As most of our users probably know, Bifrost was our support system of choice for many years. It was a great system that served us well all those years, however it also had it’s weaknesses and it is time for a change.
Announcing Service Window on Wednesday 4th of October 2023: Larry skin & Spellcheck
The Kolab Now Staff is going to deploy the “old” larry skin and enable the English spellcheck option (again). Therefore we declare a service window on:
Wednesday 2023-10-04 at 07:00 UTC until 08:00 UTC.
Incident report: Service not restarting automatically on failure
In the very late hours (UTC) of 2023-09-18 Some users experienced that they could not receive mails, or do administrative activities – like making payments or creating new users. When they tried they were given an error message: ‘Internal Server error’. This lasted until the morning (UTC) of 2023-09-19.
The issue was caused by the in-memory data store (Redis) going out of memory.
The Kolab skins
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.
Incident report: “Stability!”
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.
Service window postponed – Due diligence..
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.
Announcing Service Window Friday 23rd of June: The everlasting race to get rid of old infrastructure..
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.
Announcing Service Window Friday 9th of June: Getting rid of even more old infrastructure..
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.
