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d-centralize handbook

Company services

Most services require you to have completed your Onboarding process.

Company email

Your username will be assigned by a d-centralize admin.

Company email account
{username}@d-centralize.nl
Receive email through
imap.d-centralize.nl (TLS/SSL, port 993)
Send email through
smtp.d-centralize.nl (TLS, port 587)
Webmail
https://mail.d-centralize.nl/SOGo/

Other domains

When communicating with clients, it could be useful to have extra email addresses on different domains. For example, username@itslanguage.nl.

Use the same IMAP and SMTP host names as for the company email mentioned above.

These extra email addresses are an alias of your primary email address, so you’ll receive everything in one inbox. This is the default: if you prefer you can have it separated.

Scam and phishing emails

Sometimes you might receive an email that looks like it originates from @d-centralize.nl, only for it to come from a malicious actor. If you suspect something is fishy, check the sender’s email address to make sure it actually comes from the person they claim to be. A general rule of thumb is that people from d-centralize will send emails using their @d-centralize.nl email address. If in doubt, contact the person in question to verify the email using a channel which is not email, like Mattermost.

Read more on how to recognize phishing emails: Phishing (Dutch Government)

Obviously you should not click any links in the email or reply to it. Just flag the email as junk/spam if your email client supports it, and delete it.

An example of a fake email. Note how it is vaguely worded and tries to make you curious.

English transcription:

“Do you have some time now? I’d call you about it, but I’m in the middle of something important and can’t talk right now. I have an assignment that you must do for me right away. Let me know if you’re available”

Calendaring

If you’d also like to use the calendar and contacts. You can use them through the above webmail portal as well as using the following links for use in other applications:

Sharing

You can see and subscribe to the calendar of a co-worker from webmail.

Login, load your calendar and locate the + button next to Subscriptions. Click it and select a co-workers’ agenda.

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File sharing

Our next server provides a personal folder to store files. It also provides access to shared project folders. Both can be accessed through:

If you access these files a lot, spend a bit of time making a permanent connection from your OS.

Sharing outside the organization

Through the web interface of our next server, files and folders can be shared with people outside our organization for collaboration efforts.

  1. Select the share properties of a file or folder.
  2. Click the three dots left of “Share link”.
  3. If you want the person you’re about to share with to edit, tick the “Allow editing” box.
  4. Fill in a note on top (the person and/or reason you’re sharing). That’s for ourselves to be able to get an overview of what content is shared out of the organization. Click the right arrow to finalize.
  5. Now click the copy icon right of “Share link (Sharing with Anna)“.
  6. Paste the link into an incognito browser window to test out if this is how you’d like the user to share with sees it.
  7. Send that link to the user to share with.

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Credentials

Many services allow individual login accounts with roles. However, there are still cases where shared credentials are the only way to distribute access within the team. When invited by an admin, you can join our Vaultwarden service.

Team communication

Instant Messaging

Mattermost

Mattermost is our primary team communication tool where you can also meet your remote working colleagues. Aside from the general team (dcentralize), a project specific team can be joined for project specific communication. Also, bots post relevant messages here. Join through Mattermost by signing in with your d-centralize Gitlab SSO account.

Mattermost is chosen because of its open source codebase and default (but optional) coupling with Gitlab.

Apps

Mobile and desktop apps can be downloaded here.

Ubuntu installation instructions:

Terminal window
curl -fsS -o- https://deb.packages.mattermost.com/setup-repo.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install mattermost-desktop

Instructions on logging into a self-hosted Mattermost server here.

Inviting guests

The External team in Mattermost is designated to invite guests outside our organization.

For new topics, create a new channel of type Private channel. Next click the button Add members to this private channel and invite them through email or send them the invitation link.

Please archive channels once they’re no longer in use.

Discord

The Appsemble team uses Discord which is convenient to join for external guests: (Appsemble).

IM Bridge

It’s convenient to have a wormhole for messages to travel from Mattermost to Discord and vice versa. That’s the #bridge channel on Mattermost and #mattermost-bridge on Discord.

Video conferencing

Besides having textual conversations with your coworkers, having video calls is also very convenient way to also see each other. We use Jitsi to have our video conferences.

To invite coworkers or clients for a conference call, you can create a new conference room and share it.

When in doubt if you have audio/video problems, just check your setup with the echo server

VPN

Regular VPN

We maintain a VPN subscription from a commercial VPN provider for several uses:

  • For employees working outside the Netherlands who need to appear as Dutch for security reasons while working on client projects.
  • For deliberately obtaining a remote presence to test out regional differences in our SaaS.

