In today’s digital landscape, organizations require tools that work together to increase collaboration, efficiency and control. Nextcloud, a leader in business collaboration software, offers a suite of products – called Nextcloud Hub – designed to meet the diverse needs of modern enterprises.

In this blog, we summarize the four key components of the Nextcloud collaboration platform, exploring how they provide organizations with advanced content collaboration solutions, enhanced productivity, and how they ensure adherence to data security for teams.

Nextcloud Talk: video and chat communication

An enterprise thrives if its teams can communicate well. When all teams have one place to send a message, a file, or spreadsheet easily, they will be more efficient and successful.

By using Nextcloud Talk as part of your collaboration software, you offer your employees one communication channel that is integrated with other apps like Files and Groupware (Emails, Calendar, Contacts). Employees and teams can conduct video conferencing, chat in real-time, and more.

Here’s a breakdown of what Nextcloud Talk offers businesses:

Video calls and video conferencing

According to a survey of 1,000 people in Germany, 33% have between one and five business video calls per day, 29% have between five and ten, and 27% even make more than ten video calls a day! That’s a lot of video calls and you sure need the right software to handle it.

Some features include:

• 8 reactions (ex: clap, thumbs up, etc.)
• Breakout rooms to boost team effectiveness
• Recording consent for individual privacy
• Timer to track calls and reminder by the hour
• Screen sharing for enterprises

Chat including:

• Interactive widgets
• Message editing

Whether you’re a small or medium sized business or a large scale-up enterprise, Nextcloud Talk functions the way you need it to.

Nextcloud Files: document sharing and collaborating

All organizations need secure cloud storage and filing sharing software. It needs to be easily accessible anywhere, provide utmost security and foster collaboration.

By utilizing Nextcloud Files, your enterprise can manage its files in the way that synchronizes your files and works best. Whether that’s through powerful integrations or rich file access control, develop Nextcloud Files in your control.

Nextcloud Files offers:

• Secure file sharing internally or externally
• Advanced access permissions
• File Drop feature to let others upload files to a secure folder via link
• Integration with Microsoft apps and other cloud environments for secure self-hosted file exchange

Nextcloud Office: document collaboration software

Powerful collaborative editing paired with versatility and security is what makes Nextcloud Office.

Office includes a powerful document writer, spreadsheet editor, presentation builder and drawing application for all business needs. Nextcloud Office is built upon Collabora Productivity, providing a strong base with incredible document compatibility. Experience the self-hosted online office that provides you more!

Nextcloud Tables

Nextcloud Tables, the impressive Microsoft SharePoint Lists or Airtables alternative, helps enterprises manage their structured data. With Nextcloud Tables, you can manage your employees’ time off, customer data, and more kinds of tracking and organizing.

Collectives

Build your company handbook or create a knowledge base for your employees with Nextcloud’s Collectives. This wiki-like application lets you build a trustworthy space to share documents and knowledge within your organization – and even to the outside!

Reliable and scalable for large enterprises, try it out today!

Nextcloud Groupware: making calendar and email easy

Your enterprise relies on communication and organization through email, calendar and contacts, so why not have it integrated directly with your files? Nextcloud Groupware is unique because whether you’re creating an email or updating a meeting, you can directly access and work with your files. By integrating email, calendar, contacts, and task management into a unified platform, Nextcloud Groupware enhances productivity and ensures that teams stay connected and organized.

1. Unified Communication Platform: Nextcloud Groupware integrates email, calendar, contacts, and task management into a single, cohesive platform, streamlining communication and enhancing productivity.
2. Shared Calendars and Scheduling: Shared calendars allow teams to view each other’s availability, schedule meetings efficiently, and maintain organized workflows.
3. Collaborative Document Editing: Real-time collaborative editing enables multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, fostering teamwork and accelerating project completion.
4. Advanced Security and Compliance: With end-to-end encryption and stringent access controls, Nextcloud Groupware ensures that all communications and data are secure and compliant with regulatory standards.

The post 4 Nextcloud Hub tools to improve business productivity appeared first on Nextcloud.

