Design
RSS integrates at your location(s) the functions separately offered by cloud service companies such as DropBox, Zoom, GMail/Hotmail, Google Drive, ICloud, OneDrive, Teams, Office365 and similar* — without ongoing fees based on usage or storage requirements, without risk of being ‘data mined’ by third party hosting companies, without the security risk of having ‘so many eggs in one high value third party basket’ — and with A+ rated security.
Entirely an optional capability, but if enabled it works automatically from any device. Either restricted within client locations, or restricted to those with client vpn access, or from anywhere over TLS 1.3 net connections with locally RSS-issued certificates, username/password, or to any individual client staff sends per-file or per-chat links, or open to the public, or any combination.
This Sync/Groupware feature is a great security enhancement as it provides a ‘middle ground’ between the trust levels require for full remote ‘VPN’ or ‘Road Warrior’ access (which simulates physical presence within a client location), and remote access limited to email. Access can be fine-tuned to just the shared aspects of interest, and nothing other than those will ever cross the net– and only when clients demand data crosses the net, it uses the latest available encryption.
Additionally, as the files and databases involved are part of the RSS administrative access/usage/storage infrastructure and as such open to client on-location applications, clients can extend and enhance this feature to integrate in their organization’s particular workflow.
Extensive GUI-based customization and enhancement modules (group document/spreadsheet editors, photos organized on maps by geolocation, ‘federation’ possibilities with client partners, keeping old versions of files, automatic social sharing via Facebook, Twitter, Diaspora, SharePoint*, form creation/data entry, intrusive ‘notifications’, and more) are available for those who want to ‘dive in’ (details to the right). But for those who want it to ‘just work’: RSS automatically configures all the basics: mail, contacts, calendars, files, photos, work assignment cards and offers video call/group chat features.
Just add a user via the Admin GUI, join the user to the ‘syncusers’ group and that’s that; their devices will ‘just work’, whether Android, Apple, Windows*, Linux, or anything with a web browser.
If all of this ‘isn’t for you’ — just ignore it. Don’t authorize any users in the sync group and you’ll never know it exists, nothing will be shared. But it will be ready and waiting 24×7.
RSS checks all the feature, device compatibility, performance, scale and security boxes. From the simplicity and maintainability needs of a small office to the administration requirements of multi-location, multi-domain organization.
Highlights of groupware/sync subsystem capabilities and structural components, including links to background and details, are in the columns on the right. Click the column heading.
*The various third party products and properties named are for comparison and illustration purposes, and offered by the respective companies– they are not affiliated with RSS.
RSS offers ‘integrated groupware in a box’!
To understand RSS groupware capabilities, a short preliminary:
Farthest away from the ‘foundation of it all’ and so closer to what non-technical users see, are these groupware/sync/talk capabilities. Nothing this most capable module provides could be delivered but for the sturdy reliability of everything else it depends upon– nearly all the RSS features and integrated subsystems documented on the homepage and elsewhere on this website.
RSS is proud to present an enhanced and tightly integrated version of the Nextcloud suite. Organizational and structural details can be found on the ‘Structure’ tab above. Below you will find detail of its capabilities and features– robust and many. Though all are available, the most generally useful are enabled by default.
- Every internet domain an RSS customer chooses to support enables authorized persons with to be provisioned with these groupware capabilities:
- Photo & file synchronization across devices: with HIPAA, GDPR and more. Details.
- Calendars & Contacts sync: compatible with OutLook, Thunderbird, iOS, any CALDav/CardDAv capable client, or just use the web interface. Contact sync details.
- Mail, via web or app: See our website’s Mail section for full details.
- Video calling / group conferencing / chat. Details.
- Private, group, public and password protected calls.
- Share your screen with participants of your call.
- Integration with other Nextcloud apps like Files, Calendar, User status, Dashboard, Flow, Contacts and Deck, with more to come.
- Based on the great simpleWebRTC library.
- Sync with other chat solutions With Matterbridge being integrated in Talk, you can easily sync a lot of other chat solutions.
- Work assignment / project team management cards, sometimes called ‘kanban‘. From the authors:
- Add your tasks to cards and put them in order
- Write down additional notes in markdown
- Assign labels for even better organization
- Share with your team, friends or family
- Integrates with the Circles app!
