A study by McKinsey showed that two-thirds of companies are asking themselves “How to automate business processes”. Pursuing automation in business departments such as Finance, HR, or Customer Service, is becoming an essential business need. And while there might be solutions out there, obstacles remain. Because how do you keep full control over your data with an external tool? Or how do you set up workflows without any programming experience?
With our no-code automation tool, you can streamline your work processes easier than ever. Approving vacation requests, ensuring quick review of documents, or handling payment workflows: Nextcloud Flow is built to make your work life and your team’s projects easier. A couple of clicks is all you need to start turning clunky processes into automated tasks.
And of course, all while staying in charge of your data.
What is Nextcloud Flow?
Nextcloud Flow is an extremely user-friendly automation tool, designed to help organizations streamline tasks and improve productivity. Through an easy-to-use, graphical interface it enables users without programming skills to effortlessly set up workflows to automate routine tasks in businesses of all sizes, from SMEs to large enterprises.
Nextcloud Flow combines various tools in Nextcloud Hub that help automate a variety of processes in your organisation. This combination of features allows Nextcloud Flow to connect triggers and actions, forming a bridge between you and your colleagues or clients.
Let’s look at some examples.
A user uploads a file to a folder.
This action triggers Nextcloud Flow to convert the file to a PDF.
Nextcloud Flow notifies the team via chat about the new PDF.
As Nextcloud Flow also integrates with your Nextcloud ecosystem, you can use it across various apps.
A user submits a form, for example a holiday request.
Nextcloud Flow automatically stores the data in Nextcloud Tables.
Once the data is stored, the user receives a confirmation email.
These examples show how in a couple of automated steps, you are enabled with the necessary information, including files, chat messages, or mails. By ensuring these type of quick replies, small and large companies can reduce noise, better the customer experience, and reclaim their teams’ time.
Of course, Nextcloud Flow is fully adapted to your business needs and can run in sequence or in parallel. Do you still want to ensure a human touch? You can add manual approval in your setup where needed. And as Nextcloud Flow connects with external systems, you can use it for anything, from public-sector tasks like company registration to business processes like invoice handling.
Digital sovereignty meets workflow automation
As workers face the challenge of rising stress and workload, a question like “How to automate business processes?” becomes increasingly important to address. Digital transformation has become a necessity for governments, educational institutions, and businesses to ensure long-term resilience and growth.
With Nextcloud Flow, you access a workflow solution that is:
100% open source with a no code interface: By choosing Nextcloud Flow, you avoid vendor lock-in, instead getting to a transparent and auditable automation tool. The drag-and-drop flowcharts ensure that non-tech users can still get powerful results.
Privately hosted or managed: As Nextcloud Flow operates in an environment of your choice, you are in full control of your data and can ensure GDPR compliance, even for components such as email parsing, digital signatures, PDF generation, and payment integration.
Fully integrated: Nextcloud Flow is built into your trusted Nextcloud ecosystem, so it is secure by default and easily communicates with your favorite Nextcloud apps, including Nextcloud Mail, Nextcloud Forms, Nextcloud Tables, Nextcloud Assistant, and Nextcloud Office.
A large part of our work day is spent doing routine tasks, even though computers were supposed to free us from such things. With Nextcloud Flow, every user can create custom workflows in minutes. By making automation accessible for everyone, teams can focus on what they do best.
Frank Karlitschek
CEO and Founder of Nextcloud
The tech behind the magic: Nextcloud Flow components
What does the technical side of Nextcloud Flow look like? By combining four key components, Nextcloud Flow becomes a flexible and extensible workflow automation tool.
Built-in workflow app: Your assistant to set up triggers and follow-up actions in Nextcloud Flow, such as sending a chat message when receiving a file. This app is ideal for automating simple tasks, and can be found under “Flow” in your settings.
Open Collaboration Service (OCS) API: A powerful, open standard API developed by Nextcloud that allows scripting and custom automation, such as connecting third-party tools and apps.
Windmill: An open source application that you can install as part of Nextcloud Flow to connect and configure different scripts for advanced business process automation. Options include executing singular actions in Nextcloud, reacting to user input, getting data from an external source, and more.
Nextcloud Tables: Structured data organization is guaranteed thanks to custom Nextcloud Tables view to manage your employees’ time off, customer data, health tracking, and much more.
The Nextcloud Flow components make it easier than ever to build custom workflows, including a clear overview of all your data with Nextcloud Tables.
How to automate business processes: use cases
As Nextcloud Flow offers a wide range of applications, it is used for all kinds of tasks and teams. But whatever automation you have set up, the Nextcloud Flow dashboard grants you an overview of all workflows, so admins can see at a glance what is running, paused, and planned. Want to see some use cases at work? These examples show how Nextcloud Flow works transparently, remaining compliant and intuitive for different organizations.
Public sector: Applying for a place at kindergarten
A parent completes a Nextcloud Form for a kindergarten spot on the website of the local town hall. Nextcloud Flow extracts the information and adds it to a Nextcloud Table, and pings a staff member for review. Once checked, an email with a PDF attachment is sent to the parent, confirming their application.
