Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extension and Microsoft Outlook with proprietary Kolab-Connector PlugIns.
Basic Concepts
Kolab uses IMAP as an underlying protocol for email, contact, and calendar entries. These entries are saved in IMAP folders in Kolab XML format, and the IMAP server controls storage and access rights. Configuration and maintenance of Kolab is done by LDAP.
Kolab Clients and the Kolab server use well established protocols and formats for their work (i.e. IMAP as mentioned above, vCard, iCal, XML and LDAP). This allows the Kolab Format specification framework, or even portions of it, to be utilized as an open set of specifications for groupware clients and servers to communicate with each other. Third party implementations began almost immediately; for example, the Citadel groupware server began supporting version 1 of the Kolab Format specification in March 2004.
The concepts on which Kolab relies are laid out in the Kolab Format Specification and Architecture Paper for Kolab 2, and for Kolab 1 in the Kroupware Contract, Architecture Paper and Technical Description.
Main features
Full seamless support of mixed clients environments (Outlook, KDE, Web etc.) Full server side support for ActiveSync and CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV Support for Email, Calendar, Address Books, Tasks and File-Cloud Support for KDE with Kontact Support for Microsoft Outlook with proprietary connector PlugIns A web administration interface Configuration data is kept in a LDAP directory A global LDAP addressbook for contacts IMAP4rev1 as well as POP3 access to mail Full support for client-side PGP and S/MIME email encryption (officially Sphinx-interoperable) Full support for shared calendars with IMAP ACLs Full support for shared contacts with IMAP ACLs Fully offline capable using KDE Kontact or Microsoft Outlook Support for server side resource management (e.g. rooms, cars) Full support for freebusy handling
Kolab 3.x clients
Roundcube is the default web client delivered with Kolab 3.0; KDE Kontact, starting with version 4.10 , and Kontact-Touch (K Desktop Environment, Free Software); SyncKolab , starting with version 3.0.0, is a Mozilla Thunderbird/SeaMonkey and Lightning extension (Free Software); Kolab Desktop Client is a stabilized and professionally supported version of KDE Kontact.
Kolab 2.x clients
KDE Kontact and Kontact-Touch (K Desktop Environment, Free Software) Horde (integrated in Kolab since v2.2.1), a web-frontend for utilising web-browsers as Kolab-clients (Free Software) SyncKolab , a Mozilla Thunderbird / SeaMonkey and Lightning extension (Free Software) evolution-kolab (integrated in GNOME / Evolution since v3.4, see,) extends GNOME's Evolution and EDS (Evolution-Data-Server) to be a full-featured Kolab-client (Free Software) Kolab's integrated Horde also provides a SyncML interface, over which SyncML-capable mobile phones can synchronise PIM-data on a Kolab-server (Free Software) Z-Push (integrated in Kolab since v2.3.0) enables ActiveSync-capable clients to access their server mailboxes and to use Kolab-provided PIM-functionality (Free Software) Kolab-WS extends Kolab to provide Kolab-functionality as a web-service; Kolab-WS was originally part of Syncphony, which utilises Kolab-WS since their split (Free Software) Syncphony (initially "kolab-sync") connects Kolab-WS with a Funambol sync-server, thus enabling devices supported by Funambol to synchronise their PIM-Data with a Kolab server (Free Software) kolab-android synchronises Android's addressbook and calendar to IMAP-folders in the Kolab2 format (Free Software) Toltec Connector (Microsoft Outlook Connector, Proprietary Software) KONSEC Konnektor (Microsoft Outlook MAPI Storage Provider, Proprietary Software) Bynari Outlook Connector (Microsoft Outlook MAPI Provider, Proprietary Software) Aethera, a client solely for the Kolab 1 format, available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (Free Software) Roundcube is the default Webclient in the Kolab 2.4 release
History
2013: Kolab 3.0 was released, featuring the improved Kolab 3 format based on xCard and xCal, the Roundcube web-client, a new ActiveSync component called Syncroton and other new properties. Kolab Now hosted solution was launched. It lets customers create individual accounts or managed domain accounts, with the possibility to move data to a self-hosted Kolab 3 installation any time. The service is operated by Kolab Systems in Switzerland.