- Attach files and embed them in your markdown description
- Discuss with your team using comments
- Keep track of changes in the activity stream
- Get your project organized
- Administrators can use the GUI to enable any number of supported additional abilities. Their number is large and growing. The full list is here. Some of the more notable include: Announcement posting, Two-factor authentication, News, Tasks, Office Suite (yes, the whole collaborative document / spreadsheet etc. suite), maps, circles, surveys and questionnaires, social media sharing in many forms, addition of external sites to menus, SharePoint Backend, SSO/SAML authentication, quite an array of additional security related options, Analytics, File submission approvals, many multi-media presentation / tagging / management options, etc.
- Administrative Capabilities:
- DNSSEC – Secure Domain Name System. When access to RSS groupware is offered via the internet, RSS offers a standard means by which a remote client can prove they are communicating directly with their organization, and not some ‘good seeming but false’ copy. Every client domain a client owns gives RSS to manage, is provisioned with secure numerical ‘keys’. When these keys are loaded into the client’s domain name registrar (a one time task via GUI), it is possible for all to prove RSS communications of any sort originate from the numeric internet addresses owned and controlled by client, and not some ‘hijacked’ or ‘spoof’ attempt. General Information. Domain Management Overall Screenshot. Details.
- User / Account maintenance. Using a GUI, an administrator can establish user names, primary and secondary email addresses for users and more. Users can use the same interface to change their passwords. The interface is not available over the general internet, but only after secondary authentication via RSS’s RoadWarrior VPN or from within one of the client’s RSS locations. Screenshot Details.
- Integrated Subsystems:
- Nextcloud – Secure groupware feature access from any browser, Apple or Android mobile device ‘app’ or Windows or Linux desktop or laptop. One of many features RSS provides using the Nextcloud Sync/Groupware subsystem. Launched in 2014 as OwnCloud. Article: Nextcloud has over 36,000 server installations and over 100,000 client downloads. General Information.
- Security Technologies – To avoid giving those with ill intent information, RSS server installations at client locations have further security related technologies which are documented only for admin users. However, other than described publicly, nothing in RSS permits client data or metadata to leave the client’s installations.
- Foundational Subsystems:
- ClamAV – Updated automatically every few days since release in 2007, ClamAV ranks 12th out of 19 of the most used antivirus products. Removes upwards of 75% of known viruses from incoming mail. All files submitted for storage via groupware are first scanned for viruses. General Information. Details.
- FreeIPA – Multi-server, high availability user authentication, authorization, policy, certificate and trust management systems. Among so many other things, provides administrators and optionally users a GUI to manage accounts and passwords, set up email addresses and aliases, and more. Supports DNSSEC secured company domain names, and cross-trust agreements with Microsoft’s Active Directory. General Information. Details.
- Ceph – “The future of storage”. Updated annually since 2012, among many other things: stores email in ‘future proof’ eml format in its own file, each copied on not fewer than three servers– only one of which need be operating to continue operations. General Information. Details.
- Nginx -Released in 2009, now in 2022 Nginx serves 1 in 4 of the busiest websites. Among other RSS multi-server services, Nginx supports the ‘Autodiscover’ feature allowing simple email client setup, and the Nextcloud system described above. General Information. Details.
- Maridb/Galera – Highly available multi-server SQL database engine, provided in both site-local (secure, high performance) and intra-company (multi-location simultaneous updates) modes. Allows multiple email servers to share anti-spam and related information in real time. A successor to MySql. General Information. Details.
- Host OS: Ubuntu LTS running on either ‘bare metal’ or virtual machine/KVM – Each RSS site supports not fewer than two simultaneously running email servers (scales to many more depending on hardware). Even should only one be running, email services will appear normal. Scales to thousands of users natively. All email functions are isolated in a virtual machine both to protect the overall system from email breaches and to allow the installation of the latest email related patches without concern for dependencies and incompatibilities in unrelated subsystems. The underlying Linux distribution for the Email subsystem is Ubuntu. While ‘docker’ and related isolation technologies provide small speed advantages, virtual machine isolation remains the gold standard for security and is therefore the basis for RSS email. Ubuntu Linux General Information, Details. KVM General Information , Details.