How to administrate users with UCS

User administration is a key feature of UCS and can be accessed through the „User“ module. In this article and the corresponding Howto video tutorial, I will explain its primary functions. These include:

  • searching for users
  • creating users
  • modifying user attributes
  • the detailed user overview
  • editing passwords of single or multiple users simultaneously
  • deleting users
  • administration of users in groups

How To: Configuring UCS Self Services for New Features

A major benefit of UCS is that users can log in to a variety of services which are operated on UCS and which are used in their respective organisations with the same user name and password they usually use. In the past, users could change their password through the Univention Management Console (UMC). Via the entry User settings / Change password a new password could be set after entering the old one. However, if the user had forgotten their old password, they had to contact the administrator to have them reset the password.

With the current UCS version 4.4, all of this can be done with the new function of the App Self Service without needing help from the administrator. Indeed, all you need is the user’s e-mail address (or mobile phone number to receive an SMS). Moreover, the UCS Self Service enables users to edit their own contact information and, for example, upload a profile picture or enter an address and further data.

How To: Upgrade to the new UCS version 4.4

In March we launched the fourth minor release for Univention Corporate Server 4. The current version 4.4 offers a number of new features, as well as increased security and more convenience. In the blog article UCS 4.4 Release – Admin Diary, Self Services and Windows Domain Trusts we discussed the highlights of the new UCS version. With this article we will now demonstrate how easy it is to update to the new UCS – depending on your personal preferences either through the Univention Management Console (UMC) or using the commandline.

Email Service, Learning Platform and Unified User Identities – Bremerhaven Digitizes School IT

As a media center in Bremerhaven, we support a total of about 40 schools, 1,700 teachers and 17,000 pupils in the use of IT and other media. When we began implementing our digitization strategy in early 2015, the introduction of a learning management solution was at the top of our list of priorities. But even then, we were already considering offering further services, such as a service e-mail address for teachers. At that time, however, there was still no standardized database in which the data of all pupils and teachers was available to which a learning management solution or a e-mail server could be connected.

UCS: How to set up LDAP Replication

The central element of every identity management system is usually a directory service, a repository that stores and manages information like user profiles and access privileges, and network resources. Univention Corporate Server (UCS) uses OpenLDAP for this task.
If the directory service is down, many other services are no longer available. In this article we are going to show you how to plan a fail-safe environment for your UCS domain with LDAP replication, i.e., storing an exact copy of the data on multiple servers – this improves the reliability as well as the performance.

End of maintenance of UCS 4.2

The maintenance of UCS 4.2 ended on March 31, 2019. Users still using UCS 4.2 should update to a more recent version of UCS to continue to receive security updates, bug fixes, and minor releases. To update to the latest UCS version 4.4, you must first update to UCS 4.3. A description of the steps required for the update can be found in the release notes of UCS 4.3.

Collabora Online in UCS: get your own private office suite in few minutes

In this article I would like to introduce you to the most important features and benefits of Collabora Online, explain the possibilities of using it to meet data protection requirements together with Nextcloud or ownCloud, and show you how easy is to integrate and operate Collabora Online with Univention Corporate Server (UCS). You will also learn that Collabora Online in UCS offers a pre-built environment, pre-configured packages and a friendly UX that makes the integration process extremely easy and straightforward by including Nextcloud or ownCloud appliances preconfigured as data storage. At the end, you will get a short overview about the main differences between our two versions: Collabora Online Development Editon (CODE) and the supported Collabora Online, both available in the Univention App Center.