Use Case Study

Nextcloud Hub is a very versatile platform. It is used in a wide range of sectors and for organizations of any size. As outlined in the platform description page, four components (Files, Groupware, Office and Talk) expose their functionalities to the users on their own as well as integrate deeply with each other.

When you start using Nextcloud Hub it is mainly because it represents a solution to a problem you may have. A problem that brings to a less-than-optimal collaboration and communication for your colleagues, ultimately affecting productivity.

Let's discuss a few examples in which Nextcloud Hub could be a good choice to boost your organization productivity.

Cross-department team collaboration

In your organization there may be departments and these departments may be implemented as groups in your users management system. Each department has its own storage area that may or not be visible to other departments staff. Quota and access control should be implemented at the department level, not at the user level, while the department heads and other project managers should have larger privileges than other employees. Moreover there is a need of a simple, flexible way to bring together employees of different departments when they need to collaborate on cross-department initiatives. Let's think about events organization or a software release announcement.

In Nextcloud Hub, this scenario can be addressed in several ways:

  • connect to your user management system to get the groups and user membership. Define a group administrator to delegate some users management task, restricted to the scope of the group.
  • use Group Folders to create project folders with a dedicated storage quota and granular access control rules
  • allow normal users to define Circles, that are groups of users with most of the features of built-in groups with respect to sharing and access control
  • allow users to invite external collaborators, via the app Guests
  • enhance collaboration with Deck boards, Talk conversations, Tables and shared calendars

Some of these techniques are complementary, while other are alternatives, but there are many ways to suit the platform to your case while making sure to have all the stakeholders relying on a digital workplace under control.

We can help you in key early decision making when evaluating different implementation options and train the users to get the most out of the platform.

Webinars management

Webinars are nowadays a widespread method to complement in-person fairs in the product or services marketing strategy.

While the part visible to the prospects is more or less 1 hour, the typical duration of a session, the pre-webinar and post-webinar phases are complex and time consuming.

To manage your webinars, you can do almost everything in Nextcloud Hub:

  • plan the webinars in a Deck board or in a Table view. This can be done in team as both are collaborative tools and have advanced features such as user assignment, calendar integration, tags, activity timeline and more
  • centralize your assets in a Nextcloud folder. This means that you also have your documents versioned and all the team members can access, edit and sync the files from whenever they want
  • talk and organize the webinar in an internal Talk conversation. You'll have access to all chatting and videoconferencing features while having the option to create tasks on the fly from a chat message, access the shared resources without switching tab and add / remove team members as the webinar team changes
  • host your webinar on your systems. Participants will access the webinar with a url on your domain and with a branded layout, with an optional lobby. With full moderation capabilities, polls, screen sharing and recording you will have everything you need to have a successful webinar hosting experience.
  • store presentation deck and edited recording on your Nextcloud and optionally share it in a follow-up email

We can install and configure the videoconferencing infrastructure enabling you to host a webinar with tens or hundreds of participants. Moreover we can configure your Nextcloud instance for the best performance.

Scalable Storage

Storage is a core component in Nextcloud as all your users documents will end up in a storage system.

Nextcloud Hub offers two options for the primary storage, that is the storage that it assumes exclusive access on:

  • filesystem: local or distributed, it is specified in the data directory parameter
  • object storage: an Amazon S3 compliant storage system

When deciding for the one or the other it is important to keep in mind that there is no out-of-the-box way to migrate from one to the other. So migration complexity goes in hand with the number of files stored in Nextcloud. In addition, the application manages files naming, versioning and layout logic differently and this could make it harder to operate the platform and to restore data snapshots. Finally, encryption in transit and at rest is also managed differently.

We can advise the system architect who needs to have a clear view of the pros and cons of each solution.