UCS 5.0 – first release candidate published

With the first release candidate (RC), we are announcing the finalization phase for the major release of Univention Corporate Server, UCS 5.0. We will be concentrating on stabilizing the features implemented up to this point. Compared to the beta version of UCS 5, which we published in December, we have been able to achieve many improvements, in particular in the web interface of the UCS portal, the management console and the Univention App Center. I would like to present these briefly.

Cool Solutions on GitHub

Almost ten years have passed since we published the first Cool Solution for UCS 3.0: in 2011, on November 25 at 8:02 am, we created a new page in the Univention Wiki which collects the Cool Solutions for the different versions of Univention Corporate Server. A lot has happened since then: Many instructions are now available in English and no longer in German, and there is a separate section for the Cool Solutions in the Univention forum.

How to integrate with LDAP – Example Redmine

In the blog article series “How to integrate with LDAP”, we introduce a whole range of different options and possibilities for how you can use LDAP provided by UCS to expand or use in cooperation with other services.

In the first section of this article, “Typical Configuration Options”, I will be using an example to demonstrate the sort of information typically required to perform user authentication against the UCS LDAP. I will be taking you through the necessary configuration steps using the project management system Redmine as an example, as this requests all the typical information.

In the second section, “Types of Search Users”, I will detail the possibilities available to you if it is not possible to search through the UCS LDAP anonymously.

Univention Summit 2021: transferring a proven format to the web

The Univention Summit looks back on a 13-year tradition as a place of exchange and discussion around the topics of digital sovereignty and sovereign IT infrastructures. This year, for the first time, it had to be purely digital. This article looks back at the challenge of translating such an event, with all its interactivity and discussion spaces, from the real world to the virtual.
In order to realize the 14th Univention Summit as an online event, Univention approached us, Plain Schwarz, last year as an event agency and service provider for the conception and implementation of virtual, hybrid events as well as face-to-face events. We already knew each other through the Open Source environment and shared networks before we worked together for the Summit.

Bitwarden: Open Source Password Manager

Logos von Bitwarden und UCS mit einem Schlüsselbund in der Mitte
Apart from two-factor authentication (2FA), strong passwords are still your best protection against data theft. We already described how you can apply what are known as “password policies” in our article “Secure passwords for the UCS domain”.
In this article, we will go one step further. After a brief refresher on the topic of password managers in general, we will present a concrete software solution that offers a convenient way to store and manage passwords – so that none of your users have to rely on writing down their access data anywhere in plain text.

Better together: Sovereign Productivity Suite by Univention, Open-Xchange and Nextcloud for the public sector

We were happy to announce the Sovereign Productivity Suite (SPS) at the Univention Summit on January 29  In cooperation with our partners Open-Xchange and Nextcloud, we are delivering and developing a product combination that is specifically tailored to the public sector for office work and online collaboration as well as digital education offerings.

An introduction to DNS and its relationship with Univention Corporate Server

This article is about the Domain Name System (DNS) and explains how the “Internet’s telephone book” works. Alongside the fundamental details of name resolution on the Internet, we also look at special topics like administering DNS records in dynamic environments and debugging DNS setups during operation. We look at it within the technical framework of Univention Corporate Server, because it contains not only a dyed-in-the-wool DNS server, but also diverse tools to make managing DNS records significantly easier.

Exhibition of the open source industry: the Univention Summit 2021

On January 28, 2021, the 14th Univention Summit will take place. For the first time, it will be purely digital. Our CEO Peter Ganten will open the meeting with his keynote on “Digital Sovereignty: Spread Possibilities, not Dependencies”. In further presentations, you can listen to Frank Karlitschek (Nextcloud) talking about how to collaborate securely and efficiently, and Rafael Laguna (Federal Agency for Leap Innovations SPRIND) who will take a look at Europe’s digital future.

The future is now: OX delivers seamless video, voice and text integration

Bild vom OX User Interface auf einem Laptop
The world has changed dramatically in 2020, with people being forced to work in ways they never imagined this time in 2019. While many people have looked at working from home as an option over the years – and companies examined the practicalities – only a small percentage of the total workforce was working remotely at the beginning of the year. However, no one foresaw the rapid move to home or remote working that would result from Covid-19 restrictions across the world.