Integrating 3CX with Kerio Connect 7 for Unified Messaging

One of the great allures of an IP PBX is the promise and delivery of a single unified messaging (UM) inbox for its users.  What this means in the context of 3CX Phone System for Windows and Kerio Connect 7 deployed together, is a single repository (inbox) where both voice mail message (VM’s) and email coexist.  From the UM inbox, users are able to either read their email, or review and listen to their VM’s.  Combining 3CX and Kerio Connect will inexpensively and effectively do just that for those that wish to deploy these two products together.

By combining 3CX with Kerio Connect 7 users are able to have email with full groupware capabilities compatible with native support for Outlook MAPI / IMAP/POP3 / ActiveSync, SyncML, iCal, CalDav and a host of network-based, or over-the-air synchronization at no extra cost.  Kerio Connect 7 also comes with a sweet webmail client that can be used as a desktop replacement for email clients like MS Outlook.  Kerio Connect is cross-platform and is available in Windows, Mac, and Linux, costs much less that MS Exchange – and is ease as easy as apple pie to administer.  It also contains very good support for Mac and Linux clients as well.  If you are using Kerio Connect with 3CX – it does not matter what OS Kerio is running on, 3CX will talk to it just fine.  It also does not matter what client is connecting – Windows, Mac, or Linux.  Of course 3CX will be running on a Windows server itself as it is made for Windows only currently.  One note is that Windows users will also enjoy the benefits of the 3CX Assistant, a desktop application that puts all of the call control (hold, transfer, answer, hang up, etc) in a slick drag-n-drop interface.  Recently however, 3CX released a version of the 3CX Assistant optimized to the Windows Terminal Services environment, so this functionality is available to Mac and Linux users as well.

3CX provides a complete telephone system with functions such as auto-attendant, VM, call queuing, ring groups, transfer, hold, foreward, follow, and a bunch of other stuff.  The integration occurs between 3CX and Kerio at the VM level.  When a VM is left for a particular extension, an email address can be specified where a copy of the VM should be emailed (either the whole VM as an audio file, or just a VM notification).  Users then receive these in their inbox, and they can be reviewed and played from right within the PC, and most newer mobile devices.

In this first image – you will see the configuration section of the 3CX administration where you simply specify the canonical (domain) name of your mail server, or alternatively it’s IP address.

 

In this second graphic, we’re showing you the screen where you can configure how VM’s are handled for a particular users extension.

 

 

Finally, we’re showing you an actual VM message in the inbox of the user.  If caller-id is enabled the caller-id information  will be present in the message (where it says “anonymous” in this picture).

If your organization can benefit from increased efficiency, reduced cost, and simplified administration, you owe it to yourself to take a look at deploying these two products together.

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Live Webinar: Configuring Distributed Domain in Kerio Connect

Wednesday March 10, 2010 | 10:00AM PST

Kerio MailServer is now Kerio Connect – the new generation of Kerio’s messaging platform. One of the stand out new features in Kerio Connect 7 is distributed domain. This feature enables organizations with dispersed geographic locations to centrally manage mail, calendars and resource scheduling by sharing a single domain across multiple servers joined as a single geographically dispersed cluster.

In this live technical webinar, Kerio Sales engineer Mark Durant will talk about distributed domain in detail including what typical use cases are, what it is intended to do (and what it is not), and what is required to set it up, and then he’ll walk through a live configuration. This will be an interactive session, so questions are encouraged.

Learn about

• Planning for and configuring a distributed domain deployment
• Renaming a domain, assigning server roles (master/slave), and administration
• Managing users, assigning users to a server, and migrating users between servers
• Debugging the distributed domain configuration
• Important licensing requirements

Who should attend

• IT Consultants and Solution Providers
• Small Business owners/operators and IT Administrators
• Organizations with geographically dispersed locations

Presenter

Mark Durant, Sales Engineer, Kerio Technologies
Read Mark’s recent blog post on Distributed Domain.   REGISTER

Meet Kerio Connect – Webinars On Demand

Kerio is committed to sharing and teaching you what the new Kerio Connect 7 has to offer.  In an effort to provide the fastest, most economical opportunity for you to learn what makes Kerio Connect 7 tick, Kerio is featuring frequent live webinars on the most sought after information by its customers and partners.  Additionally, there is also a webinar available on Kerio’s new line of Linux-based firewall appliances.  These recent webinars have been archived and are available for review at your convenience.

Note:  If you want to download a webinar, you must also install a viewer to watch.