Business: Ensuring automated event creations
From SMEs to large enterprises, scheduling events efficiently is crucial for your business. With Nextcloud Flow, you can easily set a rule to create events in Nextcloud Calendar: when someone sends you a notification through a designated form, it immediately creates an event in your calendar.
Government: Deregistering a company
A business owner sends a filled-out PDF to the government. Nextcloud Flow extracts the attachment and adds the information to a Nextcloud Table. The workflow automation tool then triggers a payment step, so the citizen can complete the next step. Once done, Nextcloud Flow automatically sends a confirmation mail.
Did you know? How the once-only principle (OOP) for data collection promotes efficiency
The application of the once-only principle shows how open source thrives in a collaborative environment. As the OOP encourages municipalities in the EU to share existing business processes, other municipalities can directly adapt or reuse automated workflows. From registering a dog to processing vacation requests, the OOP ensures efficiency and collaboration, especially in combination with powerful automation tools like Nextcloud Flow.
Discover how to automate business processes with Nextcloud Flow
Do you want to discover how workflow automation mitigates bottlenecks and support with repetitive tasks at your company?
With Nextcloud Flow, you turn complex processes into automated solutions within a couple of clicks. The open source and privacy-first approach guarantees full digital sovereignty, for a workflow automation tool that doesn’t compromise on data safety. Ready to see how Nextcloud Flow can lighten the workload for your team? Try it now and discover what digital progress can mean for your business.
Get Nextcloud Hub 10 now!
Download the latest version of Nextcloud Hub here. Or if you are new — start your instant trial right away!
At this year’s Nextcloud Summit in Munich, we announced the recipients of the Nextcloud Awards 2025. With these awards, we aim a spotlight at individuals and organizations that meaningfully contribute to digital sovereignty – by raising awareness, implementing solutions, or simply setting an example worth following.
Introducing Nextcloud Talk "Munich" — digitally sovereign open source communication platform for hybrid teams that offers a strong answer to the Big Tech clouds. Now even more resilient, powerful and easy to get started with. Learn more for details.
For the ninth time, Nextcloud has been nominated for the CloudComputing-Insider Readers’ Choice Award in the category of Cloud Content Management. We’d love to reach the top again! And we’re looking for the support of you and everyone else in our amazing community to get there. Nextcloud as the best Cloud Content Management tool? Only […]
Welcome Nextcloud Hub 10. Our latest release comes with reinforced performance in every app, deeper integration across the platform, and dozens of new features that will make your day easier.
In the Nextcloud 2024 wrap-up, we want to take a moment to celebrate this year's achievements. Join us as we continue to reimagine what’s possible - shaping a world where open source, privacy and connection come together and drive progress for the greater good.
Organisations, small and large, need a way to ensure the resiliency and digital sovereignty of their operations – an open-source, privacy-respecting alternative to Teams. And today, we present that solution - Nextcloud Talk.
Nextcloud has been recognized with the World Summit Award Germany that selects and promotes local digital innovation improving society, aiming to contribute to the United Nations' agenda of sustainable development goals.
DIE ZEIT, a prominent German outlet, interviewed Nextcloud’s founder Frank Karlitschek for an article on Microsoft’s anti-competitive behaviour on the European office software market. Read for a recap of the article and the key takeaways.
MagentaCLOUD’s migration to Nextcloud in 2021 resulted in a fully equipped Online Storage with an integrated online office suite that further improves the user experience, flexibility and security for customers.
We bring you a major update to the Nextcloud AI Assistant, plus the news we work with several big hosting providers like IONOS and OVHcloud to bring AI-as-a-Service options to you!
Bechtle and Nextcloud announce today a complete managed collaboration platform for the public sector that requires no tender and can be deployed immediately.
Discover how to make the switch from ownCloud to Nextcloud. Our quick guide provides insights into the migration process, helping you make the transition smoothly.
Today, US-based file sync & share vendor Kiteworks announced their acquisition of ownCloud and Dracoon. Kiteworks points out that their customers now have access to their file-sharing application. It is to be expected they will not maintain 3 similar products, but customers will have to migrate to the US firms’ platform or look for another […]
As part of Schleswig-Holstein's state digitization strategy, the state chancellery has announced they will work with Nextcloud to develop AI for working with government documents. This comes just after we announced the first private AI assistant last weekend with Hub 6. The German state already uses Nextcloud and their AI strategy aligns with our work on ethical, local AI technologies.
Over the last year, AI has become a popular topic. Some is hype, some is substance. Some is good, some is bad. We want to give you the good, not the bad, and ignore the hype! AI has a ton of opportunity – but also risk. So we put you in control – off by […]
Nextcloud All-in-One (AIO) supports Community Containers that let you easily add useful functionality to your instance and plug into Nextcloud AIO’s update and backup features.
We save some cookies to count visitors and make the site easier to use. This doesn't leave our server and isn't to track you personally!
See our Privacy Policy for more information. Customize
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously and help us understand how our visitors use our website. We use cloud-hosted Matomo
Service:Matomo
Cookies description:
_pk_ses*: Counts the first visit of the user
_pk_id*: Helps not to double count the visits.
mtm_cookie_consent: Remembers that consent for storing and using cookies was given by the user.
Cookies expiry:_pk_ses*: 30 minutes
_pk_id*: 28 days
mtm_cookie_consent: 30 days
Comments