Installing this browser extension makes it easy to use.

Company VPN

Some of our internal services are locked to a set of IP addresses for access. In case you’re working remotely your traffic is rerouted through the office router.

To use the company VPN, you have to configure your device to create a WireGuard VPN tunnel.

Linux (Ubuntu)

  1. Open your Terminal and install WireGuard apt package:

    Terminal window
    sudo apt install wireguard

  2. Download the vpn.conf file your admin provides you.

Now choose either GUI or CLI config:

GUI config

  1. Open NetworkManager

  2. Add VPN

  3. Import from file

  4. Select vpn.conf

  5. Add

  6. Check if the tunnel is working. Go to a website showing your current IP. e.g.,

CLI config
  1. Copy it to /etc/wireguard/.
Terminal window
sudo cp vpn.conf /etc/wireguard/
  1. Activate the tunnel and your internet traffic will be rerouted through the company router
Terminal window
sudo wg-quick up vpn

  1. If you want to deactivate the tunnel, you can use the following command:

    Terminal window
    sudo wg-quick down vpn

  2. Check if the tunnel is working. If the tunnel is working, you are going to see a new property in section peer called latest handshake. This property will have a value representing the time of the latest handshake.

Terminal window
sudo wg show

Windows

  1. Download the WireGuard app through the WireGuard website and install it

  2. Download the vpn.conf file your admin provides you and place it in your working dir

  3. Open the WireGuard App, click on Àdd tunnel and import the vpn.conf file

  4. Type a name and the WireGuard tunnel will be created

  5. Activate the tunnel via the Activate button and your internet traffic will be rerouted through the company router

    To deactivate, please use the Deactivate button and your WireGuard tunnel connection will be turned off.

  6. Check if the tunnel is working

    • Option 1: If the tunnel is working, you are going to see a new property in section Peer called Latest handshake with value representing the time of the latest handshake.
    • Option 2: Go to a website showing your current IP. e.g., https://checkip.amazonaws.com/, https://whatismyipaddress.com/, https://ipleak.net/. If your IP is equal to 185.184.111.56 and the Country is The Netherlands, then you are definitely connected to the VPN.

WSL

When developing on WSL, you have to follow the Windows instructions to install WireGuard and create a vpn.conf file.

  1. Follow the Windows instructions to install WireGuard and create a vpn.conf file

Android

  1. Download the WireGuard app from the Google Play Store and install it

  2. Scan the VPN configuration through the QR code your admin provides you

  3. Type a name and the WireGuard tunnel will be created

  4. Activate the tunnel via the toggle button and your internet traffic will be rerouted through the company router

    To deactivate, please use the toggle button and your WireGuard tunnel connection will be turned off.

  5. Check if the tunnel is working

    • Option 1: If the tunnel is working, you are going to see a new property in section Peer called Latest handshake with value representing the time of the latest handshake.

    • Option 2: Go to a website showing your current IP. e.g., https://checkip.amazonaws.com/, https://whatismyipaddress.com/, https://ipleak.net/. If your IP is equal to 185.184.111.56 and the Country is The Netherlands, then you are definitely connected to the VPN.

Example vpn.conf file

[Interface]
PrivateKey = <Client-PrivateKey>
Address = <IPv4 address>,<IPv6 address>
DNS = <DNS address>


[Peer]
PublicKey = <Public key of WireGuard interface>
PresharedKey = <Client-PresharedKey>
Endpoint = <Public IP of the system>
AllowedIPs = <IPv4 address>, <IPv6 address>

Software development

GitLab

Project planning, issue tracking, code, CI is all kept in our gitlab. To join, create your personal GitLab login and ask a colleague to grant you access to the appropriate projects. Also see Git for further setup instructions.

Sentry

Sentry is the tool for “Application Performance Monitoring & Error Tracking”. Basically, if something crashes in production, the stack trace to investigate can be obtained there.

Weblate

Weblate is the tool for translating strings within a project. It can monitor a project through Git and automatically translate source strings into several target languages. It’ll then provide a MR with these translations. Weblate is also a convenient tool for improving the automatic translations with manual translations and general linting of language specific oddities.

Plausible

Plausible is our self-hosted “easy to use and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative.”

Infra

Information on shared company infrastructure (GitLab runners, router and such) is kept in the infra repo and is also available infra rendered.