Nextcloud Hub

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2022: Nextcloud Hub 24

On May 3, 2022, the company Nextcloud GmbH announced the release of the Nextcloud Hub 24 platform, which provides a self-sufficient solution for organizing collaboration between employees of enterprises and teams developing various projects. At the same time, the underlying Nextcloud Hub is published, Nextcloud 24 Cloud Platform which allows you to deploy a cloud storage with support for synchronization and exchange, data which provides the ability to view and edit data from any device anywhere on the network (using the web interface or WebDAV). Server Nextcloud can be deployed on any that hosting supports - PHP scripts and provides access to ,/or SQLite. MariaDBMySQL PostgreSQL Nextcloud source texts are distributed under the AGPL license.

Nextcloud Hub

According to the company, Nextcloud Hub resembles Google Docs and Microsoft 365, but allows you to deploy a fully controlled collaboration infrastructure that operates on its servers and is not linked to external cloud services. Nextcloud Hub combines several open add-on applications on the Nextcloud cloud platform into a single environment, allowing you to work with office documents, files, and information to plan tasks and events. The platform also includes add-ons for email access, messaging, videoconferencing, and chat.

User authentication can be carried out 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 binding other systems to the account by QR code. Versioning allows you to track changes in files, comments, sharing rules, and tags.

The main components of the Nextcloud Hub platform are:

• Files - Organize file storage, synchronization, sharing, and sharing. Access can be made both through the Web and with the help of client software for desktop and mobile systems. Advanced features such as full-text search, attaching files when sending comments, selective access control, creating password-protected links for download, integration with external repositories (FTP, CIFS/SMB, SharePoint, NFS, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) are provided.
• Flow - optimizes business processes through automation of typical work, such as converting documents to PDF, sending messages to chats when downloading files to certain directories, and automatically assigning tags. It is possible to create your own handlers that perform actions in binding to certain events.
• Nextcloud Office - built-in tools for joint editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations, developed jointly with Collabora. Provides support for integration with OnlyOffice, Collabora Online, MS Office Online Server, and Hancom office packages.
• Photos is an image gallery that optimizes the search, exchange, and navigation of a collaborative collection of photos and images. You can rank photos by time, location, tag, and frequency.
• Calendar is a scheduling calendar that allows you to coordinate meetings, schedule chats and video conferences. Provides integration with group tools based on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Outlook and Thunderbird. Downloading 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 is supported. You can synchronize your address book with CalDAV.
• Talk - a system for messaging and conducting web conferences (chat, audio and video). There is support for groups, the ability to provide access to screen content, and the support of SIP gateways for integration with regular telephony.
• Nextcloud Backup is a decentralized backup storage solution.

Key Nextcloud Hub 24 Changes:

• Provided migration tools that allow the user to export all their data in the form of one archive and import it on another server. The export covers user and profile settings, data from applications (Groupware, Files), calendars, comments, favorites, etc. Migration support has not yet been added to all applications, but a special API is proposed to extract application-specific data, which will be gradually implemented. Migration tools allow the user to be site independent and optimize the transfer of their information, for example, the user can quickly transfer data to his home server at any time.
• The Nextcloud Files subsystem includes changes aimed at optimizing performance and scalability. Added Enterprise Search API to index content stored in Nextcloud by third-party search engines. Selective permission management for sharing is provided, for example, users may be granted separate rights to edit, delete, and load data in shared directories. The Share-by-mail feature generates temporary tokens to verify the owner of the email address instead of using a fixed password.
• Up to 4 times reduced load on DB during typical operations. When the directory content is displayed in the interface, the number of database requests is reduced by 75%. Also, the number of database accesses when working with a user profile is significantly reduced. The efficiency of avatar caching is optimized, which is now generated in only two size options. Optimized storage of user activity information. Added a built-in profiling system to identify bottlenecks. Reduced the number of connections to the Redis server. Optimized quota processing, token handling, WebDAV handling, and user status reading. Enhanced use of caching to speed access to resources. Reduced page loading time.
• The administrator is given the opportunity to determine the arbitrary time to perform background work, which can be transferred to the time with minimal activity. Added the ability to take generation operations and resize thumbnails into a separate microservice that starts in Docker. You can store data related to User Activity processing in a separate database.
• The Nextcloud Groupware component interface is optimized. You have added invitation accept/reject buttons to the scheduling calendar to change the membership status from the web interface. The e-mail client has added the option to send scheduled messages and cancel the e-mail that has just been sent.
• The Nextcloud Talk messaging system has worked to optimize performance and added support for reactions that allow you to express your attitude to a message using Emoji. A Media tab has been added, displaying and searchable all multimedia files sent in chat. Integration with the desktop is optimized - the ability to send a response from a pop-up notification of a new message is provided and the reception of incoming calls is simplified. The mobile version allows you to select an audio output device. When sharing the screen, support for broadcasting to other users is added not only to the image, but also to the system sound.
• The integrated office package (Collabora Online) offers an updated interface with tab-based menus (the top menu items are displayed in the form of changing toolbars).
• Collaboration tools automatically lock files during editing in the Text and Collabora Online office applications (blocking does not allow other customers to make changes to the file being edited), if desired, files can be locked and unlocked manually.
• The Nextcloud Text Editor supports tables and information maps. Added the ability to directly download images through the drag & drop interface. Auto-completion is provided when inserting Emoji.
• The Nextcloud Collections program, which provides an interface for building a knowledge base and linking documents to groups, has the ability to flexibly configure access rights and provide access to several pages using a single link^[1].

Notes