The release of the Nextcloud Hub 9 platform has been introduced, providing a self-sufficient solution for organizing collaboration among enterprise employees and teams working on various projects. Simultaneously, the underlying cloud platform, Nextcloud 30, has been published, allowing the deployment of cloud storage with synchronization and data sharing support, enabling data viewing and editing from any device at any point in the network (using a web interface or WebDAV). The Nextcloud server can be deployed on any hosting service that supports PHP script execution and provides access to SQLite, MariaDB/MySQL, or PostgreSQL. The source code of Nextcloud is distributed under the AGPL license.
In terms of problem-solving capabilities, Nextcloud Hub resembles Google Docs and Microsoft 365, but it allows for a fully controlled collaboration infrastructure, operating on your own servers and not tied to external cloud services. Nextcloud Hub brings together several open-source applications and add-ons over the Nextcloud cloud platform, enabling teamwork with office documents, files, and information for task and event planning. The platform also includes add-ons for accessing email, messaging, and organizing video conferences and chats.
User authentication can be carried out both via a local database and through integration with LDAP/Active Directory, Kerberos, IMAP, and Shibboleth/SAML 2.0, including the use of two-factor authentication, SSO (Single Sign-On), and linking new systems to the account via QR code. Version control allows tracking changes in files, comments, sharing rules, and tags.
The main components of the Nextcloud Hub platform:
- Files — a system for storing, syncing, sharing, and exchanging files. Access can be achieved via both the web and client software for desktop and mobile systems. Advanced features include full-text search, file attachment when sending comments, selective access control, creation of password-protected links for downloads, and integration with external storage (FTP, CIFS/SMB, SharePoint, NFS, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.).
- WorkFlow — optimizes business processes through automating routine tasks such as converting documents to PDF, sending messages to chats when new files are uploaded to specific directories, and automatically assigning tags. Custom handlers can be created to perform actions tied to specific events.
- Nextcloud Office — integrated tools for collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, developed in partnership with Collabora. Supports integration with OnlyOffice, Collabora Online, MS Office Online Server, and Hancom Office packages.
- Nextcloud Collectives — provides an interface for managing, organizing collaboration, and interaction among participants in teams, groups, and communities.
- Photos — an image gallery that simplifies searching, sharing, and navigating through a collaborative collection of photos and images. Supports ranking photos by time, location, tags, and view frequency.
- Calendar — a scheduling calendar that allows coordinating meetings and planning chats and video conferences. Offers integration with group collaboration tools across iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Outlook, and Thunderbird. Supports event uploads from external resources using the WebCal protocol.
- Mail — a shared address book and web interface for handling emails. Multiple accounts can be linked to a single inbox. Supports email encryption and attachment of digital signatures based on OpenPGP. Address book synchronization is possible via CalDAV.
- Talk — a messaging system and web conferencing platform (chat, audio, and video). Supports groups, screen sharing, and integration with traditional telephony through SIP gateways.
- Nextcloud Backup — a solution for decentralized backup storage.
- Nextcloud AI Assistant — an intelligent assistant in the style of ChatGPT, installed on your own server server and does not require access to external services. The AI Assistant can be used to generate text on demand in natural language, extract key ideas from lengthy descriptions, create headlines, rewrite text in other words, or translate into another language.
Key innovations of Nextcloud Hub 9:
- Efforts have been made to modernize the design, affecting all components of the platform and applications. Many elements, including input fields, buttons, and links, have been made more compact and occupy less space on the screen. The new interface uses rounded corners for buttons and fields. The efficiency of screen space usage has been improved.
- Support for dynamic background images that adapt to color parameters in dark or light themes has been added.
- A new application, Nextcloud Flow, has been introduced, providing an interface for developing, managing, and tracking workflows designed to automate repetitive tasks and combining Nextcloud applications with associated resources. The application is based on the Windmill process automation engine, allowing the creation of action chains. For example, data can be extracted from a PDF file attached to an email, and operations such as payment processing, saving in a table, sending a notification to a user, or creating and emailing a new PDF document can be performed.
- The Nextcloud Whiteboard application has been added, allowing users to collaboratively create drawings, sketches, notes, plans, and doodles while simultaneously conducting discussions and brainstorming sessions in Nextcloud Talk.
- Enhanced capabilities for building a federated network, encompassing users from other servers Nextcloud. In addition to file sharing and chats, support for a federated network has been added for video calls. Users can now connect not only to group chats on other servers using the Federated Cloud ID but also to audio and video conferences. This operates similarly to participating in a conference on their own server using their own account.
- The frontend has been translated to use the Vite toolkit, which significantly reduced the size of JavaScript applications (in some cases by up to 5 times) and accelerated their loading.
- The Nextcloud Text application has been migrated to a new high-performance backend written in Rust, previously used in the Nextcloud Files application. This transition has noticeably reduced server load, sped up rendering of editing operations, and increased synchronization efficiency during collaborative editing.
- Changes have been made to the server components that reduced CPU load, decreased memory consumption, and sped up updates.
- Development continues on the ability to split large Nextcloud databases into several smaller instances that are processed on different servers to distribute the load.
- In addition to the ability to implement synchronous replication across multiple servers, limited to a maximum of 4 servers, the new version adds support for connecting an unlimited number of nodes in read-only mode, replicated asynchronously.
- The Nextcloud AI Assistant smart assistant has been enhanced with chat interaction capability and supports text translation for various languages.
- Nextcloud Files now includes a wizard for requesting files from other users. It implements the ability to filter file output by type, modification time, and owner. A tree view mode for browsing folder contents has been added.
- Nextcloud Mail now includes tools for detecting phishing, enabling end-to-end encryption using Mailvelope, and expanding search result filtering capabilities.
- Nextcloud Talk now allows calls in a virtual environment using the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. Support for banning violators has been implemented. The Android version now features the ability to view chat history while in offline mode.
- Nextcloud Office has simplified form filling and added support for PDF document templates with forms. Data obtained through forms in documents can be used for creating charts, among other things.
Source: opennet.ru
