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BlueMind 4.8 is available!!!

· 11 min read

MailApp, MAPI, Teams, ... Find out here about the major changes and new features in BlueMind, available from version 4.8.0.

To know more about the latest developments and technical improvements in BlueMind 4.8, visit the Changelog.

Major Upgrades to our New Webmail: The Mail App​

Our new webmail -- released in late 2021 -- brings state-of-the-art technology and user-friendly web access to BlueMind. However, some functional shortcomings sometimes hindered the move to large-scale production. This version 4.8, in addition to providing an overall performance upgrade, brings multiple improvements and incorporates some user-driven enhancements. This includes:

Upgraded Text Editor​

A new text editor improves email composition with better copy/paste compatibility with Office and the following formatting options:

  • text color
  • fonts
  • bullet points
  • tables

Composing and Viewing Messages in a New Window​

To view or compose several emails simultaneously:

  • you can display a message in a new window, including in conversation mode (see User's Guide).
  • you can create a new message in a new window (see User's Guide).

Saved App Context and Settings after Closing​

You can adjust your webmail's display to your liking: change column widths, open files, set the toolbar to always show, etc. This context is now saved when you quit the app and retrieved when you log back in.

Message Printing​

Message printing has been improved. Among others, you can now print conversations or images.

You can find all the information about printing emails in our User's Guide.

Attachments Preview​

A long-awaited feature, being able to preview attachments, is available in version 4.8!

Just click the icon to open preview mode.

For more details, please refer to our User's Guide.

Linked Attachments​

When dealing with large attachments, BlueMind gives you the option to share them as a link which is attached to your message. The files are stored on a server for the recipient to download.

For more details, please refer to our documentation:

Moving Folders​

BlueMind 4.8 also lets you move folders! Either using the interface or drag-and-drop, you can now move your folders within one mailbox.

Below is an example of a drag-and-drop.

You can find out more about this feature in our User's Guide.

Enterprise Signatures​

You can now also move your signature using drag-and-drop.

For more details please refer to our documentation:

Improved Scrolling/Scrollbars​

Another improvement to our webmail is the addition of scrollbars.

Scrolling within a conversation in Safari has also been improved.

Writing to a Distribution List/Group​

Groups and distribution lists have been added to the list of possible message recipients. You can include a group's address or the name of a distribution list as message recipients. You can keep the list's or group's name or expand it to display all the recipients they include.

Other Changes to the Webmail​

  • BM-18166: Allows the webmail to work for users without an identity.
  • BM-18189: Fixes an issue with the editor's cursor when replying to a message (The cursor may have incorrectly been placed after the signature).
  • FEATWEBML-1058: Adds a message printing button.
  • BM-18269: Untitled email notifications now read "No subject" rather than being left empty.
  • BM-18156: Technical domain identities ("xxx.internal") are no longer displayed.
  • FEATWEBML-1395: Emails sent to unknown contacts are now automatically added to the Collected Contacts address book.
  • BM-18376: Email recipients can now have the format "Name <address@email.com>".
  • BM-18454: Improved performance for mailboxes with a large number of folders.
  • FEATWEBML-2093: Several performance improvements when conversation mode is enabled.
  • FEATWEBML-115: Improved management of distribution lists during message composition.
  • FEATWEBML-307: Improved management of replies to an email with a large number of recipients.
  • FEATWEBML-2114: Adds linked attachment support.

User Preferences​

  • BM-17846: Fixes a display issue in the "My Calendars" tab.