On-Demand Webinars

In case you missed these live webcasts, you can view them online or download.
More than email. Introducing Kerio Connect
View Online or Download
Read full description

Mobility Simplified with Kerio Connect
View Online or Download
Read full description

Deploy and Migrate to Kerio MailServer in Minutes
View Online or Download
Read full description

Build a Better Firewall with Kerio’s New Linux Based Appliances
View Online or Download
Read full description

Email Archiving: A Darn Good Idea – Even for Small Business
View Online or Download
Read full description

Kerio Connect 7 Released / Training Event

Kerio Connect 7 is a significant new course of development that opens new avenues of business for channel partners to reach mid to medium sized businesses, particularly those with multiple offices in different locations.

The new Kerio Connect 7, previously known as Kerio MailServer, gives customers an option to link standalone servers into a single distributed domain system. While companies often install separate messaging servers in offices located in other cities or countries for performance, security or compliance reasons, they often lose the benefits of a single collaboration server – most notably the ability to see the availability of coworkers in other offices. Kerio Connect 7 allows companies to join their Kerio Connect servers into a single geographically dispersed cluster with servers aware of each other’s user groups, individual user’s availability, shared contacts in Global Address Lists, or shared resources such as conference rooms.

The management of distributed domains is also an integral part of a newly introduced web-based Administration Console, providing complete remote management of Kerio Connect 7 from any modern browser.

Kerio is hosting a free channel only training webinar on Wednesday, February 24, at 7:00 am Eastern, 10:00 am Pacific Standard Time (San Francisco, GMT-08:00), to cover what’s new in version 7.0, and you are strongly encouraged to attend.
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To register for the online event
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1. Click here to join the online event.
Or copy and paste the following link to a browser:
https://kerioevents.webex.com/kerioevents/onstage/g.php?d=668847688&t=a&RT=MiM0&p
2. Click "Register".
3. On the registration form, enter your information and then click "Submit".
Once the host approves your registration, you will receive a confirmation email message with instructions on how to join the event.

Additional information can be obtained by contacting your Deerfield.com representative here.

IceWarp Server V10.1 RC Now Available!

Jakub Klos and the team over at IceWarp have been hard at work improving v10x of IceWarp Server.  Below you will find a list of changes in v10.1 and Jakub’s perspective on some of the new  improvements.  At the end of the blog post there is a link for those that wish to download and preview v10.1 RC (not for production).  For resellers, IceWarp’s primary distribution partner in the United States is Deerfield.com.

.. in Jakub’s own words, here’s what new in the v10.1 Release Candidate:

Config - Profiles (Search, Easy Selection, GUI Enhancements And Simplifications)

The GUI has been greatly enhanced with a few cool features.

The menu.xml has been completely changed. A new structure and new behavior. Multiple sets of the left structured tree and also keywords. Keywords are used for the new Search feature. Any partner can now create an independent set of the left tree structure (make it only 3 nodes with one tab for instance). By default there are Advanced and Basic and just like in Outlook you can change them by clicking the buttons on the bottom.

The language selection has been removed from the menu and put to the status bar. This way any user can see instantly they can change their language and it is just much more user friendly.

Additionally some graphical tuning has been done. The user and domain tabs have been updated in the philosophy so that the first tab is simple as possible (admin must not be confused what to set in the fields). This means that some options were moved from the first tab to Options and others. This is specifically true with the user account. Mail and Options tabs were reorganized.

Groupware - Mailbox Quota Checked

Groupware finally checks the mailbox quota while working with attachments. It rejects any objects exceeding the mailbox quota and properly updates the sizes. If you are trying to insert a large attachment it will simply not let you. WebClient also handles the error codes properly.

Finally the admin has full control of their servers and there will be no mailbox quota violation.

Groupware - AddvCard - Multiple Objects Support

It is possible now to import or add a vcard object with multiple objects in it. Any system can export multiple vcard objects to a text file and Groupware will simply import them all with just a single click (in WebClient).

It was already possible to do so with vCalendars (Event, Task and Journal) and it is a breeze with contacts now.

Windows Search Auto Configuration And On By Default

Not sure if you people realized how great the new IMAP Fulltext search via WindowsSearch really is. It just works and any Body search in WebClient will output the results immediately. We decided to enable and integrate WindowsSearch by default. The reason is simple. Our server must be a working and complete solution right after installed. No additional tweaks or settings should be required.

So IMAP Fulltext search will be working automatically right after installed.

Archive - Deleted Messages

A new archive mode has been implemented. Delete Messages archive simply all deleted messages and nothing more. This is specifically handy if you do not wish to have dual copies of all emails (default Archive behavior). Simply, there is only one copy in the system with this mode. Either it is in your mailbox or the Archive.

Some users require this functionality instead of the default one. Me personally, I like the Received mode :). And yes, Archive is also on by default (both email and IM) for the same reason as above.

