[appsuite-announce] Open-Xchange releases OX App Suite v7.4.0 and OX 6 v6.22.4

[Open-Xchange App Suite Maintenance Announcements]

Dear Customers and Partners of Open-Xchange,

Open-Xchange is pleased to announce the release of OX App Suite v7.4.0 and Open-Xchange Server 6 v6.22.4.

The main improvements to this latest major version of OX App Suite, are  improved Mobile- and Tablet Devices support, additional keyboard shortcuts for different modules and usability improvements for publications, recurring tasks and mail filter.

With this shipment of OX App Suite 7.4.0, Open-Xchange also announces new versions of OX Connector for Business Mobility and OX Connector for Microsoft Outlook. OX Connector for Business Mobility provides some additional usability enhancements plus an update to the now officially supported Exchange Active Sync Protocol 12.1. The new version of the OX Connector for Microsoft Outlook provides improved participation handling for private appointments.

A complete overview of all improvements for OX App Suite and the new OX Connectors can be found at http://software.open-xchange.com/products/appsuite/doc/Feature_Overview_OXAppSuite_7_4.pdf

Open-Xchange has created an announcement list for details relating to upcoming releases and all other information relevant to OX App Suite. You can subscribe to appsuite-announce at open-xchange.com at the link below: https://lists.open-xchange.com/mailman/listinfo/appsuite-announce or directly at the Open-Xchange License Database.

Important - please note:

- Open-Xchange encourages administrators to regularly update to the latest available release. An overview of the latest supported Major- Minor and Public Patch Releases can be found in the Knowledgebase at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:Version_Support_Committment. In order to ensure a stable and up to date environment please note the different supported versions.

- Debian 7 (Wheezy) was released by the Debian project on May 4th 2013. Both OX App Suite and Open-Xchange Server 6 support Debian 7 with OpenJDK 7 and MySQL 5.5 with this release of OX App Suite. Please note that the combination Debian 7 / OpenJDK 6 or Sun Java 6 will not be supported as a platform by Open-Xchange. OX App Suite v7.4.0 supports Debian 6 (SUN Java 6, OpenJDK 6 and Oracle Java 7), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (OpenJDK 6 or Oracle Java 7), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (IBM Java 7) and Univention Corporate Server 3.

- Open-Xchange would like to provide you with early notification of an upcoming name change for one of our modules, OX Files. As part of our product strategy we are currently developing clients for different desktop and mobile devices to provide improved file handling and synchronization. During development it became clear that a change of name would better reflect customer expectations of the features and functionality provided by OX Drive and provide greatest consistency and clarity for users across devices.  The name change from OX Files to OX Drive is planned for January 2014.

- Open-Xchange will discontinue Support for AJP based communication between the HTTP server and the OX backend server with the next major release of OX App Suite v7.6.0, planned for April 2014. Open-Xchange already provides a new HTTP connector, which is based on the Grizzly project. Download and configuration instructions are available at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:Grizzly. Starting with the release in April 2014, the current AJP based communication will no longer be supported. We encourage administrators to update to the latest Grizzly implementation.

- Open-Xchange will discontinue OX App Suite web frontend support for Internet Explorer 9 with the major release of OX App Suite v7.6.0, planned for April 2014. Starting with this release Open-Xchange will officially support Internet Explorer 11. In addition to this OX App Suite is optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, Mozilla Firefox (latest version), Google Chrome (latest version) and Apple Safari (latest version, Mac OS X only).

- Open-Xchange will discontinue OX App Suite support for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) with the major release of OX App Suite v7.6.0, planned for April 2014. Starting with this release Open-Xchange will officially support Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) for the Open-Xchange Calendar and Contact synchronization via CalDAV and CardDAV. Additionally OX App Suite will support Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).

- Open-Xchange will discontinue support for the currently available "showruntimestats" monitoring function (which fetches runtime information from the Java virtual machine and about the Open-Xchange Groupware backend) in September 2014. With OX App Suite v7.4.0, there is a new monitoring function using Jolokia for Open-Xchange. From v7.4.0 onwards, this is located inside the Open-Xchange Bundle and configured by jolokia.properties. Further information can be found at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Jolokia

Shipped packages and versions:

- Open-Xchange App Suite: Version 7.4.0-Rev 11 (built 2013-09-24/25)
- Open-Xchange 6 GUI: Version 6.22.4-Rev 11 (built 2013-09-24)
- OX Connector for Microsoft Outlook: Version 7.2.0
- OX Connector for Business Mobility: Version 7.4.0-Rev 11 (built 2013-09-24/25)
- Open-Xchange Notifier: Version 1.0.4
- Open-Xchange Client Updater: Version 6.18.21

Complete Release Notes can be found at:
- Open-Xchange App Suite v7.4: http://software.open-xchange.com/products/appsuite/doc/Release-Notes-v7.4.0.pdf
- Open-Xchange Server 6 v6.22.4: http://software.open-xchange.com/OX6/doc/Release-Notes-v7.4.0.pdf

For details of how to install and update OX App Suite please refer to the instructions given at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:UpdatingOXPackages 

For Open-Xchange Server 6 update please follow the instructions given at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=UpdatingOXPackages#Updating_Open-Xchange_Server_Packages_6.22.x to install the updates.

Best regards,
Your Open-Xchange Team

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Open-Xchange AG, Rollnerstr. 14, 90408 Nürnberg
Amtsgericht Nürnberg HRB 24738
Vorstand: Rafael Laguna de la Vera, Carsten Dirks
Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Richard Seibt