Kolab Groupware (Part 1 - Overview)



    Hello, Habr! I want to tell you about a rather interesting and functional replacement for MS Exchange, completely free and also with a beautiful web-face. We will talk about Kolab - a free mail server with support for collaboration, calendars, to-do lists, WebDAV, ActiveSync synchronization and other goodies, which can be used both for work and for home.

    Beware, in the post a lot of pictures .. .

    Kolab Groupware (Part 1 - Overview)
    Kolab Groupware (Part 2 - Installation)

    What it is?


    Kolab is a free mail server with a beautiful web-client, inside which there is everything necessary for the user: mail with tag support, address books, notes, calendars, to-do lists, file trash and much more ...
    Users can synchronize their mail, calendar and contacts to a mobile device using the ActiveSync protocol.
    It is also possible to rummage through separate folders of your mail, calendars and contacts to other users, and completely delegate access to your mailbox.

    To administer all this, there is an interface in which you can: manage users, distribution groups, and public folders. You can create so-called resources, this is such a special calendar for meeting rooms or couriers, from which you can see availability and book for free time.
    There is also a built-in LDAP editor with which you can enable or disable editing any fields, for example, the primary email field - it must be generated by itself, or it can be specified manually

    What's inside?


    Kolab is a combine harvester from such well-known services as:

    • 389 Directory Server - storage of information about domains, users and groups, also acl and some settings are stored here (you can use Active Directory or OpenLDAP if you wish)
    • Cyrus-imap - IMAP server, in its database the letters themselves are stored, as well as data from calendars, notes and other user data
    • MySQL - stores data necessary for the operation of the main services Kolab and Roundcube
    • Postfix - MTA is an SMTP server
    • Roundcube - a promising and highly popular email web client
    • Apache - default HTTP server (can be replaced with nginx if desired)
    • Amavis with Spamassassin and ClamAV - antispam and antivirus protection

    Just a few of our own services:

    • kolab-saslauthd - provides authorization for postfix
    • kolab-freebusy - busy daemon
    • kolab-syncroton - implements ActiveSync protocol for synchronization with devices
    • iRony - implements WebDAV, CalDAV and CardDAV protocols
    • wallace - scans mail for groupware content
    • Chwala - file client
    • + stack of roundcube plugins


    What does it look like?


    Well, now let's move on to the review. Kolab by default has 2 themes, the first is Larry , this is a classic theme for Roundcube, the second has appeared recently - Chamelion . It appeared literally in the latest version of Kolab 3.4 and it was immediately made the default theme.
    In my opinion, it is somewhat overloaded, and by ordinary users it is perceived harder, much like Larry.
    Larry looks more stylish and beautiful.
    No, Chameleon is certainly not bad either, but Larry, in my opinion, is better so far, so I'll post screenshots of this topic under the spoilers.

    post office


    Mail main screen:


    Chameleon


    This is the procedure for writing a letter:


    Chameleon



    Contacts



    Chameleon



    The calendar


    And this is what the calendar looks like:


    Chameleon



    Here you can see the employment of other people, if they allowed you to do this.
    You can invite other people to created events, and they will receive notifications from you by e-mail.



    Notes



    Chameleon



    To-do lists



    Chameleon


    Cases can also be assigned to other users, in which case they will receive a notification in which they will have to confirm their participation.

    File cloud


    At the moment, it is very spatial, i.e. you cannot give external download links to folders and files, it is also not recommended to upload large files here, however you can always save files from the mail to the cloud, as well as access them via WebDAV.

    If you need something more, you probably should look in the direction of ownCloud , especially since with LDAP and Roundcube it will not be difficult for you to integrate it into the main Kolab interface in the latest version of Kolab added the ability to integrate the cloud into Seafile


    Chameleon



    Settings screen




    Chameleon


    The settings are quite standard for Roundcube, everyone can choose their own theme of design, which he likes best. Configure sieve rules for incoming emails. Delegate the management of your mailbox to any of the employees, without the participation of the system administrator in this process. For each mailbox on behalf of which the user can write letters, a separate profile is created that can be customized in its own way, for example: assign a sender name or change the signature.

    Folders




    Chameleon


    As I said, all user data, including to-do lists and notes and calendar events are stored in IMAP. At first glance, this is a rather strange solution, but we have a flexible mechanism for managing permissions on imap folders. You can give permissions to read, write, change a separate folder of your mail, for example, and a separate calendar to certain people, for example, colleagues from your department. You can, for example, if you go on vacation, fully delegate access to your account.

    As soon as the user gets the rights from you, he will also need to go into this interface and subscribe to the imap folders shared by you.

    Alternate Clients and Sync


    All this is of course very nice, but there is also a fly in the ointment:
    If you connect your mailbox to a third-party mail client, for example Thunderbird, you will see all these calendar folders, among your usual mail folders, but you won’t be able to read them, t .to. in the inside of these folders will be only the service files of the same calendars. That as though hints, to use Roundcube as the main mail client, well he already copes with this task quite well. In addition, there is support for the ActiveSync protocol for synchronizing this all to a mobile device, ActiveSync settings are conveniently made in Roundcube:



    Chameleon


    Also, for each calendar or contact list, or file trash, you can get a DAV link and use it at your discretion in compatible clients.

    By the way, there is the officially supported desktop client on qt - Kontact , it is not as beautiful as Roundcube but also quite functional:



    There is also an add-on for Thunderbird , it, by mail, adds the ability to sync individual calendars and contact lists.

    You can find more different customers and add-ons here .

    Admin


    I almost forgot to mention the admin panel. The admin panel has a slightly different design, but this does not make it less functional.
    In the admin panel, you can manage users, groups, shared folders. For example, you can create a group that will be automatically populated based on information received from another LDAP server, such as AD.



    Here is the procedure for adding a user:



    Conclusion


    That’s probably all.
    In the second article, read about installing this miracle, the initial configuration and some aspects that I encountered while working with it.

    Official project site: kolab.org

    Also popular now: