Carbonio Usage

This section contains general advices about the most common tasks and functionalities of the various Carbonio CE components. The following components have dedicated sections featuring more information, howtos, and best practices:

All functionalities provided by Zextras Carbonio CE are available after logging in to the mailbox; access to the mailbox only requires using a supported browser on any device, provided it is connected to the Internet.

Hint

For a better use of the Carbonio CE features, it is recommended to use an up-to-date version of Firefox or Chrome browsers.

On Mobile devices, dedicated application can be used to access specific functionalities of Carbonio CE.

Use the URL of your webmail to access the login page and provide your credentials:

  • Username: your e-mail address

  • Password: the same password associated with your username

  • Version: The choice is either Iris, Carbonio CE’s native GUI or Classic

Note

We use the URL https://mail.example.com/ to denote our fictitious domain and mailbox. Whenever you find it, remember to replace it with the URL of your mailbox.

Once logged in, the user will be on the Home screen from which he can access all the features of his mailbox.

The features of Carbonio CE are grouped in several modules, each accessible from the menu on the left-hand side of IRIS, Carbonio CE default web interface. At a glance, they are:

Mails

Manage your inbox and e-mails; add filter and sub-folders.

Calendar

Plan your activities and appointments, share them with colleagues and find their shared calendars.

Contacts

Display all the information related to contacts and distribution lists.

Files

Share documents with colleagues (optional component).

Search

A powerful search engine across all modules of the mailbox.

Settings

Define your preferences to customise the appearance of your mailbox and its daily operating functionalities.

Additionally, all the functionalities to search for objects in the mailbox and to create new objects in the various modules have been unified.

The remainder of this section contains usage instructions for the most common tasks that can be carried out from Carbonio CE’s GUI.

Quick Search And Create New Objects Functionalities

_images/Searchbar.png

Fig. 2 The top bar of Carbonio CE, used to search for objects and to create new ones.

In Carbonio CE, the functionalities to create new objects (email, contacts, calendar appointments and events, and so on) and to search have been integrated into the top bar. For example, it is possible to create a new calendar appointment while reading e-mails or search for contacts when planning an event on calendar.

To do so, use Carbonio CE’s top bar, shown in Fig. 2. Click the blue NEW button to create a new object in the module you are currently in (i.e., while in the calendar, create a new appointment) or the to create a new object in another module.

The search works in a similar way: the white button on the right-hand side of the NEW button, which changes label depending on the current module, can be used to search in the module the string provided in the text box. Click the to search in a different module. A more advanced search is available in the Advanced search module.

Preview

Sharing files with a colleague is an everyday convenience: send them as attachment to emails, save them in Carbonio Files.

Carbonio Preview allows to have a quick look at those files. Supported files that can be previewed include PDFs, text documents, spreadsheets and other office files, and images, but excluding the svg format.

By clicking once the name of the file, an automatic preview in JPG format will be opened, centred and scaled to the browser’s window size. On Carbonio Files, to open a file for editing, it is necessary to right-click the file name, then selecting Open Document from the drop-down menu.

Mails

The Mails module is where you store, create, and arrange new e-mails.

Folders and shares

E-mail are arranged in folders, which by default are Inbox, Junk, Sent, Drafts, and Trash. New folders can be created by right-clicking on any item in the folder list and placed in a hierarchy.

Note

Initially, there’s no folder hierarchy, because all the default folders are at the same level.

Whenever a folder contains unread e-mails, a blue icon with the number will be displayed on the right of the folder name, with 99+ meaning there are at least 99 emails to read.

A right-click also allows to carry out other actions on the selected folder: move, wipe (i.e., remove all e-mails in the folder), edit, delete, and share (with internal colleagues or even make it freely readable).

Hint

An e-mail can be placed in exactly one folder.

To find shares, click on the FIND SHARES underneath the Share Folders. In the dialog, enter the e-mail address of the colleague of which you want to find the shares. If the colleague has shared some folder, you’ll be presented with a list.

Tags

A tag is a label, added to either an e-mail or a calendar event item that helps to improve both the organisation of the e-mails or events themselves and the search among them.

New tags can be added with a right click on the tags menu item, while an existing tag can be modified or deleted by right-clicking on it.

To search for a tag, in the Search quickbar use the syntax tag:name, replacing name with the name of the tag. The same tags used for e-mail can be used to mark Calendar appointment.

Working with e-mails

By default, e-mails are placed in the Inbox folder upon arrival (unless they are marked as junk email) and in the Sent folder when sent. These landing folders can be changed via the Mails settings page, by setting up filters and move automatically any email to a given folder.

E-mails are arranged in Conversations, meaning that an e-mail with all the replies it receives is packed in one single element in the list. Messages and conversations can be drag-and-dropped to any folder.

Hint

Moving a single e-mail in a conversation is not possible, the whole conversation will be moved.

On the top-right corner of each e-mail there are a few icons that allow to carry out a number of actions; click the icon to access them and many more: mark e-mail as read/unread or as spam, print, delete, tag, or flag it. A flag is a simple indicator for an email that can be adapted to one’s preference: to name a few, it has some importance compared to other, it needs some action, or it has been processed and can be archived or deleted.

More actions are available and shown upon right-clicking an email.

Carbonio CE has support for e-mail receipts: when composing an email, a click on the icon on the right-hand side of the subject will add a request for a read receipt from the e-mail recipient.

When opening for the first time an email with a receipt request, a modal will appear and ask to send a read receipt to the author. Click NOTIFY to send the receipt, otherwise no receipt will be sent.

Trash Folder

The trash folder is a special folder in which e-mails marked for deletion are temporary stored, in case they need to be recovered. An e-mail in the Trash folder will be automatically deleted after a period equivalent to the retention time, by default 30 days.

Junk Folder

Like the trash folder, this is a special folder in which e-mails that are wither marked as spam, or otherwise are unsolicited or undesired, are stored.

Carbonio CE ships with anti-virus and anti-spam engines that are able to automatically infer whether an e-mail is legit or not and mark it as spam. However, in case you think an e-mail is spam but was not processed, it can be manually marked as spam by right-clicking it and selecting Mark as spam. Also that vice-versa is valid: an e-mail in the Junk folder (i.e., recognised as spam) can be marked as not spam: it will land in the Inbox.

All the content of the junk folder helps the anti-spam engine to learn and improve its results.

Massive e-mail sending

A massive e-mail sending is the process of sending legitimate e-mails to a large number of e-mail addresses, often used for marketing purposes and using a specific software or online service for this purpose.

Carbonio CE users may be allowed to send an e-mail to all or to most of their colleagues (internal users) in special circumstances (e.g., company-wide announcements), but they should never send massive e-mails to external e-mail addresses, because the risk is that the company’s e-mail server enter a blacklist and all the e-mails it delivers are marked as spam,making communication with external companies (like suppliers and customers) very difficult.

Calendar

The calendar component allows to keep track of the appointments, meetings, and events you need to attend to and share them with your colleagues.

Beside using NEW, a new appointment can be created with a click of the mouse on the desired date and time on the calendar. The only difference is in the start (and end) date and time: by using the button, they are set to the current date and time, by clicking the calendar they are taken from the clicked date and time.

Attendees, whose presence is either mandatory or optional, can be added by writing their e-mail address. In case the invitation was not sent or if something went wrong, the event will show up in the calendar, but marked with a red icon. The attendee can propose a new time. In this case, new e-mail will be generated and sent to the other participant to inform them of the change.

Additionally, Tags can be added to any calendar event.

Shared Calendars

You can also search for calendars shared by your colleagues: click Shared Calendars in the left-hand side columns, then the FIND SHARES button. In the dialog that opens, enter the (partial) name of the colleague, then assign a colour, and finally click ADD.

The calendar will appear in the list of calendars, and all the appointments are shown; toggle their visibility clicking the checkbox.

Contacts

In the Contacts component you can keep track of all the people with whom you exchange e-mails and group them in address books. Existing address books appear on the column on the right of the component’s list. You can create new contact by using the NEW button and selecting New Contact; they will be stored under the Contacts section of the Contacts component. Tags can be added to any contacts. Addresses of people to whom you send an e-mail are automatically added to the Emailed Contacts.

Deleted contacts land in the special Trash address book, which keeps them until you manually empty it. To do so, right-click the address book and select Empty trash.

A right-click on the address book allows to carry out a few action on it and its content: edit, share, empty, or delete it. Moreover, new address books can be created. For each contact, icons allow to carry out different actions: delete, move, or write an e-mail to the contact.

Hint

To move the contacts from one address book to another, you can also drag the contact and drop it on the destination address book.

If any colleague has shared an address book, you can click the FIND SHARES button under Shared Address Book and provide the e-mail address. You will see all the address books shared by the user.

Chats

The Carbonio Chats component, which includes also videoconferencing functionalities, will soon be available.

Files

Carbonio Files provides a file storage system with ability for sharing documents with colleagues, collaborative editing, and document versioning.

Items in Carbonio Files are shown in the central area of Carbonio Files and are organised in a folder structure, which initially contain a number of pre-defined shortcut as icons: Home, Shared with me, Trash, Filters, and Uploads. Files can be arranged in folders under Home.

Working with files

The following panels summarise the most common activities that can be done on files and folders

File Upload and Download

  • To upload a file to Carbonio Files, either click the Upload button on the top bar.

  • To download a file from Carbonio Files, right-click on it and select Download:

Create new Folder and Files

To create a new item in Carbonio Files, use the right mouse button in the file list (central area) to create new folders, documents, spreadsheets, or presentations.

