PA OXaaS APSv2 Deployment Guide

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Deployment Guide for the OX as a Service APSv2 package into Parallels Automation

This guide describes the integration for the OX as a Service APSv2 package into Parallels Automation. This guide is intended for providers that use Parallels Automation and want to sell Open-Xchange services to customers.

Terms and Abbreviations

Below is the list of concepts and abbreviations you will find in this page.

Abbreviation Definition
API Application Programming Interface
APS Application Packaging Standard, an open standard that was designed to simplify the delivery of SaaS applications in the cloud-computing industry.
PA Parallels Automation, which includes both POA and PBA.
PBA Parallels Business Automation.
POA Parallels Operations Automation.
SaaS Software as a Service.

Business Model Overview

About Open-Xchange

The standard business model of Open-Xchange consists of two major components: a platform fee and a revenue share. With the platform fee the customer pays the basic access to the hosted service or the software and it usually includes a certain amount of basic packages that are ideally distributed to a wide audience of users by bundling them into other products.

Open-Xchange Services Provided

Below is the list of resources provided by Open-Xchange:

Resource Name Resource Class Limit Auto-Provide
OX Globals Application Service Reference 1 No
OX Brand Application Service Reference 1 No
OX Profile Webmail Application Service Reference Unlimited No
OX Profile Basic Application Service Reference Unlimited No
OX Profile Advanced Application Service Reference Unlimited No
OX Profile Pro Application Service Reference Unlimited No
OX Shared Domain* Application Service Reference Unlimited No
OX Shared Subdomain* Application Service Reference Unlimited No
Parallels Business Automation Application Service Reference 1 No
OX Tenant Application Service 1 Yes
OX User Application Service Unlimited No
OX Email Address Application Service Unlimited No
OX Domain Application Service Unlimited No
OX Purchase Request Application Service Unlimited No
OX Group Application Service Unlimited No
OX Subdomain Application Service Unlimited No
OX Resource Application Service Unlimited No
OX Storage Quota Application Counter (KB) Unlimited No
  • You can add as many as necessary.

Integration Workflow

The integration workflow looks as follows:

Deployment

Please refer to the Deployment Guide for more detailed information. This action is performed once and consists of:

  1. Deploying Open-Xchange application endpoint.
  2. Importing Open-Xchange application package.
  3. Creating service instance in the Provider Control Panel.

PA Integration

  1. Creating the required resource types. For further details, please refer to the Resource Creation section of this guide.
  2. Creating the service template. For further details, please refer to the Service Template Creation section of this guide.

Localization List

Open-Xchange has been localized in the following languages for each category:

  • Customer Interface: English
  • PA task manager error logging: English
  • Open-Xchange API error messaging: English

Technical Overview

This section contains an outline of how the integration of Open-Xchange and PA is performed and the list of Open-Xchange features that are supported within the integration package.

General Architecture

The following scheme represents the architecture of POA and Open-Xchange integration:

TO BE ADD - ARCHITECTURE DIAGRAM

Components

The following table shows the main actions offered by the APS through the different panels of PA.

Components Actions
Parallels Admin
  • Import APS package.
  • Create an APS instance.
  • Manage application settings:
    • CRUD tasks to automatize report creation.
    • CRUD brands.
    • Edit OX App Suite branding settings.
    • Download reports.
    • CRUD shared domains / subdomains.
    • CRUD profiles.
Parallels Customer Manager
  • Buy subscriptions.
  • View resource usage.
  • Buy more profiles (in app purchase).
  • Create service users.
  • Enable / Disable OX App Suite for a service user.
  • Add email aliases to an existing user of OX App Suite.
  • Change profile of an existing OX App Suite user.
  • View mailbox and storage usage per user.
  • CRUD user groups.
  • CRUD resources.
  • CRUD domains / subdomains.
  • Configure catch all for existing domains.
  • View all users’ purchase requests.
Parallels Service User
  • View profile features.
  • Go to OX App Suite.

PA Integration

Configuring Services for Selling - POA

Learn about how to configure the service templates that are necessary to create Open-Xchange APS subscriptions for sale.

Instance Configuration

Minimum Instance Configuration

In order to configure the instance, the following minimum steps need to be observed:

  1. Configure the settings (please refer to the APP Settings subsection, under the Detailed Configuration section).
  2. Configure the reseller’s brands (please refer to the Brands subsection, under the Detailed Configuration section).
  3. Configure the profiles (please refer to the Profiles subsection, under the Detailed Configuration section).
Detailed Instance Configuration

A description follows on how to configure all the specific settings of this particular instance.

Accessing the Instance

  1. In the POA Provider Control Panel, navigate to Services>Applications.
  2. Click on the latest version of the Open-Xchange APS package.
  3. Go to the Instances tab.
  4. Click Open-Xchange.