Linux Format

Collaborat­ion

What are your options when you need to share the workload?

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amajor factor for the popularity of online office suites is that they enable multiple users to collaborat­e and work on the same document simultaneo­usly. While offline office suites are catching up, this is one domain that’s ruled by online office suites, such as Google Docs.

Google Docs enables real-time, character-by-character

collaborat­ion on Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google Drawings tools. When multiple people are working on the same document as the same time, they’ll all be able to see the changes that have been made by each other. These collaborat­ion options work in conjunctio­n with the sharing options that makes it possible to set access levels for files, so that you can control who sees and edit your files. Again like with other features, you can use another Google service, Google Groups, to share the document with a group of people with a single click.

LibreOffic­e Calc enables document sharing with simultaneo­us write access for many users. Assuming each user adds a name on the LibreOffic­e User Data page under Tools>Options, it’s quite easy to track the contributi­ons made by the different users. A similar feature has still not been implemente­d by the Calligra

Suite and there isn’t any mention of it being introduced in future releases. The project’s website doesn’t have a roadmap for future releases, so there’s no telling when, if ever, this feature might be introduced.

With OnlyOffice, you get a visual cue informing you of the passages your collaborat­ors are working on, and you can talk to them to discuss ideas. But this feature isn’t available on the offline editor, and you must use the cloud feature to access it.

 ??  ?? Collaborat­ion on LibreOffic­e is restricted to Calc, as the other apps don’t provide simultaneo­us write access.
Collaborat­ion on LibreOffic­e is restricted to Calc, as the other apps don’t provide simultaneo­us write access.
 ??  ??

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