Governments, agencies and public services have the immense responsibility to protect citizen’s data. With the tremendous amount of choices for online collaboration tools hosted by dozens of different vendors, it is hard to keep an overview of where that data is. At the same time, strict policies forbidding employees from using random third-party platforms limits their productivity and it is hard to ensure the rules are followed.

The best solution is of course to offer a single collaboration platform that is easy to use, offers all functionality users need AND that can be trusted with sensitive data. But can you trust a third party vendor with such power? There are legal but also public image consequences of a choice of vendor.

What if you didn’t have to rely on any third party at all and you could keep data under your own control?

Amid rising concerns about digital sovereignty, many governments and public services are discovering the benefits of an open-source, on-premises collaboration platform in Nextcloud. Let’s dig into why governments around the world are choosing the Nextcloud solution.

Host your data at home

Foreign cloud providers like Microsoft and Google have obtained customers across the globe, however for those outside of the USA, there are legal and practical consequences.

One of those is being subject to the pressure of a foreign government.The U.S. has laws in place that force tech companies to release their data to US intelligence agencies as well as businesses or government agencies when a court mandates it. This can even happen under a gag order, so the entity which has its data handed over will not know about it – or only long after it happened. In short, foreign data is at risk and could be compromised at anytime whenever it is being held by US based companies. Note the wording – this extends beyond US borders! Even data in an European data center is subject to the US CLOUD Act, signed by US president Donald Trump. Despite international efforts to remedy the situation, even the EU-US Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy framework does not eradicate the risk involved.

It is far safer to house your data within trusted data servers in your country. With Nextcloud, governments and public services can be in control over their data and do not not have to worry about foreign regulations or changing laws. Out of all our government customers, hosting data in one’s own country is the highest priority that can be achieved by deploying Nextcloud.

For instance, the City of Geneva in Switzerland placed high importance on a cloud solution that is secure and compliant with data privacy law. With Nextcloud, these requirements were all possible and to prove it, even an extensive audit was executed to make sure our solution was the best fit.

Avoid vendor lock-in

A serious risk with SaaS vendors is around vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in, often designed into SaaS products, is a situation where a customer can not move away from a vendor as the switching costs would be very high. This is not just in terms of money – often, moving away means losing (meta) data, or incurring a significant period where there will be no service. Taking data out of a cloud service, for example, can take a long time, and shut down operations. Here are several identifiable risks:

1. If sanctions force the vendor to shut down their product or service, they go bankrupt, or the company is sold, the customer is stuck. If they want to update their policies that go against your protocols, they have the power to do so without informing you in advance. This kind of unreliability cannot be tolerated by government and public sector entities.
2. If the vendor raises prices, you’re stuck paying the new price.

1. If your company relies on a critical product, feature or integration provided by the vendor and they decide to discontinue it, you’re completely out of luck and will be left to find a new solution.

What’s the perfect antidote against the risks of vendor lock-in? The answer is open source. When you run open source software like Nextcloud yourself or at a local hosting provider, nobody has the power to shut down your service or lock you out of your data. Even if, for whatever reason, Nextcloud would no longer be a reliable vendor, availability of the source code and our policies on open standards would allow customers to migrate to other solutions while they keep their service running for the time inbetween.

Protect citizens data

With a growing digitization, the challenge of privacy and security becomes ever bigger. Governments can not be seen to leak data of citizens. It is paramount that government institutions have a solution in place that gives them and their citizen’s the certainty that the way they store and work with data is secure.

With Nextcloud Files, government entities can rely on secure document exchange internally and with other organizations. Security features like File Drop, group folders with advanced permissions and persistent versioning create a safe environment to work.

Boost digitization

With so many productivity tools out on the market, it’s easy to pick a few that you think are best for their main use: The fastest internal chat, the sleekest mail system and the most versatile file storage. However, constantly switching between different applications can produce a toggle tax or the cognitively taxing switch from one task to another. It also increases your reliance on multiple platforms and the companies that back them.

With a single platform like Nextcloud, all your applications from file storage to email are in one place and backed by you.

Using a single platform enables stronger productivity, collaboration and security as well as significantly lowers costs and maintenance work.

