The Nextcloud Office bundle is composed of four applications:
Nextcloud Office
Nextcloud Office is the main application in the bundle. It allows you to collaboratively editing in real time text documents, presentations, spreadsheets and diagrams. The editing service relies on a Collabora Online server, that can be contracted as-a-service or hosted on your infrastructure, just like the core Nextcloud application.
A few highlights on Nextcloud Office functionality:
- Edit your files collaboratively from the browser and from the mobile apps with Nextcloud Write, Nextcloud Impress, Nextcloud Spreadsheet and Nextcloud Draw.
- Lock the file before start editing or be aware that the file is being edited by someone else thanks to the advanced file locking system available in Nextcloud.
- Work with both Microsoft-native formats (docx, xlsx, pptx) and Libreoffice-native formats (odt, ods, odp, odg).
- Translate text from within the document by calling the DeepL API machine translation service.
- Insert link to Nextcloud objects (Deck board, Talk room, file ...) by using the Smart picker.
- Access the Nextcloud side bar at any time while editing and do your editing in a videoconference.
- Manage bibliographic data thanks to the integration with Zotero, an open source reference management software.
- Manage per-user and global templates.
- Force secure view with watermarks to avoid unauthorized download or export of sensitive data.
- Manage fonts graphically at the administration level.
Nextcloud Text
Nextcloud Text is a good, light-weight alternative to Nextcloud Write, as it doesn't require an external editing engine while offering a large range of formatting options. In addition it features advanced collaboration functionalities and it is the backbone of other applications, such as Collectives, and embedded in other plugins such as the Deck card text editor and folders description with Readme.md file.
Let us review its main functionalities:
- Create, edit and share your notes with a Markdown-compatible simple-yet-powerful integrated text editor.
- Use advanced text formatting features such as tables, infoboxes, quotes, checkboxes, images and code blocks.
- Edit the documents in real-time with colleagues and guests with real-time colored cursors for who-changed-what tracking.
- Manage templates by adding yours to the ones provided by default.
- Mention other users while editing, so that they receive a notification for a call to action.
- Leverage the top toolbar to apply formatting in one click.
Nextcloud Collectives
Nextcloud Collectives is an application that allows you to build knowledge bases, also known as Wikis. These knowledge bases are structured in a hierarchical collection of pages. Editing and management rights are handled by Circles and can be shared, edited collaboratively and exported seamlessly.
Let's list a few of the major features of Collectives.
- Leverage the editing experience provided by Nextcloud Text, the built-in markdown editor of the platform.
- Structure your pages in an expandable hierarchy with a drag & drop, easy-to-use menu.
- Search in page titles or in page text, thanks to an out-of-the-box Full Text Search engine.
- Manage access rights in an advanced way, as it is provided by Circles.
- Search and embed any Nextcloud object, such as a Talk conversation, a Deck card or a file, thanks to the Smart Picker.
- Recover a previous page version or get an overview of the relationship between pages via the backlinks session.
- Export to PDF or share publicly the page with one-click.
- Set up templates for your pages.
Nextcloud Tables
The latest addition to the Nextcloud bundle, Nextcloud Tables allows you to build interactive and dynamic tables that can be useful in managing and tracking complex activities. These tables are deeply integrated within the platform, can be shared with different privileges sets and feature an impressive range of management operations: import, export, create views, integrate with external apps via an API.
Let's review their main functionalities:
- Create tables with columns of different types: free text, single or multiple selection, date & time, checkboxes, numbers, progress bar, stars rating.
- Use Nextcloud Text in free text columns.
- Import data from csv, xlsx, html and xml and export data to csv.
- Create views of tables with only a subset of columns and / or rows.
- Share tables and / or their views with granular permissions.
- Each table is a REST API endpoint that can be managed externally.
