[appsuite-announce] Open-Xchange releases OX App Suite v7.8.3, OX Documents v7.8.3, OX 6 v6.22.13 and OX Guard v2.6.0

[Open-Xchange App Suite Maintenance Announcements]

Dear Open-Xchange Customers and Partners,

Open-Xchange is pleased to announce the release of OX App Suite v7.8.3, OX Documents v7.8.3, OX 6 v6.22.13 and OX Guard v2.6.0.

As always Open-Xchange strives to improve the usability and functionality of its products, this release is no exception. This release includes usability updates gained from extended usability testing as well as brand new functionality, such as OX Presentation, that is now part of OX Documents v7.8.3.


OX App Suite v7.8.3

OX App Suite is a modular platform designed for telcos, hosters, and other service providers for delivering a wide range of cloud-based services. These include email, file sharing, collaborative document editing, document management, time management, cloud storage and even metrics for monitoring end-user behaviour. 

Points to note about this release include:
- Webmail Push - The web interface now notifies users immediately when emails arrive
- Improved Scheduling View - Better usability for larger meetings with more participants
- Preview Images of Shared Files - More visual usability in Drive Mail


OX Presentation

OX Presentation is a new way of working with presentations. Open-Xchange has noticed that presentation work has two distinct phases: Building the presentation and delivering the presentation. Also different people with different skills sets, and even in different locations, often perform these phases. That is why Open-Xchange has two distinct apps for handling each stage: OX Presentation for building and OX Presenter for performing.

Finally OX Presentation lets both business and consumer users take advantage of its transparent ability to work with legacy files. This removes the need to learn new skills. 

OX Presentation provides the following:
- Non-destructive support for PowerPoint files (2007 and later)
- Master and layout slides to work with less effort
- Powerful text frame options
- Shape gallery with lines, squares, circles, etc. 
- Aligning, reordering and grouping objects 
- Drag and drop images from desktop or web pages
- Collaborate on slides


OX Documents v7.8.3

For service providers looking to attract customers, OX Documents is the perfect hook. Fully integrated into OX App Suite, OX Documents now includes the following new features:
- Work with OX Guard encrypted documents
- Improved document rendering on platforms where no MS Office standard fonts are available
- Display and edit shapes in OX Text
- Support for Array/Matrix formulas in OX Spreadsheet


OX Guard v2.6.0

This release of OX Guard has focused on becoming much more user-friendly, especially for basic users. Open-Xchange has recognized that some of the features and terminology was more orientated to advanced encryption users and thus was confusing for non-experts.

OX Guard now also provides:
- Simplified and enhanced file encryption support for OX Drive and OX Documents
- Simpler Guest Invitations


What’s New in General and Feature Overviews

Open-Xchange now provides more detailed overviews and Feature Overview documents about all new product releases. This can be found at 
https://www.open-xchange.com/portfolio/whats-new/


General information

Open-Xchange encourages administrators to regularly update to the latest available release. In order to ensure a stable and up to date environment please note the different supported versions. 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

Important - Please Note

- Starting with OX App Suite v7.8.3 the Open-Xchange middleware will not expose newly added configuration properties by adding them to existing, or new property files, anymore. This mechanism is tracked as 'lean configuration'. All properties that follow the 'lean configuration' approach will be published on https://documentation.open-xchange.com/7.8.3/middleware/configuration/properties.html

- Please note that there is a major Hazelcast library update to OX App Suite v7.8.3. This means that when updating from an earlier backend version, due to the upgraded library, it is not possible to form a cluster of nodes that run previous version of Hazelcast (i.e. exiting volatile data in the cluster will be lost during the update). A consistent Hazelcast cluster is needed for cluster-wide cache invalidation. To circumvent problems with database update tasks that need to perform cache invalidation, please follow the steps described in http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:Running_a_cluster#Upgrades_of_the_Hazelcast_library
Please also note that session migration is not possible between versions. This usually affects all user sessions that are stored in a distributed map, and will require the users to re-login after the update. Running incompatible versions of Hazelcast within a cluster will result in log entries showing the conflicting node and version information.

- Starting with OX App Suite v7.8.3 Open-Xchange deprecates its munin monitoring scripts that are based on parsing the output of command-line tools like 'showruntimestats'. In the past two versions of every monitoring script have been maintained, one based on such output and the other based on direct HTTP communication with the OX middleware. From the next version on, planned Q2 2017, only the HTTP-based versions will be available, which use Jolokia (https://jolokia.org/) under the hood. Details about Jolokia-based monitoring can be found at http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=OX_munin_scripts and http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Jolokia.

- In accordance with the supported platform policy, Open-Xchange discontinues support for Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES 11) and Debian Wheezy with this release of OX App Suite v7.8.3. We encourage administrators to update to the latest operating system version, Suse Linux Enterprise Server 12 (SLES 12) and Debian Jessie. For details of all supported platforms and databases please refer to the requirements page at: http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:OX_System_Requirements#Server_Platforms

- In accordance with the supported platform policy, Open-Xchange discontinues support for the following platform operating systems: Apple iOS 8, Apple Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.

Shipped packages and versions

- Open-Xchange Middleware 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange OX6 Middleware 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange App Suite frontend 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange OX6 frontend 6.22.13-rev5
- Open-Xchange USM 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange EAS 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Updater 7.8.3-rev5 (6.18.33)
- Open-Xchange Drive Restricted 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Documents 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Documents Frontend 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Readerengine 7.8.3-rev5 (5.2.3)
- Open-Xchange Documentconverter 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Documentconverter API 7.8.3-rev5
- Open-Xchange Guard v2.6.0-rev5

Complete Release Notes 

- Open-Xchange App Suite v7.8.3:
http://software.open-xchange.com/products/appsuite/doc/Release_Notes_for_Release_7.8.3_2016-11-30.pdf

- Open-Xchange Server 6 v6.22.13:
http://software.open-xchange.com/OX6/doc/Release_Notes_for_Release_7.8.3_2016-11-30.pdf

- OX Guard v2.6.0 for OX App Suite v7.8.3:
http://software.open-xchange.com/products/guard/doc/Release_Notes_for_Release_2.6.0_2016-11-30.pdf

Download and Installation

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

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

For details of how to install and update OX Documents, please refer to the instructions provided at:
http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:Documents_Installation_Guide

For details of how to install and update OX Guard, please refer to the instructions provided at:
http://oxpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=AppSuite:OX_Guard

Best regards,
Your Open-Xchange Team

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Managing Board: Rafael Laguna de la Vera, Carsten Dirks, Uwe Reumuth 
Chairman of the Board: Richard Seibt
  
European Office: 
Open-Xchange GmbH, Martinstr. 41, D-57462 Olpe, Germany, District Court Siegen, HRB 8718 
Managing Directors: Frank Hoberg, Martin Kauss
 
US Office: 
Open-Xchange. Inc., 530 Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA 
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