Univention Corporate Server (UCS) / Blog: Recent posts

We reached an important milestone in the step-by-step migration to Keycloak as
an Identity Provider in UCS: In August 2022, we made Keycloak available as an
app in the UCS App Center for integration in UCS in an initial version and
have improved it ever since. With the latest release in December, the app is
now also part of our official product support, and thus ready for productive
use.... read more

Let's talk about VLANs—in this article I would like to talk about virtual
networks and their benefits. I'm also going to describe how configure VLANs in
Univention Corporate Server (UCS), how to increase security for your UCS
environment with our RADIUS app and dynamically assign devices to specific
VLANs via a RADIUS server.

What are VLANs anyway?

Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) divide existing physical networks into
several logical networks. They are used to separate data traffic at network
level. Each VLAN has its own unique VLAN ID and creates its own broadcast
domain, i.e. its own logical group of network devices in the LAN (local area
network). Devices in different VLANs can therefore only communicate with each
other via a router that is also connected to both virtual networks.... read more

Due to the progress in our technical basis in general and because of the usage
habits of our customers, we have revised the pricing model for Univention
Enterprise subscriptions. It takes effect on December 1, 2022, for all new
customers.
Our Univention Corporate Server (UCS) subscription model has been
streamlined and simplified. At the same time, the basis has become more
flexible. In the past, pricing was mainly based on the number of servers. In
the new pricing model, the dependency has been significantly reduced in favor
of a model that is based on the number of users.... read more

Using the UCS@school Kelvin REST API app, you can conveniently create,
delete or modify UCS@school user and class objects via a REST interface.
Unlike the import function and manual interventions via the web interface, it
is less error-prone and can be addressed automatically.

Important Changes in Version 1.7.0:

• School classes and workgroups can now be created without share. Until now, group shares were a prerequisite for creating a class or workgroup. By joining a group with share, students and teachers can share data that is of interest to the respective group, such as worksheets. However, since this does not always go hand in hand in practice, sharing is now optional during creation and thus more data-efficient.
• If you want to check if a school already exists before creating it, the new HEAD endpoint for schools now makes it easier to find out.... read more

When you hear Marburg, you probably first think of its nationally known
Philipps University or the production site of the biotechnology company
BioNtech. What is probably less well known to most outsiders is the role of
the school authority. In this function, the university city is responsible for
23 schools of all types - from elementary school to vocational school. The
approximately 11,500 students and 1,100 teachers can be accommodated in the
schools' more than 800 classrooms.... read more

The provision and maintenance of the schools' master data are one of the most
challenging issues in digital school administration. How do you manage to have
complete, up-to-date user data available at any time, in any system, without
manual and error-prone maintenance? At Univention, we have taken on this
challenge and developed the UCS@school ID Connector to synchronize school
identities on several independent UCS@school IDMs.... read more

The new OX Connector app synchronizes selected users and groups between
Univention Corporate Server and a remote Open-Xchange system. Our app uses the
OX SOAP API for communication. In this blog article I would like to introduce
you to the new OX Connector. I'll also talk about the prerequisites for your
environment.

Open-Xchange in our App Center

Open-Xchange is a modular communication and collaboration platform. It has
been available in the Univention App Center for some time now. In addition to
a mail client, the OX App
Suite also includes applications for managing contacts and
appointments, extensions for managing and synchronizing documents, pictures,
photos and films (OX Drive), for encrypting e-mails and files (OX
Guard) as well as the text editing and spreadsheet
application OX Documents.... read more

In the independent city of Jena in Thuringia there are 27 schools run by the
municipality. Our IT department at the Jena Media Center supports around
12,500 students and 1,700 teachers in elementary schools, community schools,
high schools, three vocational schools and a special-needs center. Ten
employees now work at the media center, including three school supervisors and
individual supervisors responsible for infrastructure, Linux administration,
mobile device management (MDM) and software distribution. They take care of
the information technology supply and equipment of all schools run by the
municipality.... read more

Part 2: Most Important Drivers of the Digitally Sovereign Emergence in

Germany and Europe

A few weeks ago, our working student Ann-Kathrin dedicated her series on
Digital Sovereignty to the what & why. To learn more about the meaning of this
now almost overused term and the role of open source in strengthening Digital
Sovereignty, take a look at part 1 of the blog
series.... read more

Today we present another educational platform that will soon be available via
the Univention ID Broker for all connected school boards and their schools:
itslearning.

Founded in Norway in 1999, itslearning is now one of the most widespread used
European learning management systems (LMS). With offices in eight countries
and its headquarters in Bergen, Norway, itslearning became part of the Sanoma
Group in 2019 and is used by millions of people around the world.... read more

A huge opportunity for digitalization of not just the administration!

Last week, the project "Sovereign Administrative Workplace" was officially
launched at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and in the presence of the
Federal CIO State Secretary Markus Richter: Working together with Dataport and
a number of other manufacturers from the open source ecosystem, Univention is
developing the software for the administrative workplace of the future.... read more

Do you administer any Windows machines in your UCS domain? Do you also use
Samba to provide an Active Directory-compliant domain controller with a login
service for the Windows clients? If the answer is yes, you may have wondered
what backup and restore strategy is best suited for your environment. What
data do you need to back up? How do you go about restoring a single domain
controller (DC) in the event of an emergency? And what to do if the entire
domain is affected by a failure?... read more

Detailed domain and server monitoring for important Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) such as disk usage, memory, CPU, network, etc. is an indispensable
part of ensuring the smooth, trouble-free operation of an UCS environment.
Using the UCS Dashboard, administrators can quickly obtain an overview of the
status of a UCS domain and its servers via different dashboards.

