1 Password for All Services and Networks with Single Sign-on

Single Sign-on in UCS at management console

Single Sign-on (SSO) is a process where your users authenticate themselves only once against the system and that’s it. They can then use a whole range of different programs, services, and cloud offerings without having to sign on personally each time again. Your users will love it. No more hassle with inventing and remembering numerous different passwords.

But single sign-on is not only about user friendliness. Another important aspect is, of course, the security of your data. When you’ve got a complex IT infrastructure, which includes mobile apps and devices and cloud services, the security risk increases a lot.

This is why I would like to explain here how you can catch two birds with one stone: Making work easier for your employees with single sign-on technology while keeping your data safer from external attacks at the same time.

Setup of a Collaborative Workspace for a Globally Operating Team with UCS as the Central IDM System

Screenshot of the website of SOLARKIOSK

In this success story, you can find out how we set up a collaborative workspace for SOLARKIOSK AG, a company offering green energy services, high-quality products, and sustainable solutions all over the world. This workspace allows all members of the team to work and communicate with each other from anywhere and at any time – efficiently, reliably, and securely.

Guide to Your Private UCS Server with ownCloud, Kopano & Let’s Encrypt

Have you ever thought?: “It’s enough! I finally want to set up my own robust, powerful server at home to put an end to the permanent threat that someone might hack my precious data.”

I did! And today, I’d like to share with you here all the necessary steps that are required for this. In addition to UCS, my home server scenario also includes a software bundle made up of groupware, mail, and file exchange software, i.e. ownCloud and the Kopano apps. This bundle make proprietary mail and groupware solutions redundant if you like. In addition, I also show you how to install Let’s Encrypt so that the connections to your UCS server will be well protected, too.

Advantages of Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection to Boost Network Performance + Data Availability

Männerkopf mit Binärcode

Would you like some valuable tips on how to increase network performance and user data availability when using Windows clients together with UCS?

Thinking about user data, many of us admins immediately understand that questions about the issues of backups, privacy, and availability, no matter whether across different machines or outside the office, can create us a considerable headache. But fortunately there are solutions in place and in this article I want to cover two of them.

UCS at the SchwuZ in Berlin, Part 2: Synchronizing User Profiles

SchwuZ Keller

We would like to inform you about further mile stones we achieved with our IT project at the Berlin-based cultural event organizer SchwuZ and therefore complement our last blog article bitpack.io modernizes IT at the SchwuZ in Berlin with Univention Corporate Server from last year with instructions on how to setup synchronized user profiles.

Central Domain Management with Samba and Active Directory

Graphic of a company's worldwide network

The release of UCS 4.3 also provides you with the Samba version 4.7 . Compared to older versions, it clearly improves the performance in the area of LDAP queries and replications of group memberships in particular. This offers great benefits, particularly for large organizations with several thousands or even ten thousands of authentication accounts.

But what is Samba in general? How can it be compared to Microsoft‘s Active Directory? Where is it involved in UCS‘s identity management and how can you benefit from it?

In this article I want to present you two solutions for the central detection and authorization of the members of a domain. Both of them enable you to centrally administrate a domain network. They also help to achieve more data protection and significantly increase failure security for your IT systems.

Besides, I want to show you how UCS is able to bridge the gap between the Linux world and the Windows world. By this you can reap the benefits of both systems, instead of having to decide for one and thus restrict yourself.

Brief Introduction: How Can UCS Systems Be Updated Automatically?

Like any operating system manufacturer, Univention usually publishes weekly updates. As an administrator, you want to install them as soon as possible. However, in large UCS environments with many connected servers, manual updates can take a lot of time, which is not always available every week. The easiest way to reduce such a big workload is to automate the task by using policies.

In the following, I want to explain how you can set up an automated update of UCS systems by using the policy ‘maintenance settings‘.

Central IdM of Cloud to Minimize Risks with Users and Structures

When administrators think about user management (IdM), they often only keep an eye on traditional IT systems. But even in the cloud, where you can buy new services with just a few clicks, it’s extremely important for companies to keep control over their users if they do not want to lose control over who has rights and access in the organization. Otherwise, a dissatisfied or dismissed employee can quickly become a real threat to the entire corporate IT. Or the failure of subsystems can mean that the entire IT can no longer be accessed and all processes in the company are stopped.

Customized Univention Portal Page in Just a Few Steps

Screenshot of a personalized Univention portal

The Univention Portal is the central hub via which users access a Univention system. It is where you can find links to installed applications like webmail. In addition, administrators also have the option of including their own links to external websites. Last, but by no means least, there is also a module here with which users can change their own password.

Univention supports personalization of the portal’s start page – in the best-case scenario, this not only ensures compliance with your corporate identity, but also allows users to identify better with Univention. For example, it is possible to place a number of different applications on the start page, permitting users direct access to them. Yet another option is even more evident immediately: In just a few steps, the portal can be customized with a large-scale background image and a portal logo. Domain administrators can perform this step quickly and with minimal effort.

Best use of LDAP in UCS: Schema Extensions for Adding Attributes & New Object Types

The LDAP server in UCS, like the Active Directory on a Windows server, stores all the information on your domain about all your resources from hardware to employee as objects, namely in a structured and well-defined manner. Every object has some defined attributes of a particular type. Common attributes of a user object are, for example, the user’s surname, password and further valuable information on him. Part of the LDAP is the LDAP schema, which provides the administrator with a clear overview on all objects by describing which types of attributes exist within the LDAP and what attributes they have.

So, if you want to include additional attributes or create entirely new object types, extending the schema might be the way to go.

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