Note

The following characters can not be used in folder’s name: Slash / Backslash \ Semicolon : Question Mark ? Plus sign + Asterisk * Percent sign %

Sharing

When clicking once on a file or folder, an informative box appears on the right-hand side, which contains multiple tabs:

Details

Shows a (partial) preview of the file, if the file belongs to a recognised type. There are also a number of metadata visible; a description of the file or folder can be added at the bottom.

Sharing

Lists the owner of the file or folder and who has access to it. Add a collaborator by writing its e-mail address, then click SHARE or use the ADD LINK button to generate a link to allow access to everyone. Optionally, add a description and expiration date (defaults to the end of the current day) to the link.

The SHARE button is clickable only for internal collaborators and only if the e-mail address is correct.

Hint

Sharing a folder implies that permissions are inherited by the whole hierarchy underneath, so all files and directories contained there will have the same access permissions.

Versioning (files only)

The history of each file is preserved in case the file is edited or a new version is uploaded. Manual removal of unused or deprecated versions of a file is possible.

By default, five version can be stored for each file. Editing a file that has reached this limit is prevented, with an error message informing of the reached limit. This limit can be customised and even removed, by configuring it to -1.

Settings

The Settings module allows to customise both the appearance and the behaviour of the modules. Configuration options are grouped in categories: General, Mails, Calendar, and Contacts.

General

Theme Options

Choose whether the Dark Mode is enabled or not.

Out of Office Settings

These setting allow you to define the behaviour of Carbonio CE when e-mails are received within a time period during which you are not available. You can choose whether automatic replies are sent and to whom: you can also send a different message to people outside your organisation or decide to notify only your colleagues (i.e., people in your organisation).

Define also the time period during which you will be away. By default, an appointment that matches the time period is created on your calendar.

Application versions

Informative panel reporting the versions of Carbonio CE’s components.

Account

Click LOGOUT to exit the current session.

Mails

Displaying Messages

The options here control how the e-mails are displayed in the mailbox and how often to check for new emails (i.e., polling interval).

Other options allow to set the colour of incoming messages and which is the default query over e-mails, that is, which e-mails are shown upon logging in. By default, the query is in:inbox, meaning that all messages in the Inbox are displayed.

Receiving Messages

These settings define the response to incoming e-mails. Notification e-mails can be sent to a third party and different types of desktop notification can be combined (pop-ups, flashing browser title, highlight of mail tab, play a sound). Notification can be restricted to e-mail landing in the inbox or in all folders (in case you defined Filters, see further on).

Choose also where to store e-mails sent from yourself, whether to send automatic read receipts and if duplicate messages should be deleted.

Signatures

Define signatures that can be appended to the e-mails that you write. Use the textarea to write a plain text or HTML (default) signature, assign a name to them and add to the library by clicking the ADD SIGNATURE button.

Set Default Signatures

Choose from the signature library which signature to append by default to new e-mails that you write or to replies and forward.

Filters

Filters determine how to move incoming or outgoing e-mails to folders within your inbox.

In the list of active filters, click CREATE to define a filter and, in the dialog that appears, configure the condition(s) that need to be matched, the action applied, and give the Filter a name. Filters are applied in a top-down fashion, so in case of multiple active rules, choose whether to stop processing other following filters.

When multiple rules are defined, only those among the Active Filters are used to process e-mails. Filters can be managed individually by selecting them and using the buttons << ADD (activate an available filter), REMOVE >> (disable an active filter), EDIT (modify a Filter), RUN (execute a Filter), and DELETE (remove a filter).

Calendar

General

General setting for Calendar allow to customise how the calendar and its events are displayed, how invitations are managed, and how remainders behave.

The calendar can be shown for the next Month, Day, Week, or Work Week, and it is also possible to choose which day would start the week (usually Sunday or Monday).

Appointments and invitation can be accepted automatically and the notification e-mail deleted.

Reminders can be set up in different way: by playing sounds, showing a popup or flashing the browser’s bar.

Work week

Define the times when your daily work week starts and ends.

Creating Appointments

You may select on which calendar events and appointments are created by default and if the default time zone is used or can be chosen when creating new appointments.

Apple iCal

Allow delegation for Apple iCal.

Permissions

Configure access to free/busy information of appointments, which can be restricted to selected internal users, to configured domain(s), to everyone (i.e., internal and external users), or none.

Moreover, you can limit the users who can send you invitations.

Contacts

Options

You can define how to populate your Contacts and the behaviour of the autocomplete feature. New contacts can be added automatically, while the search for colleagues’ address can use the GAL by default.

Autocomplete can take advantage of the GAL and of shared contacts, while typing a , can be used as a shortcut to confirm the currently highlighted suggestion.