Our development department just recently released a new version of the
dashboard for UCS. One major innovation: The Alertmanager replaces the
previously used tool Nagios. In this article, I would like to give you a brief
overview of the dashboard features and introduce you to the new Alertmanager.... read more

Part 1: How to secure the ability to create and control Design Flexibility

and Control Capability for Germany and Europe with Open Source Software

What is Digital Sovereignty? Why is it so important? Where does OSS come into
play for the development of an intra-European solution and what contribution
does Univention make? These are the very questions our working student Ann-
Kathrin addresses in part one of this blog series on Digital Sovereignty.... read more

The documentation family for Univention products grew by a new member, the
Univention Corporate Server Architecture. You can find the document
online and for
download as PDF. It is the first iteration
of a much larger documentation project that covers the technical architecture
behind Univention Corporate Server (UCS) on different detail levels for
different audiences.... read more

With the Point Release UCS 5.0-2, another important step has been taken for
further developing Univention Corporate Server towards more accessibility,
better usability, as well as the integration of services and their central
management. In this blog article, I would like to give you an overview of the
most important new features and improvements, such as the integration of Self
Services into the UCS Portal, the introduction of service-specific passwords
or various performance improvements in the use of DNS and LDAP, as well as an
overview of the apps made available for UCS 5.... read more

Most of us find it difficult to imagine what it's like to work on a computer,
tablet or smartphone with limited physical, sensory and/or cognitive
abilities. There are numerous obstacles out there in the digital world, not
just for users with physical disabilities. Older people and non-native
speakers face barriers in digital environments as well—so let's talk about how
we can include all users, in particular users in the education and in the
public sector.

UCS and UCS@school customers increasingly request accessible interfaces, so
we’ve checked whether our software meets common accessibility guidelines.
Together with Dataport, we’ve tested the portal of Univention Corporate Server
(UCS), which works as identity and access management in the Phoenix project.
We’re taking the results as motivation to focus even more on accessibility.... read more

In May 2021, the release of UCS 5 took place. Important changes are:

• New design and improved user interface
• Expansion of Univention App Center
• New core: Debian "Buster" and Python 3
• Simplification and concentration on the essentials

Since the release of UCS 5, installations have been increasing daily. New
systems are being installed and existing UCS 4 systems are being updated.

App Center as an essential part of UCS... read more

On May 11, 2022, we released the new Univention ID Broker to simplify the
integration of educational portals and educational SaaS services (Software as
a Service) in schools' IT environments. The broker acts as intermediary
service and connects UCS@school (serving as identity management system at
school boards, states, and individual schools) with different external
services, like learning management systems, digital media, and other
educational offers. As a result, students and teachers can log in with their
usual credentials to access their personalized and familiar environment. Here
they get immediate access to all connected and enabled services (single sign-
on).... read more

The IDM (Identity Management System) is an essential part of UCS. Thanks to
the central administration of the data, it is ensured that the necessary data
for the logins following different standards is available and unified.

One of the essential features of UCS is the option to set a password for the
user. The user can then reset the password, e.g., when using the self-service.

When using an additional application such as RADIUS (WLAN connection), any
user can use their domain password to log on to the WLAN.... read more

The fifth major release of Univention Corporate Server was published in May,
2021. As announced back then, not all apps were immediately
available, but migrated step by step. As of now, opsi 4.2 is available in the
Univention App Center: one version for the predecessor UCS 4.4-x and one
version for UCS 5.0.... read more

Easily and quickly manage the entire company with all employees, whether you
are 2, 20, 200 or 2000 employees.
Thanks to its modular concept, our modern, web-based business ERP and CRM
solution can already be adapted to your needs as standard. As an open source
based product it is open, customizable, and far ahead of many commercial
products in terms of handling, functionality and security. Ideally suited as
an upgrade from Excel-based procedures, which are still practiced by many
companies, but do not allow reasonable collaboration and data change tracking.... read more

Easily and quickly manage the entire company with all employees, whether you
are 2, 20, 200 or 2000 employees.
Thanks to its modular concept, our modern, web-based business ERP and CRM
solution can already be adapted to your needs as standard. As an open source
based product it is open, customizable, and far ahead of many commercial
products in terms of handling, functionality and security. Ideally suited as
an upgrade from Excel-based procedures, which are still practiced by many
companies, but do not allow reasonable collaboration and data change tracking.... read more

XWiki is a full-featured Open Source knowledge management platform used by
thousands of organizations of all sizes to collaborate and exchange
information. We are excited to announce that XWiki has joined the Univention
App Center. In this article,we explore XWiki’s main features, then take a
look at how you can go beyond basic capabilities to create a personalized
experience and where to find help, should you need it.... read more

A new EGroupware version is available in the Univention App Center, and it
offers some cool new features. For example, users can insert all data stored
in EGroupware into Collabora Online directly via a new dialog, and not just
via placeholders.This way, only a few clicks are necessary to include entries
from the address book, calendar, timesheets, etc. into an office document—say
good-bye to the tedious copy & paste sessions between EGroupware modules.... read more