Upgrades to Native Outook/MAPI Support​

Many fixes and upgrades have been made to stabilize native Outlook support:

  • BM-17768: Several improvements to the synchronization and message-moving processes that may have caused syncing malfunctions.
  • BM-18067: Adds full notes support.
  • BM-17877: The MAPI diagnosis tool now generates a differential file that shows the differences between the calendar in Outlook and in BlueMind.
  • BM-18299: External users are now correctly taken into account in groups.
  • BM-18357: Adds a bm-cli mapi rules command that lists the filters requested by Outlook.
  • BM-18213: Improved handling of declined meetings after a profile is created again.
  • BM-18437: Adds support for out-of-office message translations.
  • BM-18312: Improves the propagation of updated rights when changes are made to a shared mailbox.
  • The MAPI diagnosis tool can now show the list of plugins installed for the profile.
  • BM-18506: Improved handling of calendar events with external participants.
  • BM-18593: Fixes an issue when deleting a recurring calendar event.
  • BM-16102: Warning no longer showed during autodiscover domain checks on "xxx.internal" addresses.
  • BM-18581: Fixes each user's distribution list through a hot update.
  • BM-18624: Adds support for Outlook localized sender searches ('From' becomes 'De' in French)
  • BM-18665: Improves contacts display order.

Support of Microsoft Teams Videoconferencing​

The videoconferencing systems BlueMind supports -- BlueMind.video, Jitsi, Starleaf, etc. -- now includes Microsoft Teams.

  • FEATBL-1719: You can now create Teams videoconferences and link them to a BlueMind meeting.
    For more details, please refer to our Administrator's Guide.

Improved Management of Organizational Units (OUs)​

For large organizations, the OU management and navigation window can now show the resources associated with one or several OUs and the roles given to OU administrators, and can also be used to edit OUs.

  • FEATBL-1315: Management of Organizational Units has been made easier for administrators.
    For more details, please refer to our Administrator's Guide.

Other Significant Changes​

New Behavior​

  • TRIAL subscriptions now display a specific ribbon that identifies the install as such.
  • BM-18389: During updates, the bj-data database is backed up automatically. This backup can time-consuming and resource-hungry. The option "bm-cli setup upgrade --no-backup" has been added to stop this backup from being made and save time during updates.

Improvements to the CLI​

  • BM-18357: Adds the bm-cli mapi rules command that lists the filters requested by Outlook.
  • Adds the bm-cli maintenance xfer command to transfer users across different storage servers (backends).
  • BM-18500: The bm-cli hotupgrade progress command is used to follow the progress of hot updates.
  • Adds the bm-cli node status command to check that the server is running properly.
  • BM-18636: Several changes to the bm-cli certificate command to improve the handling of Let's Encrypt certificates.
  • Improves the handling of asynchronous tasks monitoring logs launched by BlueMind. These logs are now handled by Chronicle Queue, with disk-based compressed storage. The task log is no longer limited to 10_000 lines.
  • bm-cli maintenance repair --match= filters now run through email addresses rather than the "displayName".
  • The default amount of memory used by the CLI is now limited to 4GiB and the garbage collector's settings have been adjusted to be more aggressive (to give memory back to the operating system quickly).
  • Adds a bm-cli maintenance repair --domain-only option to run repair tasks for a domain only (without user entries).

LDAP/ActiveDirectory​

  • BM-18465: Lets you change the ActiveDirectory password from the BlueMind admin console.
  • BM-18258: No longer generates more than one stacktrace when a user's profile picture is too big.
  • BM-18184: Fixes an issue with on-the-fly user creation during the initial login.
  • BM-18442: Adds an error log when a user's/group's UID is not found in BlueMind.
  • Correctly deletes temporary /var/spool/cyrus/data files when using storage object during an unexpected IMAP logout.

Email Log​

  • FEATWEBML-1667: Enables email conversation logging.
    For more details, please refer to our Administrator's Guide.

Technical Changes​

Besides our solution's ongoing enhancements and maintenance efforts, we've spent the last year preparing for the arrival of major new features:

  • hot BlueMind system upgrades
  • real-time backup
  • real-time platform cloning as well as instant DRP.

These projects translate into technical changes in BlueMind's version 4.8.

Changes to the Database Schema​

To enable future changes to BlueMind's advanced resilience system, the data stored in BlueMind containers has been transformed to use 64-bit database keys.

