Carbonio User Guides
This section contains general advices about the most common tasks and functionalities of the various Carbonio components. The following components have dedicated sections featuring more information, howtos, and best practices:
Quick Search And Create New Objects Functionalities: search for any item or create a new one
Preview files without the need to save them in advance
Mails, the core component of Carbonio
Carbonio Auth for users or how to allow users to access Carbonio
Calendars: manage your appointments and share them with colleagues
Contacts, to collect and organise your e-mail addresses
Chats: textual and visual conversations, shared spaces, virtual rooms to communicate in real-time with users
Files is used to create, share, and collaborate on documents
Search completes the Quick Search functionality
Settings is the place where to customise all Carbonio options
All functionalities provided by Zextras Carbonio 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 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.
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’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 are grouped in several modules, each accessible from the menu on the left-hand side of IRIS, Carbonio 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.
- Chats
-
A tool dedicated to individual and group chats, video calls and video conferencing (optional component).
- 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’s GUI.
Quick Search And Create New Objects Functionalities
Fig. 10 The top bar of Carbonio, used to search for objects and to create new ones.
In Carbonio, 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’s top bar, shown in Fig. 10. 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.
Carbonio Auth for users
Carbonio Auth features a dedicated settings page (see Fig. 11) to manage all user-side credential and features, such as the account and EAS Mobile Passwords, Mobile App QR Codes, and OTP for 2FA.
Carbonio Auth settings page overview
The Carbonio Auth settings page can be accessed from the right-hand side menu. Users do not need any CLI access to use the Carbonio Auth.
The creation of a new credential allows to give access to the account, possibly including the Zextras Mobile Apps, to other persons without having to share the personal credentials.
Fig. 11 The Carbonio Auth settings page.
From the settings page, the user can:
Change the password of the currently logged in user
Add new credentials in the dedicated pages, accessible by clicking Exchange ActiveSync, Mobile Apps, or OTP Authentication
Check the status and other information for all Exchange ActiveSync and Mobile Apps credential created. In each section, entries in the list display the label of the password, its status, the service it is valid for, and its creation date.
Check the status and other information for every One Time Password created. Here, each entry shows a description, its status, the failed attempts, and its creation date.
Manage the 2FA access. Each user can decide whether to enforce access using 2FA, unless its use has been enabled or disabled at COS, domain, or global level.
Delete any credential created
Important
Users can in no case modify their assigned username, change the password of credentials they generate, or modify any property of the credential. Limited editing of a credential is strictly limited to the administrators.
In the remainder of this section, we give an overview of the various possibilities to create new credentials and provide instruction to add or delete them them.
Change Password
In order to change password, click Change Password. Here, you need to provide the current password, then enter twice a new one (see Fig. 11.
Hint
Make sure you use a robust password, which includes lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, characters, and is at least *8 characters long.
To save the new password, click the blue CHANGE PASSWORD button.
Create New Credentials: EAS
To create a new Password for EAS service, click Exchange ActiveSync, then NEW AUTHENTICATION +. Here, enter an easy to remember identifier for the password in the Authentication description field.
Then click CREATE PASSWORD: the new Mobile Password will be displayed.
Finally, click the COPY PASSWORD button to copy the password to the clipboard.
Warning
Mobile Passwords are randomly generated and cannot be displayed again after the creation is complete.
Click DONE to close the Carbonio Auth window. An entry for the new Mobile Password is now visible in the Active Passwords list of the Carbonio Auth Zimlet.
Create New Credentials: Mobile Apps
Carbonio Auth can speed up and manage Zextras Application logins, such as those for the APPs for Mobile Devices. This is achieved through the creation of a QR Code, which the user can then scan from the App’s login page to log in. The procedure is very similar to the one described in the previous section.
Warning
QR Codes are a one-time credential only, meaning that once generated it will grant access to the app until the relevant credential itself is deleted from the account. Once generated, the QR Code can only be viewed once.
In order to create a new QR Code for Mobile Application, open the Carbonio Auth Zimlet and click Mobile Apps, then NEW AUTHENTICATION +. Here, enter an easy to remember identifier for the password in the Authentication description. Click CREATE PASSWORD and the new QR code for Mobile Application will be displayed. You can use the Zextras mobile app to frame the code and grant access to the app.
Warning
QR Codes are randomly generated and cannot be displayed again after the creation is complete.
Click DONE to close the Carbonio Auth window. An entry for the new Mobile Application is now visible in the Active Passwords list of the Carbonio Auth Zimlet.
Create New Credentials: OTP
In order to create a new One Time Password access, open the Carbonio Auth Zimlet and click OTP Authentication, then NEW OTP + to open a dialog in which you have to enter a unique label to identify the OTP.
You will be presented with the QR code: scan it with your smartphone or copy it (as string) to the clipboard, then click NEXT to see the list of PIN codes to be used for authentication.
Next, click the PRINT PIN CODES button to print the codes on paper or to a file. The printed document includes all the codes, the username/e-mail address for which they are valid and instructions to use them.
Warning
QR codes and their associated PINs are randomly generated and cannot be displayed again after the creation is complete.
Finally, click DONE to close the Carbonio Auth window. An entry for the new OTP entry will be shown in the list.
Note
The Description is automatically created using the email address to which it is associated.
Delete Credentials
In order to delete a credential, simply select it from the list of Active passwords or OTPs, and click the DELETE x button:
Click YES to confirm the removal of the credential.
Preview
Sharing files with a colleague is an everyday convenience: send them via Carbonio Chats or 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.
To preview a supported file, click once the name of the file: the
Details view will open. Here, click the small magnifier icon above
the details to show an automatic preview in JPG format, centred and
scaled to the browser’s window size. PDF files can be scrolled with
buttons (PgUp, PgDown, Home, End)
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.
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. Conversations (but not single messages) can be drag-and-dropped to any folder: you can select one conversation in the list by clicking on the Avatar on the left of the e-mail (i.e., the circle with the initials of the e-mail’s sender). You will enter the so-called Selection Mode: you can select additional conversations by clicking them, or select all of them by clicking the SELECT ALL button above the list, then move them to another folder.
Hint
You can select immediately all conversations by clicking the checkmark above the list of e-mails.
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 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.
In Carbonio, to prevent sending an incomplete e-mail, an automatic delay of three seconds takes places, and a message appears on the bottom right corner: click UNDO to stop the sending and continue editing the e-mail.
When you have multiple aliases or access to shared accounts, you can add a different signature whenever you create, forward, or reply to an e-mail: refer to section Using Signatures in the Mails settings.
Attachments Management
Carbonio supports e-mail attachments; depending whether the e-mail is written before it is sent or it has been received, the following actions are available
While composing an e-mail, any file can be added as an attachment for either a local directory on the workstation or on the user’s personal storage on Carbonio Files.
Images on the local workstation can be included as inline attachments in the body of the e-mails, using the button in the bar above the editor to select them.
When receiving an e-mail with attachments, the user has the option to either download the file to a local directory on the workstation, or to save it in the user’s personal’s storage on Carbonio Files.
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 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.
Calendars
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 in other ways. The first one is 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.
Alternatively, you can open an existing appointment, clone it, and edit only the relevant details, like for example date and time, without the necessity to create a new one and fill in all the details. This option is useful if you have to schedule recurrent events without a fixed schedule.
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.
When right-clicking an event in the calendar, different actions can be carried out: open it and show all participants and details, edit, copy or move it, and its original, plain text version, can be shown.
Additionally, Tags can be added to any calendar event and the event itself can be (tentatively) accepted or declined
Searching for events is easy: insert a search string in the quick search bar to retrieve a first batch of results. By default, all matches in the past and future 30 days are shown. To broaden or restrict the search, click the ADVANCED FILTER bar and select the new start and end dates using the date pickers. Optionally, also add more keywords to search.
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. You can also choose under which address book the new contact is stored. Additionally, Tags can be added to any contacts.
Note
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.
You can search among contacts using the search bar. You can then refine your search by clicking the ADVANCED FILTER button. Here you can also choose to include shared address books in the search.
Chats
Carbonio Chats is a component that provides corporate instant messaging features like text chats, 1-to-1 video calls, and videoconferencing.
The UI of Carbonio Chats is organised in three columns:
The left-hand side column holds the list of contacts with the history of the passed chats. Above it, you can CREATE new chats and Groups, filter existing chat names and on the top, select between Chats and Virtual Rooms (see further on for more). Below it, buttons allow to manage virtual rooms.
The central column holds the chat messages. Above the chat’s top-right corner, click the phone icon to start a video call with the contact.
The right-hand side column holds information about the contact and allows to copy the link to the contact’s virtual room (which is unique), mute notifications, and clear the chat’s history
Moderators in Rooms
The user that creates a room (we call virtual room a Group or a Virtual Room, see below) becomes automatically the Room Moderator and can manage the room’s textual and video conversations. In particular, the Mute For All and Add new members functionalities are reserved for Moderators only.
A moderator can promote any user as moderator and can leave the virtual room only if either no other users are present in the room or another moderator is present in the room.
Groups
Groups are non-persistent entities used to communicate with multiple people at the same time (by default up to 5 in total). Any user can create a group inviting people, and any group member can invite more people in the same way. When all users leave a group, the group itself ceases to exist.
Virtual Rooms
Virtual Rooms allow to set up video calls with multiple participants, including Internal Guests and External Guests. The former are users with an account on the current Carbonio instance, while the latter are users that have no local account (i.e., on the Carbonio instance). Both can join on a temporary basis without the need of being members of the Virtual Room.