What Nextcloud offers

Nextcloud offers a modern, easy to use Content Collaboration Platform accessible through mobile, desktop, and web interfaces. Teams collaborate seamlessly in real-time documents, chat, and engage in video calls, access their email or plan meetings in calendars. As a pure software vendor, Nextcloud does not force customers to host in its data centers but works with a variety of leading partners to provide SaaS or on-premises solutions.

• Don’t hand your data to a third party
• Fully auditable code
• No vendor lock-in
• Industry leading security features
• Integrated collaboration environment

Pave your own path towards digital sovereignty

It’s never too late to start building your path towards full digital sovereignty. With Nextcloud, it can be accomplished and once you reclaim your data, you’ll never look back.

The post Digital Sovereignty for Governments with Nextcloud Enterprise appeared first on Nextcloud.

E2EE improvements in Hub 4

End-to-end encryption is designed to keep a sub-set of super important data confidential, even in the worst case of a server breach. Its value goes beyond breaches, however. In some situations in large organizations, an extra layer of security is needed because you might not be allowed to trust the system administrators. Think of the financial details of a corporation that is on the stock market. Or simply the employee dossiers from the HR department. Even admins should not gain access to those. This is what End-to-End encryption makes possible.

With Hub 4 and the 3.8.0 version of the desktop client come two improvements to end-to-end encryption.

First, we introduce sharing. Before, after picking a folder for end-to-end encryption, users could work in this folder and access it from all their clients, mobile and desktop, but not share it. It is now possible for the HR team to share their folders with confidential dossiers with each other, or the Finance department to prepare the quarterly report together.

The second feature brings File Drop to E2EE. You may already use File Drop – the Nextcloud feature that allows your external personnel, clients and partners to easily upload files to a secure cloud folder through a hyperlink.

With the new Nextcloud Hub 4 release, File Drop now includes the option to upload files to End-to-End Encrypted folders for increased security in your organization.

Receive confidential files in a secure, trustworthy way without worrying about breaches. It’s simple, secure and a no fuss file exchange.

Going back to the HR department – the team can now send job applicants a link where they can securely upload their resume’s directly in an end-to-end encrypted folder, shared in the HR team. And the Finance team can receive external financial information in an easy and secure way.

Version 3.8.0 of the desktop client is now available for download on our website. If you have the Windows or Mac clients, they will download the update and ask you to install/upgrade. As Linux user, you can either get the new Appimage or let your distro packaging system take care of it.

The post Desktop 3.8: End-to-End Encryption levels up with sharing and file-drop appeared first on Nextcloud.

We hope you enjoy the new iOS app!

Nextcloud Reviews

The post Nextcloud for iOS 4.7 improves image upload and document editing appeared first on Nextcloud.

Update: 3.7.0 Desktop client version had a crash that was discovered after the final binaries were built. This is fixed in the latest released version of Desktop client 3.7.1. Please update to the latest version.

What’s new?

Rewritten share dialog

Interactive Talk notifications

Lock file when editing locally

Resync button & sync improvements

Check the full changelog with many fixes and improvements! See for yourself what’s new by watching the snippets below.

Lock file while editing locally

Easily lock your file when editing locally.

Thank you to our amazing community!

A big thank you goes out to all the awesome members of our community that regularly help us make Nextcloud better by translating Nextcloud to other languages or reporting and fixing issues!

Would you like to contribute to our Desktop client too? Check out all you need to know here.

Feedback

We appreciate your feedback! Feel free to share your comments with us or continue the discussion in our forums. What’s the best thing about the Nextcloud desktop client so far?

The post Desktop Client 3.7 with new share dialog, better syncing and more! appeared first on Nextcloud.

AWO Berlin-Mitte is a major provider of social work and welfare programs in Berlin. They are a volunteer and membership organization with 1,300 members and provide services ranging from managing day care centers for children, aid for people with disabilities and the homeless, services for refugees seeking asylum, housing and counseling and more.

As a result of the pandemic, a large part of the organization’s consulting and administrative work shifted to remote working. To enable their employees and volunteers to have the flexibility to work from home, they needed a solution. Furthermore, AWO Berlin-Mitte placed a high importance on having the new solution be 100% GDPR compliant, unlike other popular platforms like Microsoft and Google. That’s why the esteemed social work association looked to Nextcloud.

