Why is onlyoffice a separate app?

[girish]

Maybe related, maybe now - ask the reasoning for having OnlyOffice available as a separate App in Cloudron? Is it for those that want to use it with something other than Nextcloud?

[marcusquinn]

Maybe related, maybe not - ask the reasoning for having OnlyOffice available as a separate App in Cloudron? Is it for those that want to use it with something other than Nextcloud?

So, as a Sys Admin should I choose Nextcloud OR OpenOffice in Cloudron?

Just thinking about user on boarding and making these things self-explanatory rather than me having to also re-explain these things to our users.

[girish]

@marcusquinn Moved your question to a separate topic. There are two edition of ONLYOFFICE - community server and document server. The community server, I think, provides a full blown interface to manage documents, CRM, email etc. The document server only provides editors. What we have packaged is the ONLYOFFICE document server and as such the app provides editors as a web service for apps like Nextcloud.

When you install ONLYOFFICE on Cloudron, you can go to Cloudron Dashboard and then go to Access Control to hide the app for normal users. Users don't need to see the app since it's all actions are inside Nextcloud.

[ruihildt]

I recently added Twake to the cloudron app wish list and I noticed they seem to propose to use Only Office for documents.

So there are probably other apps out there that could benefit from Only Office.

[marcusquinn]

@girish Thanks, sort of makes sense. So if it's installed as a plugin in NC then no need for it in My Apps?

Or better to have in My Apps for them use with other Apps and have one less plugin in NC?

[fbartels]

@marcusquinn said in Why is onlyoffice a separate app?:

So if it's installed as a plugin in NC then no need for it in My Apps?

There was a blog post by Michael Meeks about the engineering that was done when Nextcloud switched from OnlyOffice to Collabora a few weeks ago. One of my take aways was that while this in the end produces a workable solutions for infrequent use, for serious usage only a dedicated installation provides enough performance.

The main difference between the two is of course that Collabora/LibreOffice is mostly server side processing, while OnlyOffice is mostly client side processing. But in case of change tracking in collaborative use the importance of a central component cannot be dismissed.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Why is onlyoffice a separate app?:

Thanks, sort of makes sense. So if it's installed as a plugin in NC then no need for it in My Apps?
Or better to have in My Apps for them use with other Apps and have one less plugin in NC?

I'm not sure, but I think there may now be NC OnlyOffice and Collabora plugins that just work by themselves. But as far as I understand it these don't have as good performance as stand alone OnlyOffice or Collabora servers which are then connected to NC.

So, I think the best set up is install the Cloudron OnlyOffice app and then use the NC OnlyOffice connector plugin to connect to that app.

(and then also hide the OnlyOffice app from dashboard as it doesn't do anything by itself and so will just confuse users if they see it).

[nebulon]

I'll mark this as solved. The takeaway is to use the connector nextcloud apps/plugins, then it works.