CommCloud has implemented P7-Office

2022: Implementation of "P7-Office"

CommCloud is a Russian company that provides hosting services for customers on its infrastructure has implemented the P7-Office solution. The company P7-Office announced this on October 25, 2022.

Previously, CommCloud used Microsoft 365 to work with office documents, mail and communications. All employees liked working in the cloud: the service does not need to be installed locally, you can work from any device and place. The most important thing is the ability to work together.

First, the company decided to deploy several different local solutions - mail server office, etc ON file storages. In the spring of 2022, it became obvious that it was necessary to look for a solution that would meet the necessary requirements.

Both Russian and were considered. Chinese software The choice was also influenced by the fact that "P7-Office" can be used not only as SaaS a platform, but also to deploy the system on its own. server CommCloud also praised the ability to fully work with common calendars, a powerful planning tool.

The calendar for us is not just an opportunity to schedule a meeting and share information about it with colleagues, but also, for example, a vacation schedule, a means of planning the availability of some resources - for example, meeting rooms, - said Sergey Sinichenko, technical director of CommCloud.

A couple of months after testing the product, the company decided to fully implement the P7-Office. After receiving the distributions, the deployment process began on Linux. As a software platform for implementation - Debian.

The deployment process took about a month. At the same time, it took so much time not the installation procedure itself, but the development of expert experience. Employees dealt with issues that could become typical for customers in the future. Among them were issues of compliance of computing resources with platform requirements, configuration of components, ensuring network security and others.

Gradually, the entire CommCloud team was connected to P7-Office. Corporate communication, including workshops, weekly statuses, and even most customer video meetings, has also been moved to the new platform. Employees of the company even created a separate chat in which they backlog the problems that arise: they wrote down a description of the question there and attached screenshots. For example, one employee could not find the desired function, in the second he had already found it earlier, then he told the first where to find it.

We managed to solve some problems on our own, technical support helped us in some, but we got our own experience in implementing P7-Office, "said Sergey Sinichenko.

As of October 2022, 20 people are already working in P7-Office in combat mode - almost the entire team, with the exception of several employees.

Among the most popular modules - "Documents." Flexible rights management and operational integration with Active Directory. Employees also appreciated the visual labeling of the availability of documents shared by the user, as well as the ability to view version history.

We were also surprised by the quality of the implementation of joint work on the same document - my colleagues and I can edit neighboring cells in the table without interfering with each other and continuing to communicate without breaking away from work, "added Sergey Sinichenko. - The editors interface is simple and straightforward. Although more templates would not hurt the presentation editor.

In the near future - the development of the "Projects" module.

Project management is an understandable tool, - said Sergey Sinichenko. - There are no advanced functions, such as resource planning, but it is possible to set tasks, assign performers, control the process, build Gantt diagrams. While we are studying the functionality of the module in test mode, but we plan to test the work on real projects in the near future.

The team faced some difficulties that required help from technical support.

It turned out that the Command module was not working properly. For some reason, sometimes the quality of the video stream changes in the absence of reasons - the computing power is sufficient, the client's channel is stable. And when working in a desktop application, the service loads the processor heavily - loading can reach 50-60% even on powerful PCs. This does not happen when working in the browser.

We were disappointed by the mail module - it seems to me that there are not enough topical opportunities here, - said Sergey Sinichenko. - And even using a web client with another mail server via IMAP can be problematic - for example, if letters were manipulated through other mail clients, the web client does not see these changes - for example, does not change the status to read. We solved the problem with the use of a third-party mail server and third-party clients. However, our experience has shown that the collaboration platform, P7-Office, is a working solution. And let not everything work smoothly yet, the service and functionality will develop in the future.

CommCloud not only uses the P7-Office platform, but also offers it to customers - both existing and new. The company even rolled out a demo stand offering to try the service in SaaS format. Also in the future, CommCloud plans to offer technological and consulting assistance in the implementation of P7-Office on the infrastructure of third-party customers.