Everyday Usage

Groupware

Nextcloud Groupware is a bundle of apps which is consisting of a Mail-Client and a Calendar/Contacts Server with their respective web interfaces. Nextcloud also offers deck, the productivity tool compared to Kanboard.

Upstream Docs: https://nextcloud.com/groupware/ 

The Nextcloud welcome screen will provide links to walk you through connecting your calendar, contacts, and more. Unfortunately, most of these will say to install the respective apps. This can be done by installing several applications from the application list.

Calendar:

With Calendar you have the ability to:

Contacts:

With Nextcloud Contacts you can:

Deck:

Deck provides the ability to:

Mail:

With Mail you can have:

Talk:

Talk provides:

 

Tips:

Application not showing up after Nextcloud Upgrade in the top Banner

If the groupware applications are not showing up in the top banner it could be because the versions are not tested against the Nextcloud version that is available. To enable these untested applications, click your user at the top right of the page > Apps > Click Disabled Apps on the left hand side of the page > Enable the Application. Note if the Groupware application needs to be updated before being enabled it is recommended to update it first.

image-1616946665226.png

The Calendar application was in the process of being updated at this point in time. After it was updated, it was able to be enabled successfully on the running Nextcloud instance.

Email Configuration:

When configuring email, most email providers require you to use an application password as opposed to the password you would normally use to login.

Checksum

Do you need to confirm the file you are sharing with another is the same file you sent to them. Use a hash.

The Checksum Third Party Application allows you to generate a hash of the file. There are multiple hashes available including: MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, CRC32, and CRC32b.

Note this hash can only be performed on individual files, and not on shared folders.

For more information, check out the project here.

image-1620007325491.png

EPUB/CBZ/PDF Reader

With everything going digital, there is no reason not to have digital books. The Epub provides the ability to read EPUB, CBZ, and PDF files.

Some of the major features include: table of contents, bookmarks, seamless reading. Although these are major features of readers, this is a nice feature to have out of the box. One of the great features is the ability to pick up where you left off no matter your device. (This third party application also supports a dark mode for reading.)

Check out the project here for more information.

image-1620007966152.png

Deck

Deck is a kanban style organization tool aimed at personal planning and project organization for teams integrated with Nextcloud.

User Documentation: https://deck.readthedocs.io/en/latest/User_documentation_en/
Code Repo: https://github.com/nextcloud/deck

Install

As an admin, go to your Apps:

2020-08-09-17-07-41-Apps---Nextcloud.png

Search for Deck, and Download and Enable it

2020-08-09-17-10-35-Apps---Nextcloud.png

You'll see the Deck Icon show up on your apps:

2020-08-09-17-13-05-Apps---Nextcloud.png

Setup

You can add a new board on the left, and new columns using the "Add new list" button

2020-08-09-17-17-23-Deck---Nextcloud.png

Everything there can be rearranged as necessary.

Configuration

Deck has a subset of features that Kanboard has. Deck has the following features (in no particular order):

It is notibly lacks the following when compared to Kanboard:

However, for the most basic of workflows, it would be more than sufficient!

OnlyOffice

ONLYOFFICE connector allows you to view, edit and collaborate on text documents, spreadsheets and presentations within Nextcloud using ONLYOFFICE Docs. This will create a new Edit in ONLYOFFICE action within the document library for Office documents. This allows multiple users to co-author documents in real time from the familiar web interface and save the changes back to your file storage.

Check out the project here for more information!

image-1620010186714.png

image-1620010266034.png

Dashboard

Customizing the dashboard gives the ability to open nextcloud and have an overview of what may be going on in your digital life. With the dashboard widgets, you can check anything from reports, to jira tasks, to manage messages from Mail, Gitlab, Github, Reddit and Twitter.

Getting started with the Dashboard begins at the Adding Apps section of Nextcloud where the Dashboard section can be found.

image-1622505425852.png

After the widgets you would like to add have been added they can then be added the dashboard on the main page by hitting the customize button. By default the dashboard will be blank and not have any widgets configured or enabled.

image-1622505590209.png

After you have enabled the widgets, they are now accessible on the main page but need to be configured.

image-1622505654982.png

To configure these apps, either the "Connect to Service" Button can be clicked or you can click on your avatar on the top right, click settings, and then click Connected Accounts.

image-1622506142786.png

For Github and Gitlab Adding Access was a matter of adding Personal Access Tokens

image-1622505736076.png

 

As for Reddit and Twitter there is a popup that shows up in the browser asking for web+nextcloud link integration.

image-1622505894196.png

There is then a little connect button at the bottom of the Connected Accounts page that will allow you to authorize with Reddit to allow Nextcloud access to your feed.

 

Something to note is that as other application integrations are added, widgets become available through the dashboard. The best examples of applications which have an included widget which can be enabled are Calendar and Mail. The widget for mail shows unread mail and the calendar widget shows upcoming calendar events.