: It depends.. 🙂

Users were pointed to this knowledge base note. This answered the questions, though with some confusion. In this post we will lay out the options.

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Incident Report: Various Types of Failure Symptoms

Posted on: March 3rd, 2023 by

On Friday March 3rd, 2023, from approximately 01:00 UTC to approximately 14:40 UTC, numerous users of our service experienced a variety of issues.

A complete listing of the symptoms experienced is infeasible at this time, but logins will have failed to the web-client interface, the cockpit interface, and people will have not received emails in time.

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Update on the ongoing performance issue

Posted on: February 2nd, 2023 by

During the last 2 days Kolab Now has experienced a serious performance degradation issue. Users see that logins to- and operations in the webclient is taking a long time, and users connecting via desktop or mobile clients might not be able to perform synchronizations.

In the end of Wednesday it was thought that the root cause was found, and many users saw better performance for a while, but Thursday morning the performance dropped back to unacceptable levels.

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