Nextcloud provides AWO Berlin-Mitte a secure, online collaboration platform that fits their needs. For communicating and collaborating with colleagues on a daily basis, employees use Nextcloud Talk, Deck, Tasks and Polls. Access Control Lists are a key feature for security and meeting GDPR requirements makes Nextcloud the ideal solution.

GDPR compliant solution

Every day, employees at Berlin-Mitte are working with individual’s personal data case by case. The social workers have a responsibility to protect this confidential data from leaking. With Nextcloud, employees can process, store and delete any personal data without having to worry about privacy, as the data stays on servers 100% controlled by AWO.

Meeting the data protection requirements of Europe and Germany was a crucial factor in AWO Berlin-Mitte’s decision making process. Nextcloud provides AWO Berlin-Mitte a secure, online collaboration platform that fits their needs.

Infinite collaboration

Currently, Nextcloud is actively being used by approximately 600 of AWO Berlin’s employees.

With a wide range of integrations and apps, including Mindmap, Tasks, and Polls, Nextcloud has become an indispensable tool for streamlining collaboration efforts.

In the future, AWO Berlin plans to add its volunteers to Nextcloud too – so all members of the organization will be able to collaborate together!

Key feature for AWO: ACLs

For Berlin-Mitte, having configurable group folders that allow for special access and authorization permissions was a key to their success. This was especially important while dealing with confidential data in complex services.

Now administrators have control over what their team can do within a folder, subfolder or document. This system is called an ACL or Access Control List and lets the administrator choose who can read, write, create, delete, share and download a folder or document. Group folders give the authority to administrators while still creating a collaborative environment for employees.

Learn more about AWO Berlin-Mitte and its mission on their website.

What did you think of this use case?

If you think your organization needs similar file storage, collaboration tools and processes, be sure to check out our Nextcloud for Enterprises page or have a Nextcloud expert contact you.

Request an Instant Trial, Proof of Concept or Quote today!

The post 600 Employees at Berlin NGO AWO Collaborate through Nextcloud appeared first on Nextcloud.

What’s new?

• File thumbnails in VFS view on Windows
• Better notifications on macOS
• Improved account wizard
• Activity item click opens the local file if possible
• User status dialog is now much nicer and has an animation
• Check the full changelog of over 130 other fixes and improvements!

Screenshots

For this release of the desktop client, the team continued to focus on stabilizing and improving design elements that make the user experience better. We show the changes in the pictures below.

Thank you to our amazing community!

A big thanks go to all the awesome members of our community that regularly help us make Nextcloud better, by translating Nextcloud to other languages or reporting and fixing issues!

Would you like to contribute to our Desktop client too? Check out all you need to know here.

Feedback

We appreciate your feedback! If you’d like to share your comments with us, continue the discussion in our forums. What’s the best thing about the Nextcloud desktop client so far?

The post Nextcloud desktop client 3.6.0 is here with UX and visual improvements! appeared first on Nextcloud.

Twice a year, Nextcloud hosts Enterprise Day for all prospective and current customers. It’s a great opportunity to gain more information about Nextcloud, discuss changing demands in business and their impact on IT security, as well as talk personally to our experts, customers, partners, and guest speakers.

Last June, Enterprise Day was hosted at the dazzling Raddisson Collection Hotel. The Raddisson is located at the edge of Alexanderplatz, directly next to the DDR Museum and Berliner Dom, as well as across the street from the Humboldt Forum. Come for the talks, drinks, and conversations, and stay to explore the illuminous city of Berlin!

The day started out with a welcoming coffee as people made their way in and got settled. We like everyone to be able to ease into the day and have the chance to say a few hellos before the main event begins. From there, everyone gathered in the spacious meeting room where Nextcloud’s owner and CEO, Frank Karlitschek, gave an enlightening intro into Nextcloud’s company goals and future vision.

Frank’s opening session was followed by a variety of talks, beginning with a product overview and followed by a session from our productivity partners Collabora and Sendent, covering Nextcloud Office and our Microsoft Outlook integration. After lunch, Maxime Le Héricy, our Sales Engineer in France, started his talk by comparing a Proof of Concept with drilling a well – you need to go through the steps carefully to make sure things work out for you!

