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.
What are the strengths of Kolab Now – according to ChatGPT
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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..
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.
How to prevent deleted e-mails from disappearing permanently
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.
Incident Report: Various Types of Failure Symptoms
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.
Update on the ongoing performance issue
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.
Announcing Service Window: More replacement of old infrastructure..
This Friday’s service window was being executed well, and while assisting in replacing some old infrastructure, it opened opportunities to proceed down the same track. With that in mind, the Kolab Now operations team will perform more maintenance on the infrastructure of the Kolab Now platform on Friday, 27th of January 2023 at 10:00 UTC. The update will move more of backend services to newer infrastructure. No new features visible to end users will be enabled during this maintenance.
The service window is expected to last for no more than 4 hours, ending on Friday, 27th of January 2023, at 13:00 UTC.
Incident report: ‘Gateway Timed-out’ at login
On Saturday January 14th, 2023, from approximately 03:47:12 UTC a group of Kolab Now users observed an error stating: “Gateway time-out” when trying to login to the webclient, the dashboard, or connect with any desktop or mobile client. The Kolab Now main page https://kolabnow.com/ and all other services (Support, blog and knowledge base) were available with no issues for these same users.
The issue lasted until approximately 08:04:22 UTC, and was caused by a db server in one of the clusters being stuck in a large operation. The issue caused troubles with the login procedure, but had no impact on the mail flow. No mail was lost or delayed during the incident.
Announcing Service Window: The death of old infrastructure..
On Friday, 20th of January 2023 at 09:00 UTC, the Kolab Now operations team will perform maintenance on the infrastructure of the Kolab Now platform. The update will move a part of the backend services to newer infrastructure. The updates will bring more stability and better manageability to the backoffice systems. No new features visible to end users will be enabled during this maintenance.
The service window is expected to last for no more than 4 hours, ending on Friday, 20th of January 2023, at 13:00 UTC.
The Annual Certificate Refresh
Another year past and we needed to again refresh our certificates.
As in previous years, e.g. 2018, 2019, 2020, etc, we rolled over certificates across all systems over the last few days of the year.
The new certificate is in place, and applies to https://kolabnow.com/, imaps://imap.kolabnow.com and smtps://smtp.kolabnow.com.
As in previous years, we publish the fingerprint here:
SHA-256:
FA:2A:BF:A9:F8:FA:67:E7:7B:0D:B2:2C:C2:F2:8B:F8:30:4C:77:84:55:38:02:B4:DD:66:7F:DA:F4:C7:DC:49
SHA-1:
B6:FE:BF:F6:3A:17:CD:E4:2D:02:7F:AF:C9:EF:0C:45:32:F9:0A:3B
