The release of the Nextcloud Hub 22 platform is presented, which provides a self-sufficient solution for organizing collaboration between employees of enterprises and teams developing various projects. At the same time, the Nextcloud 22 cloud platform underlying the Nextcloud Hub was published, which allows you to deploy cloud storage with support for synchronization and data exchange, which provides the ability to view and edit data from any device anywhere in the network (using a web interface or WebDAV). The Nextcloud server can be deployed on any hosting that supports PHP scripts and provides access to SQLite, MariaDB/MySQL or PostgreSQL. Nextcloud sources are distributed under the AGPL license.
In terms of tasks to be solved, Nextcloud Hub resembles Google Docs and Microsoft 365, but allows you to deploy a fully controlled collaboration infrastructure that operates on its own servers and is not tied to external cloud services. Nextcloud Hub combines several open add-on applications over the Nextcloud cloud platform into a single environment, allowing you to work together with office documents, files and information for planning tasks and events. The platform also includes add-ons for email access, messaging, video conferencing and chats.
User authentication can be performed both locally and through integration with LDAP / Active Directory, Kerberos, IMAP and Shibboleth / SAML 2.0, including using two-factor authentication, SSO (Single-sign-on) and linking new systems to an account. entries by QR code. Version control allows you to track changes to files, comments, sharing rules, and tags.
The main components of the Nextcloud Hub platform:
- Files - organization of storage, synchronization, sharing and exchange of files. Access can be made both via the Web and using client software for desktop and mobile systems. Provides advanced features such as full-text search, attaching files when posting comments, selective access control, creation of password-protected download links, integration with external storage (FTP, CIFS/SMB, SharePoint, NFS, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and etc.).
- Flow - optimizes business processes by automating the performance of typical work, such as converting documents to PDF, sending messages to chats when new files are uploaded to certain directories, automatic tagging. It is possible to create your own handlers that perform actions in relation to certain events.
- Built-in collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations based on the ONLYOFFICE package that supports Microsoft Office formats. Full integration of ONLYOFFICE with other platform components is provided, for example, several participants can edit one document at the same time, while discussing changes in a video chat and leaving notes.
- Photos is an image gallery that makes it easy to find, share, and navigate a collaborative collection of photos and images. Supports ranking photos by time, place, tags and frequency of viewing.
- Calendar is a scheduler calendar that allows you to coordinate meetings, schedule chats and video conferences. Integration with iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Outlook, and Thunderbird groupware is provided. Loading events from external resources that support the WebCal protocol is supported.
- Mail is a joint address book and web interface for working with e-mail. It is possible to bind several accounts to one inbox. Encryption of letters and attachment of digital signatures based on OpenPGP are supported. It is possible to synchronize the address book using CalDAV.
- Talk is a messaging and web conferencing system (chat, audio and video). There is support for groups, the ability to share screen content, and support for SIP gateways for integration with conventional telephony.
Key innovations of Nextcloud Hub 22:
- The address book provides the ability to create your own groups, which can be managed without the participation of an administrator. User groups, called "circles" (Circles), allow you to combine contacts to make it easier to share files, assign tasks or create chats.
- A new Collectives application has been added that provides an interface for building a knowledge base and linking documents to groups. The left side of the interface shows the various collections of documents available to selected user groups. Within pages, users can create other pages and link documents to form a structured knowledge base. Collaborative editing of data with color separation of authors, full-text search and saving of pages as markdown files for access from external systems are supported.
- Three new workflows have been proposed to make teamwork easier:
- Chat and task manager integration that allows you to turn a chat message into a task or post a task in a chat.
- A PDF document can be marked as requiring a signature, and a notification can be sent to the user to add a signature. Of the tools for adding signatures, DocuSign, EIDEasy and LibreSign are supported.
- Document approval. You can assign a user to review and decide whether to approve or reject the document.
- Chat and task manager integration that allows you to turn a chat message into a task or post a task in a chat.
- Recycle bin support has been added to the calendar, allowing you to restore deleted events.
- Expanded opportunities for group work. Added tools for reserving organization resources, for example, for reserving a meeting room and a car.
- The thread-like display of discussions has been improved in the mail client, the marking of messages with colored tags has been implemented, and the ability to create Sieve scripts for filtering mail on the IMAP server side has been added.
- Search has been improved in the project management tool, integration with the Talk messaging system has been provided, and the ability to attach documents to tasks from Nextcloud Files has been added.
Source: opennet.ru