The afternoon also saw a session where the participants discussed their needs with the Nextcloud management team and closed with the presentation of a number of case studies in the Health, Government, Education, and Enterprise sectors.

Once the official event adjourned, everyone was invited to the hotel bar on the main floor to have a drink, relax after a long day, and continue conversations. This bar happened to showcase a gigantic fish tank in the middle of the hotel called the AquaDom! The AquaDom is a 25 meter tall, cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with a built-in transparent elevator for viewing fish. In fact, it’s the largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium in the world!

The post Nextcloud Enterprise Day recap – and chance to book for the next! appeared first on Nextcloud.

Nextcloud Files 3.5 for desktop

The 3.5 version of the Nextcloud desktop client is out, bringing new features and plenty of smaller improvements designed to make a better user experience. Update your desktop today to benefit from the innovative and engaging features!

What’s new on the desktop client?

• Dark mode support (including automated detection)
• Automatic file locking
• Improved interaction with Talk: notifications and Talk calls
• Quick reply directly from main dialogue
• Improved activity list with easier interaction
• Custom server color scheme
• Many small improvements to MacOS native support
• Easy pre-release testing

Find out more details and the full changelog of 3.5 and of course, contributions in perfecting this release are very much welcome!

Install

Nextcloud Files 3.20 for Android

In addition, the 3.20 version of the Nextcloud Android client is out too! Update your smartphone today to take advantage of these great new features developed by our team on Google Play or F-Droid!

Often times, you need to open and view a PDF on your mobile. With the new built-in PDF viewer for Nextcloud Files, you can do just that even if you don’t have another PDF viewer on your device. This feature has all the basic functionalities you need and also benefits users who don’t have any other PDF viewer installed on their device.

The new storage permissions provides 2 options to access files:

1. Full access (to all files)
2. Media read-only access (to photos and videos)

This is an important feature for enabling secure file sharing on your device and gives you the opportunity to allow less access.

Now with your Android phone, you can also upload documents by scanning them. Under the “Add to Nextcloud” area, select “Scan document from camera” and you will be able to upload items quickly and easily.

Thank you to our amazing community!

A big thanks goes to all the awesome members of our community that regularly help us make Nextcloud better, by translating Nextcloud to other languages or reporting and fixing issues!

Would you like to contribute to our Android app too? Check out all you need to know here.

If you’d like to get more involved in testing, here’s the easiest way to help us!

The post Major improvements for Nextcloud clients: Nextcloud Files 3.5 for desktop and 3.20 for Android appeared first on Nextcloud.

Cloud centered, cloud focused

For some time now, Stadtsparkasse München has been running an on-premises Nextcloud server to exchange confidential data with customers. More recently, in 2020, the bank decided that they wanted to transfer all their internal managed systems to the data centers of competent, regional partners. With a Gold Partnership with Nextcloud, HKN stood out as an ideal partner for running their Nextcloud services.

Nextcloud offers a unique on-premises solution for financial services companies.

HKN delivers Nextcloud on its open cloud

With 25 years of experience in hosting Linux applications, HKN was more than capable to deliver quality results with all Stadtsparkasse’s requirements for a provider. From being a German based data center, to having significant migration experience, their top five requirements were met.

For several months, HKN was there throughout the entire process, ensuring a smooth migration and testing every detail. The end result satisfied employees and administrators.

By switching to HKN’s Open Cloud, Stadtsparkasse München achieved high availability, scalability, DSGVO-compliant hosting, and more.

Nextcloud Enterprise and beyond

Through HKN, Stadtsparkasse München benefits from Nextcloud Enterprise advantages like improved security, stability and of course direct access to our top engineers.

As a highly trusted financial institution, Stadtsparkasse München has always been looking a step ahead to provide the most advanced, modern, and secure solutions that deliver the best service to their valued customers in Munich and beyond. They are a bank committed to their city and with this interest in society they keep an integral focus on new apps and features.

Check out the case study to get a detailed look at how Stadtsparkasse München, HKN, and Nextcloud conquered the challenge, how they implemented it, and the final results.

The post Stadtsparkasse Munich facilitates customer data exchange with Nextcloud by HKN appeared first on Nextcloud.