Moreover, in the Virtual Room tab, users can see at a glance all ongoing and planned meetings involving them.
To create a new meeting, click the CREATE ROOM button, then enter a name. You will be automatically assigned the role of Owner. Besides being a Moderator, an owner can not be removed and is the solely person that can delete a Virtual Room.
In the left-hand side column, all meetings are shown, divided into Ongoing Meetings and Scheduled meetings. For each of them, a few buttons are shown, to join or delete a virtual room, to copy and share the virtual room’s link and to change the link.
Note
When a link is changed, the old one is wiped and can not be used anymore.
Planned Meetings prove useful when scheduling meetings with colleagues: create a planned meeting, then attach the virtual room’s link to the calendar’s invitation.
Video calls can be recorded, but require an additional package. Please refer to section Recording a Video Meeting for directions and more information on the functionality.
When joining a Virtual Room, a dialog window appears, which carries the name of the room and allows to choose and test the audio and video devices.
Presence
Presence is managed automatically in Carbonio Chats: whenever a user logs in, regardless of whether Chats has the focus, they appear as online.
As part of the user presence system, all messages are displayed with a variable number of check symbols:
0 grey checks: message not yet delivered to the server
1 grey check: message delivered to the server
2 grey checks: message delivered to the recipient user to all users in case of chats with multiple members or Virtual Rooms
2 blue checks: message viewed by the recipient user to all users in case of chats with multiple members or Virtual Rooms
When sending a text message, if privacy is enabled, then only one gray check is shown, meaning that the server has received the message. No acknowledgement will be sent back by the receiving user.
Unread Messages
The number of unread messages in any conversation (Group and instant meeting) appears on the right side of both the Chats and Instant Meetings label from where the message originated, and in the list of conversions underneath, next to the actual chat generating the message.
Files
Carbonio Files provides a file storage system with ability for sharing documents with colleagues, collaborative editing, and document versioning.
Items saved in Carbonio Files are shown in the central area 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; a list of recent files and folders accessed by the user is also available, to allow to quickly resume work on these documents.
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, or drag and drop a file from a file browser to Carbonio Files
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 and 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.
Docs
Carbonio Docs is based on a heavily customised LibreOffice online package that adds to Carbonio ability for all persons in the organisation to collaborate in editing different types of documents, including text documents, word processors, spreadsheets, and presentations.
The integration of Carbonio Docs with items stored in Carbonio Files and with email attachments is seamless and handled by a dedicated Carbonio Docs component.
Whenever one wants to edit a document, a connection to a Carbonio Docs server instance starts, a copy of the file is retrieved and rendered in the user’s browser. When changes are made, only changes to the client are sent back, in order to keep the accuracy and fidelity of the document between client and server, while at the same time reducing the bandwidth use to the bare minimum.
Every document can be shown in either a read-only mode, with a simplified GUI limited to the viewing functionalities, or in edit (read/write) mode with a full GUI.
Key Features
The most used key features of Carbonio Docs are:
To view and to edit documents, both in single-use and collaborative mode
The same functionalities of a LibreOffice desktop software are supported
Support of collaborative editing features from any modern browser, with no additional or third-party plugin needed
Compatibility with Microsoft Office documents
Interoperability across platforms and operating systems
-
Preservation of layout and formatting of documents saved in different formats or file types:
text documents (odt, docx, doc, txt, rft and more)
spreadsheets (ods, xlsx, xls)
presentations (odp, pptx, ppt)
Ability to save the same file in different format or file type.
Support to export documents as PDF files
Preview of PDF files
Limited GUI for read-only documents, full GUI to support all read and write documents
Custom Fonts for Carbonio Docs
Carbonio Docs can pick up any font that is installed in standard system
directory fonts, like /usr/share/fonts. Hence, to install a
font family, simply use the package manager. For example, to install
the Roboto fonts, use the command:
# apt-get install fonts-roboto
# dnf install fonts-roboto
Once done, restart Carbonio Docs.
# systemctl restart carbonio-docs-editor.service
The fonts will now be available for use in Carbonio Docs.
Search
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.
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.
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
Choose whether the Dark Mode is enabled or not.
These setting allow you to define the behaviour of Carbonio 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.
Informative panel reporting the versions of Carbonio’s components.
Click LOGOUT to exit the current session.
Mails
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 configure how to set the unsend time, that
is, the interval before an e-mail is actually sent, allowing to
stop the send process, whether to visualise e-mails by message or
conversation, 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.
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.
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.
If, besides your primary e-mail addresses, you have aliases or can access shared accounts, you can associate to each of them a different signature. Whenever you create, forward, or reply to an e-mail, the correct associated signature will be added, according to the e-mail that you choose.
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 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.
Define the times when your daily work week starts and ends.
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.
Allow delegation for Apple iCal.
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
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.