Intrusion Prevention for POP/IMAP

Some of you asked for a FR to support Intrustion Prevention for POP/IMAP protocols. Well, it was implemented and it is working. The whole feature was revised and redone from scratch. It is faster, smoother and more powerful now.

Routing - Sender / Recipient Conditions

The mail Routing feature has been greatly extended to support additional behavior. Basically, you can also make conditions based on the Sender. Originally, only the recipient was checked. Now you can also check the sender and make rules such as:

If the sender is from local domain A then forward all messages to a remote server B. Any similar scenario is possible.

WebClient:

Files Rename

Due to the reason that File objects are really files we realized it must be possible to also rename files in WebClient. So it was implemented and it is possible now. Not only you can upload a new content of SmartAttach file link but you can also rename a file and still it will be working.

I anticipate you all know that SmartAttach works over WebDAV and groupware File objects :)

Item Select - Search Support

Selecting an item already present on the server to be sent over email or file transfer (be it an email or groupware object) is easy as never. When browsing folders to select items you can perform search now.

It is very user friendly and brings a great experience to any user.

File Transfer - Send Mails / Groupware

The IM file transfer supports sending emails and groupware objects already present on the server. How good is that? You simply select an email you just received and the remote party will receive it. Or you select a contact and send it to somebody else without even using email.

WebPhone - No JMF Needed, DTMF Support, Better Compatibility

Another great news is that the WebPhone has been redone and it no longer requires JMF. Yeah. It is also more compatible with other SIP clients. JMF was really buggy so we decided to implement direct libraries for RTP and codecs.

Additionally WebPhone will support DTMF so you will be able to navigate in any call centre. This is really big.

Tab / Focus Support

Something many users were complaining for a long time. My dear Lukas has implemented tab support for all visual objects. You can easily press Tab or Shift+Tab to move to a next or previous visual object.

Options, Emails, Contacts or any other dialog easily supports the new tabbing. One more step to become perfect.

Confirmation on Exit

I was very surprised that some of you complained about WebClient exit confirmation alert. First of all, all major web email solutions do it and users should just logout first. Anyway, when I realized Lukas actually listened to these people and since then I accidentally killed my WebClient session like 10x a day I knew we had to make this an option.

As a result there is a new option where each user can set it to match their specific needs. You can completely suppress this functionality, have it only if mail compose is open or always (this one is for clumsy me :)).

Save Multiple Items (ZIP) - Mails, Groupware, vCard etc.

Another great idea by the webclient guys. It will be possible to select multiple objects (email, task, calendar or contact) and save them to a ZIP file, vcard (containing multiple objects) or vcalendar with multiple objects.

Very cool actually. A user can backup their emails or contacts just like that. One of my favorite features for sure :)

Active Sync:

Version 12.0 Compatible

Alex has been working hard for the last couple of weeks on the new ActiveSync v12.0. It is almost finished but due to licensing conditions with Microsoft it will not be released in 10.1 anyway.

So what new features does 12.0 bring?

HTML emails for Windows Mobile (other phones use raw emails so HTML was not an issue here)
Out Of Office
New Provisions
Other new features
I am very excited about HTML emails for my HTC HD2 actually. I have been extremely happy with HTC HD2, it is the best device out there. Especially if you tweak it as I did with mine (running latest Windows Mobile 6.5.5). However, reading HTML emails over EAS was not possible until now. It is really handy.

Supports Any EAS Device (WinMo 5.0 to 6.5, iPhone, Android, Nokia and others)

A little note about device compatibility. Our ActiveSync implementation supports literally any device out there. It cannot be said about other our competitors. For instance they only support 12.0 but iPhone only supports 2.5. Our solution supports all versions simultaneously and thus is compatible with any device.

This is something for you to realize and use it as an argument with your potential customers. To be frank I'm not sure if Exchange supports more versions of EAS simultaneously (probably it does) but I am more than sure that our competitors do not :). That is all I am trying to say.

That is all from me this time. You can see the list is huge and you hardly remember anything of it. We are becoming number one in the market.

Latest 10.1 nightly build:

http://www.icewarp.com/download/beta/icewarp-latest.html?type=nb

Take care.
Regards,
Jakub

Deerfield.com Enhances Email Security SaaS

Email security is a growing concern for many organizations due to the numerous "email borne" threats on the Internet today. On-premise enterprise email administrators (IT staff) are constantly battling with fine tuning anti-spam and anti-virus settings, in the never ending battle to stop these threats. Recognizing the need for managed email security services to offload the administrative burden of managing email security (and the bandwidth consumed by spam and viruses), Deerfield launched "Deerfield Email Security" (DES) in 2007.