The transformation of the data schema is carried out while the application is in production.

Hot Upgrades​

The hot upgrades system has been improved:

  • It automatically restarts critical updates when they fail.
  • When hot upgrades are launched from the CLI (bm-cli hotupgrade start), planned updates are temporarily cancelled during the hot upgrade.
  • A notification has been added at the end of the command line upgrade (bm-cli setup upgrade) telling the administrator about the presence of a hot upgrade.

Inter-Backend Data Transfer​

  • BM-18452: Adds support for the transfer of groups and shared mailboxes between storage servers.

  • Adds a bm-cli maintenance xfer command to transfer users between different storage servers (backends).

  • Adds a containers.sharding.location repair: This operation is used to control and transfer automatically the containers not located on the same storage server as the user.

    The containers not located on the correct server are also cleaned up.

  • Adds a containers.sharding.orphan.location (domain-specific) repair to delete t_container_location entries that no longer point to an existing database container.

KAFKA Resilience​

  • FEATBL-1372: Lets you create BlueMind instances from the data present in the KAFKA cluster and object storage (without access to another BlueMind system).
  • FEATBL-1680: Lets you clone an existing install by modifying existing install login credentials which makes the clone separate from the original BlueMind system.
  • Improvements to the CRP proxy:
    • Uses BoringSSL instead of the native Java TLS implementation.
    • Fixes parallel reading of the directory.
    • The proxy only responds to queries when it is done reading the full directory.
    • The proxy automatically restarts during package updates.

Other Changes​

  • Deletes the unused t_directory_ou_member table.
  • BM-18067: Fixes an issue that prevented the restoration of calendars sent by email.
  • BM-18339: Improved attachment analysis (indexation) with Tika.
  • BM-17502: Lets you modify a shared mailbox's formattedName from the admin console when the shared mailbox has no last name/first name.
  • BM-18324: During updates, if the (pg_repack) maintenance process is still running, pg_repack is stopped to avoid a deadlock that would prevent the update.
  • BM-18377: The links to public and private calendars failed to update correctly since BlueMind 3.5.
  • BM-18322: Adds a Nagios probe (bm-check) that brings up an alert about the subscription's expiry date.
  • BM-18308: Fixes an issue during email restorations with object storage enabled.
  • BM-18481: During upgrades from BlueMind 3.5, the handling of emails that are too large to be restored is improved. These messages are now skipped rather than the entire user restoration being cancelled.
  • BM-18293: Improves the migration process of filehosting files to object storage: existing links are now left as they are.
  • MAINTBL-63: Enables automatic maintenance for elasticsearch mailbox indexes.
  • BM-18577: The "S3" object storage backend can now handle regions other than "EU" (e.g. us-east-1).
  • BM-18649: Message reindexing no longer stops after the first error encountered and tries to index as many items as possible.
  • BM-18666: Adds automatic management for "autodiscover." domains with let's encrypt.
  • Prevents the launch of the bm-ysnp service if the /etc/bm/bm-core.tok core token is not present.
  • Prevents a memory leak when using an API client with a non-standard timeout (CLI).
  • Changes the core's startup timeout to 5 minutes instead of 1 minute 30 seconds.
  • Reduces the number of log errors shown during a core stoppage.
  • Speeds up core startup by not waiting for the hollow directory to be put together to move to "Running" status.
  • BM-18707: Fixes a crash when writing a sieve filter when a backend server is offline.

Support of New Linux Distributions​

  • Adds Ubuntu Jammy support (22.04 LTS)
  • Adds AlmaLinux 8 and RockyLinux 8 support (use the RHEL8 BlueMind repository)

Updated Dependencies​

  • PostgreSQL 14.4
  • ElasticSearch 7.15.5
  • JDK 8u332
  • Vert.x 4.2.6
  • Netty 4.1.77.Final