The release of the Nextcloud Hub 3 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 cloud platform underlying the Nextcloud Hub was published, which allows deploying 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.
- Nextcloud Office is a built-in collaborative editing tool for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, developed jointly with Collabora. Support for integration with OnlyOffice, Collabora Online, MS Office Online Server and Hancom office packages is provided.
- 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.
- Nextcloud Backup is a solution for decentralized backup storage.
Key innovations of Nextcloud Hub 3:
- A new design of the user interface has been proposed, allowing you to change the style and background for all applications depending on the user's preferences, use dark mode and assign keyboard shortcuts.
- A new edition of the Photos 2.0 image gallery has been added, which includes: an overview mode for navigating through existing photos; support for creating albums for grouping photos of a certain subject; the ability to share albums; built-in interface for uploading local photos; photo editing mode with a set of filters and typical editing tools; tag binding system based on automatic recognition of faces and objects.
- Significantly improved the interface of the Nextcloud Talk messaging system. Links inserted into messages are now converted into widgets that allow you to immediately watch a video, a thumbnail of a web page or a task. Added the ability to send a message or make a call without generating a notification. Provided the ability to determine the working hours, outside of which the "do not disturb" mode is automatically set. Added support for limiting message lifetime. Added the ability to send documents, presentations and spreadsheets directly from the chat panel. Enhanced permissions controls.
- In the mail client Mail 2.0, performance has been significantly improved and the interface has been updated. Added email preview in the sidebar. There are quick action buttons. Simplified account setup. Integrated the ability to respond to invitations in the scheduler calendar.
- The address book offers a hierarchical view of users, taking into account the interaction of participants and job ties.
- A sidebar has been added to the file manager with resources related to the selected document.
- Performance optimization was carried out, the time of loading pages and fetching data from the database was reduced by 25-30%, which significantly accelerated the loading of applications and the search for properties. End-to-end encryption performance increased by 75%. Added settings for the administrator to define which users will be end-to-end encrypted. With server-side data encryption, disk space consumption is reduced by 33%.
- In the mobile apps for Android and iOS, blocks with recently updated statuses, changed files, received messages, and created notes have been added. The Android app offers a new interface for the image gallery.
- Expanded integration tools with Zimbra, Cisco Webex, NUITEQ Stage, OpenProject, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.
Source: opennet.ru