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BlueMind 4.8 is available !!!

· 11 min read

MailApp, MAPI, Teams, ... Discover here major developments and new features of BlueMind, available on version 4.8.0.

For the latest developments and technical improvements in BlueMind 4.8, see 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
  • font selection
  • chip lists management
  • tables

Composing and Viewing Messages in a New Window​

To view or compose several emails simultaneously:

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.

Information on how to print an email can be found in the User Guide > Mailbox > View messages : Print messages

Attachments Preview​

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

Click on the icon and you're in preview mode.

For further details see the dedicated documentation in the User Guide > Mail > Viewing messages: Opening attachments.

Linked Attachments​

When dealing with large attachments, BlueMind gives you the option to store files on a server. The e-mail then contains a link enabling the recipient to download the attachment.

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.

For full details, see the dedicated page Organizing folders: Moving a folder.

Corporate Signatures​

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

For more details please refer to our documentation:

Improved Scrolling/Scrollbars​

Still with the idea of improving our messaging application, scrollbars have been added.

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: Notifications of emails without subject display 'No subject' instead of empty subject.
  • BM-18156: Identities of technical domain ("xxx.internal") are not proposed in display anymore.
  • FEATWEBML-1395: Emails sent to unknown contacts are now automatically added to the collected contacts.
  • BM-18376: It is now possible to send an email with format Name <adress@email.com>.
  • BM-18454: Performance improvements when a mailbox has a lot of folders.
  • FEATWEBML-2093: Some performance improvements when display mode by conversation is activated.
  • FEATWEBML-115: Improved management of distribution lists during message composition.
  • FEATWEBML-307: Improve email response management with a lot of recipients.
  • FEATWEBML-2114: Adds linked attachment support.

User settings​

  • BM-17846: Fix display problem in "My calendars" tab

Upgrades to Native Outook/MAPI Support​

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

  • BM-17768: Improvements of sync process and message move possibly provoking sync errors.
  • BM-18067: Add notes complete support.
  • BM-17877: MAPI diagnostic tool can now generate a diff between Outlook calendar and BlueMind.
  • BM-18299: The external users are now correctly taken into account in groups
  • BM-18357: Adds a command bm-cli mapi rules to list filters asked by Outlook.
  • BM-18213: Improves meeting refusal, with a profile created after.
  • BM-18437: Adds translation support for automated absence messages (Out of Office).
  • BM-18312: Improves role upgrade propagation during change on mailbox.
  • MAPI diagnostic tool can now display installed plugin list in profile.
  • BM-18506: Better calendar event management with an external attendee.
  • BM-18593: Fixes recurring events removal problem.
  • BM-16102: Do not display warning during auto-discover domains verification on "xxx.internal" addresses.
  • BM-18581: Fixes distribution lists of each user with a hot upgrade
  • BM-18624: Adds Outlook localized sender search support ('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.

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.

Other Significant Changes​

New Behavior​

  • TRIAL subscriptions now display a specific ribbon that identifies the install as such.
  • BM-18389 : During upgrades, database 'bj-data' is automatically saved. This saving might be really long and resource consuming. An option has been added to bm-cli setup upgrade --no-backup to avoid this backup and save time during an update.

Improvements to the CLI​

  • BM-18357: Adds a command bm-cli mapi rules to list filters asked by Outlook.
  • Add a command bm-cli maintenance xfer to transfer users between different backends.
  • BM-18500: The command bm-cli hotupgrade progress allows following hot upgrades state.
  • Adds a bm-cli node status command to check that the platform is working properly.
  • BM-18636: Several improvements of the command bm-cli certificate on Let's encrypt certificates management, that was not clear.
  • Improve BlueMind async tasks logs management. Now the logs are managed by Chronicle Queue, with storage compressed on disk. Logs task size is no longer limited to 10_000 lines.
  • bm-cli maintenance repair --match= operations now filter on email addresses instead of "displayName".
  • Default memory size used by the CLI is now limited to 4Gio, and the parameters of garbage collector have been adjusted to be aggressive (release memory to OS faster).
  • Add an option bm-cli maintenance repair --domain-only to execute repair tasks of one domain only (without user entries). (without user entries)

LDAP/ActiveDirectory​

  • BM-18465: Allows the Active Directory password change from BlueMind administration console.
  • BM-18258: Do not generate a stacktrace when a user has a profile image too big.
  • BM-18184: Fix fast user creation during first identification.
  • BM-18442: Add a stacktrace when the UID of a user / group is not found in BlueMind.
  • Delete correctly temporary files of /var/spool/cyrus/data during object storage utilization, during an abnormal IMAP session disconnection.

Email journaling​

Technical Changes​

In addition to the ongoing improvement and maintenance of the solution, a great deal of work has been undertaken for over a year to prepare for the arrival of important new functionalities:

  • 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: Add shared mailbox and groups transfer support between different backends.

  • Add a command bm-cli maintenance xfer to transfer users between different backends.

  • Adds a repair containers.sharding.location: This operation automatically controls and transfers containers that are not located on the same storage server as the user.

    Containers that are not on the good backend are also cleaned.

  • Add a repair containers.sharding.orphan.location (by domain) to delete entries of t_container_location not pointing to any container existing on database.

KAFKA resilience​

  • FEATBL-1372: Allows the creation of a BlueMind instance from present data in KAFKA cluster and object storage. (without any access to another BlueMind)
  • FEATBL-1680: Allows to clone an existing installation, modifying installation credentials, making clone independent of original BlueMind.
  • Several improvements of CRP proxy
    • Utilize BoringSSL instead of java native TLS implementation
    • Fix contact directory parallel reading
    • The proxy only responds to queries when it is done reading the full directory
    • The proxy only responds to queries when it is done reading the full directory

Other Changes​

  • Deletion of table t_directory_ou_member
  • BM-18067: Fix a problem preventing the restore of a calendar sent by email.
  • BM-18339: Improve the attachments analysis (indexation) with tika.
  • BM-17502: Allows the modification of formatted name (formattedName) on a shared mailbox from administration console, when the shared mailbox has no name/firstname.
  • BM-18324: During an upgrade, if the maintenance process (pg_repack) is still executing, pg_repack is stopped to prevent a dead-lock prevent upgrade.
  • BM-18377: Links to public and private calendars were not correctly upgraded from BlueMind 3.5.
  • BM-18322: Add a nagios probe (bm-check) allowing to raise an alert on subscription expiration date.
  • BM-18308: Fix a problem during emails restore, with object storage activated.
  • BM-18481: During an upgrade from BlueMind 3.5, improve the management of emails too big to be restored. These messages are now skipped instead of canceling all the user restore.
  • BM-18293: Improve migration process from filehosting to object storage: existing links are now not changed.
  • (us-east-1 for example).
  • BM-18577: The backend "S3" can now manage regions other than "EU" (us-east-1 for example). (us-east-1 for example).
  • BM-18649: The reindexation of messages do not stop at first error and tries to index the maximum of things.
  • BM-18666: Add automated management of domains "autodiscover." with let's encrypt.
  • Prevent the start of bm-ysnp service if core token /etc/bm/bm-core.tok is not present
  • Fix a memory leak during utilization of client API with a non standard timeout (CLI).
  • Change the core start timeout to 5 minutes, instead of 1min30s.
  • Reduce quantity of displayed errors in logs during a core stop.
  • Make core startup faster not waiting for hollow directory constitution to pass in state "Running".
  • BM-18707: Fix a bug during writing of a sieve filter, as a backend server is disconnected.

Support of New Linux Distributions​

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

Updated Dependencies​

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