Collaborative workflows

OnlyOffice

Developed in Latvia by Ascensio System SIA, OnlyOffice [12] (formerly known as TeamLab) is a highly flexible, free office suite under the GNU GPLv3. In addition to the locally installable desktop editors with the usual applications (word processing, spreadsheet, and presentations), OnlyOffice also offers two server-based variants for companies' IT infrastructures.

The free community edition includes three components: a mail and document server, as well as a groupware solution known as Community Server. There is also a commercial Enterprise Edition.

The variety of installation options is striking: The Community Edition is available in the form of precompiled packages in deb and RPM package formats, as well as a Docker image: the Enterprise Edition is also available as a VirtualBox and VMware image, each about 4GB in size [13]. The Community Server lets you manage documents in collaborative environments and transfer files. It also has a cloud connection to various services and proprietary cloud support. A CRM system including an accounting module, a project management application, an instant messenger, and a calendar with time tracking function are also available.

The Enterprise Edition is also available as 30-day trial version. The Community Server is available for free download on the company's website [14]. The Community Edition is limited to a maximum of 20 users and lacks an integrated backup and restore solution. In addition, the Community Edition lacks automatic updates and a comment function for collaborative document editing.

System Requirements

The on-premise installation of the OnlyOffice server has some hardware and software requirements. The minimum hardware requirement specified by the manufacturer is a server with a dual-core CPU and 2GHz clock frequency, 2GB RAM, a swapfile of 6GB, and 40GB of available hard disk space. In addition, a Linux kernel version 3.10 or newer must be running on the server.

Depending on the installation method, there are additional software requirements. If you install the server manually, it requires a MySQL database server, a Nginx web server, the Mono framework, and the Node.js runtime environment. If you use Docker images, a Docker environment including daemon is added.

Fortunately, all installation methods are well documented. In addition, OnlyOffice links to YouTube video tutorials via the website.

When installing the server variants, you should make sure that the required packages are installed in as up-to-date versions as possible. Otherwise, the installation may fail.

For example, OnlyOffice under Ubuntu 16.04 LTS does not need the packages provided by Ubuntu, but rather the official Node.js packages from the project side. The versions in the Ubuntu repositories are obsolete, which prevents the OnlyOffice server from being installed. In short, you should strictly follow the instructions to avoid inconsistencies.

Access

Once the server is installed successfully, you can reach it from every workstation on the intranet. You just need to enter the IP address to access the portal page. Here, you first configure some authentication settings and log on to the server. This takes you to the work screen.

Even a first glance reveals that OnlyOffice, unlike Google Docs or Collabora Office, provides a complete environment for collaborative work. In addition to the document manager, you will find buttons for projects, a CRM system, an email client, symbols for user administration, and community activities on the start page.

All these applications operate under a uniformly designed interface and provide an overview of the basic functions in a superimposed window (Figure 5) when clicked on.

Figure 5: The OnlyOffice interface and its services look pretty tidy.

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