COLLABORA ONLINE

Collabora has just released the latest version of its enterprise edition of Libreoffice: Collabora Office 6.4 (see www.collaboraoffice.com). Alongside that offering is another enterprise release, Collabora

Online, which provides an online version of the office suite that can be plugged into a file sync and share host via the Web Application Open Platform Interface (WOPI).

A free version of Collabora Online – the Development Edition, aimed at home users – is available, and it can be connected to your Nextcloud instance to provide functionality not entirely dissimilar to Google Docs.

The easiest way to set it up is to use the Docker image and follow the instructions at https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline. The CODE docker image listens on localhost:9980, so for this to be accessible to the outside world the instructions use an Apache reverse proxy. It’s recommended to have this proxy run on a different domain (the same machine is fine) than your Nextcloud host, which is a little complicated because for this to work smoothly you need to have valid SSL certificates for both.

It’s possible to use the same domain (at a cost to security), or self-signed certificates, but you may have to be creative in your approach here. Once you’ve done the hard work, install the

Collabora Online app using your Nextcloud admin account, and then configure it with the domain where the proxy is listening.

We haven’t heard the term ‘groupware’ since Novell Netware, but we’re glad Collabora is bringing back the term with such style.