Since Deerfield Email Security is a "cloud-based" service, it requires no additional hardware, software, or infrastructure within your organization to work. Additionally, Deerfield Email Security works with virtually any on-premise standards-based email server software or appliance, running on any operating system. The subscription-based model allows organizations to easily and economically outsource email security with no long term contract commitments. A free trial is even available to determine if DES will suit your needs.

Phase II of Deerfield Email Security was recently implemented for all new and existing customers. These new additions have been designed with simplicity and security in mind.

High Performance Administration Console

The new console is built entirely on AJAX technology enabling it to look and perform like a desktop software application, not like a website. Administration tasks can now be performed in less than half the time.

Exporting & Reporting

With the click of a button, you can now export your users, domains, quarantines and more into a CSV file for internal logging and diagnostics. The reports dashboard has been redesigned making it even easier to view the effectiveness of the solution. Also, all report data can now be easily exported or printed for internal reporting purposes.

Command Line Interface & API

The service has a new framework that enables you to automate tasks such as adding, deleting, and changing users and domains. This is made simple by the new Command Line Interface. Administrators can now easily perform many tasks from their own command line without having to log in to a console. Also, you now have the ability to write batch and shell scripts that automatically keep you in sync when, for example, a user is added to your LDAP directory.

Quarantine Feeds

Your users no longer have to wait for a quarantine summary, or manually log in to the console and wade through countless messages. With Quarantine Feeds, your users can locate and view quarantined messages right in their favorite email client. It even works with smart phones.

These features are available immediately. We hope you'll take some time to check them out at: http://www.deerfield.com/products/email-security/ and provide us with your feedback.

New Kerio Connect 7 Groupware Server Targets Organizations With Multiple Branch Offices

Kerio’s Distributed Domain Cluster Promotes Inter-office Contact Sharing and Calendar Event Scheduling

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Macworld Conference & Expo 2010– February 9, 2010 – The new Kerio Connect 7, previously known as Kerio MailServer, marks the messaging server’s entry into the market of mid-size, multi-office deployments, giving customers an option to link standalone servers into a single distributed domain system.

The advantages of a distributed domain become apparent for organizations with branch offices in different physical locations. While companies often install separate messaging servers in offices located in other cities or countries for performance, security or compliance reasons, they often lose the benefits of a single collaboration server – most notably the ability to see the availability of coworkers in other offices. Kerio Connect 7 allows companies to join their Kerio Connect servers into a single geographically dispersed cluster with servers aware of each other’s user groups, individual user’s availability, shared contacts in Global Address Lists, or shared resources such conference rooms.

“We support a significant number of clients with multiple offices around the world,” says Kevin Klein, CEO of 318 Inc., a value-added reseller and Kerio Preferred Partner in Santa Monica, California. “The new distributed domain feature will enable 318, Inc. to delegate management of a server at each location, while keeping everything under the same domain. This provides an enhanced level of support, scalability and reliability that is in alignment with the needs of our most savvy clients that have chosen Kerio Connect.”

The management of distributed domains is an integral part of a newly introduced web-based Administration Console, providing complete remote management of Kerio Connect 7 from any modern browser.

New contact list sync via CardDAV
Kerio Connect 7 continues to push toward open standards in messaging and collaboration with the implementation of a new open source protocol CardDAV for address book synchronization.

“CardDAV is for address books what CalDAV is for calendars – a straightforward way to sync up contacts among various applications, servers, laptops and phones that you use for work or fun,” says Dusan Vitek, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Kerio Technologies Inc. “The ever-growing adoption of smartphones in the corporate and consumer markets raises expectations, which users have about interoperability.”

Apple Address Book, a CardDAV-compliant client in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, now syncs contacts directly with Kerio Connect 7. A configuration utility available through Kerio WebMail helps users setup their Address Book in a few clicks.

Availability and pricing
Kerio Connect 7 is available now from Kerio partners worldwide. It starts at $450 for 5 users, additional user starts at $24. Kerio Connect 7 runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and is also available as a VMware Virtual Appliance and Parallels Virtual Appliance. For more information, please visit: www.kerio.com/connect/whats-new.

About Kerio Technologies, Inc.
Innovating in Internet security since 1997, Kerio Technologies, Inc. provides Internet messaging and firewall software for small-to-medium sized businesses and organizations worldwide. Kerio is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has offices in New York, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Russia. Kerio is a member of CalConnect, a calendaring and scheduling consortium; a premier member of the Apple Developer Connection; and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Kerio has more than 4,400 business partners in 108 countries. Technology partners include McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE), eSoft, Inc., and Notify Technology Corporation (OTCBB: NTFY). For more information, please visit www.kerio.com.

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