We are excited to officially announce this year’s Nextcloud Conference and Contributor Week!

If you’ve never attended our conference before, we invite you to check out the highlights and insights from last year’s Conference and Contributor Week. Last year’s program will give you an idea of a tentative schedule and our blogs covering day 1 and day 2 will show you more of what it’s all about!

Please stay tuned for more details about the official conference agenda, exciting speakers and more. You can also stay up to date on our social media channels, community forums and website for updates and announcements.

Contributor Week from September 16-20

As is custom, after the Nextcloud Conference weekend we continue the fun with our famous Contributor Week at the same location, MotionLab.Berlin!

From September 16-20, we invite you to join us to collaborate on Nextcloud improvements in design, functionality, stability, performance and features. It is a unique opportunity for developers to dive deep into the codebase, exchange ideas, and work closely with other Nextclouders. The atmosphere is vibrant and collaborative, fostering an environment of learning, growth, and innovation. By the end of the week, participants not only have gained invaluable experience but also made significant contributions to the Nextcloud project, helping to shape its future. Contributor Week at the Nextcloud conference is a celebration of open-source collaboration, fostering a strong sense of community and collective effort.

We share code, thoughts, inspiration, beer and knowledge, working in areas like:

• Coding (PHP, JS, C++, Objective-C, Java)
• Design & Front-end
• Testing
• Translation & Documentation
• And more!

Event location the inspiring MotionLab.Berlin!

Supporting diversity in open source

Diversity strengthens a community. The Nextcloud Include initiative helps underrepresented groups to join the Nextcloud project, building an inclusive and diverse space where we collaborate and develop world-class software.

We want to support participants from underrepresented groups in Open Source to join Nextcloud Conference by sponsoring part or the whole of their transportation and accommodation costs.

Book your free ticket in advance

Mark your calendars and get ready to join us for an unforgettable Nextcloud Conference in the inspiring MotionLab.Berlin! Together, let’s empower individuals and organizations to take control of their data in a privacy-respecting and secure manner.

We look forward to the conference and hope to see as many of you as possible for another awe-inspiring year!

Please note that the last quarter of the year is a busy one in Berlin. We try our best to avoid overlap with major events happening in the city, but there’s major events every day in Berlin so we recommend you to plan ahead, and book sooner rather than later!

The post Nextcloud Conference 2024: Sept. 14-15, Berlin – Register now! appeared first on Nextcloud.

Hi Nextcloud community!

as we are announcing Nextcloud Hub 8 here at the Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Munich, our customers and partners are presenting their own and unique use of Nextcloud. Tens of millions of users trust Nextcloud to protect their data.

These include private users, running their own Nextcloud, or using a hosted solution from the likes of América Móvil or Deutsche Telekom. Businesses, keeping data on their own servers or hosting at one of our official partners. And the public sector, with universities, cities, governments and international organizations like Amnesty International using Nextcloud to stay safe. They maintain their own servers or host with partners like Bechtle that offers tender-free Nextcloud for the public sector in Germany.

We build Nextcloud to give you control over your data. In terms of who has access, but also what. Our world is digital, and AI is digging through all its data. It can use that for good – create fun meme, summarize your mails or help medical research. But should it operate heavy machinery or be used in the courts or HR departments?

While society finds its way through these dystopian questions, we make sure you have control. Different options, plus transparency over what AI does and how helps you make informed choices. That aligns with our core values of transparency, community and collaboration.

This release introduces many abilities specifically for the public sector. Some of those are AI related, developed together with public sector partners like the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, presenting here today. Others tick off important requirements like our new European accessibility certification, improved scalability or federated chat. But all of these benefit every Nextcloud user, at home, in an office or working in a cafe somewhere!

This release is faster, scales further, and gives you more control over your data than ever before. Whether you watch our release video or read the blog, we are looking forward to your feedback, and, as always, hope Nextcloud serve(r)s you well!

Performance is now

Nextcloud Hub is the place where everything you need to be productive comes together in a connected, user-focused platform. Working on the improvements in Nextcloud Hub 8, we set a goal to give you half of your day back so you can take a breather!

Nextcloud Assistant 2.0

The first change comes in the introduction of the Nextcloud Assistant version 2. Context awareness mechanics introduced with Context Chat and Context Write lets the Assistant know even more about your work than you do. Worry not about privacy — Assistant is itself a part of your Hub and doesn’t send your data anywhere.

Nextcloud Teams

Shifting gears to teamwork, meet Nextcloud Teams — the next evolutionary leap for Circles. Teams arrives in Hub with the new team overview, quick access to shared resources, and a dashboard widget. And we are only getting started!

Speedy new Mail

A hefty part of your day you spend in Mail. With Hub 8 we made it faster — so you can go home earlier. The background sync is now twice as fast, the improved UI ensures comfort for a smooth morning catching-up, while replying takes less time with the addition of AI-powered suggestions.

Advanced Talk

Reaching out to users from another Hub is a breeze with federated messaging in Talk. More on Talk features, we added message editing, sparing you the delete-and-rewrite dance. Many improvements come your way in conferencing too, making presenting and group calls more comfortable and efficient.

Optimized Files

Hub 8 gets you to your files faster. Enjoy your private, clutter-free space with a Personal files section. Share downloads with confidence using one-time links. Preview and edit files linked across Hub with new interactive widgets. Discover optimized navigation for photos.

And so much more in Hub 8!

BITV 2.0 certification, incredible improvements in Tables, more automation in Forms, major performance updates in Office, and many other news are waiting for you in Hub 8. Get it now to see for yourself, or buckle up as we lead you through every new feature you need to know about.

Nextcloud Assistant 2.0

Build an efficient, sovereign, AI-powered workspace with Hub. Welcome Nextcloud Assistant 2.0, new integrations and new AI deployment mechanics.

Ask Assistant about your own assets

Hub 8 enables Nextcloud Assistant’s new context awareness features. One of them is Context Chat, a smart chat bot that can access your data and answer questions about your documentation, contracts, papers, reports or anything else. You can manually define the scope and even limit it to a specific folder or file for more precision.

Here you can enter your prompt.

You can optionally choose what documents should be used

And here are the results!`

And it’s not limited to Files: we developed an API that allows Assistant to look into Mail, Calendar, Talk, Deck and other apps to fetch info about important meetings, tasks received via emails and chats, and any other data from those apps. Over the coming weeks and months, we are going to gradually implement the Context Chat API across the Hub ecosystem, making Context Chat ever smarter.

Texts written your way with Context Write

Context Write is another new feature of Nextcloud Assistant powered by context awareness. It can derive context from existing files to convey their unique tone, wording, and even structure to create new texts with the data you provide. Tell the Assistant about your working experience and give it a nice CV file, and it will create a custom CV for you. Share meeting notes and ask it to write a formal report similar to your reference – done!

Generate Mail replies and automate events in Calendar

With Hub 8, we add more Assistant features to Groupware tools. Get reply suggestions based on your conversation history in Mail. Create Calendar events from emails without leaving the Mail app, automatically generate event titles and descriptions, and even an agenda. Go ahead – take an extra coffee break!

Chat summaries in Talk

Summarization of team meetings and spontaneous brainstorms in Talk chats makes it easy to get a refresher on previous discussions. The new AI Talk bot can recap your conversations, describe the discussed topics and define tasks based on chat activity. Give it a preferred time to deliver the summary, and it will send it in the chat when scheduled.

Prompt history and even more tools in Assistant

Assistant 2.0 gives you even more control. Access prompt history when you need to reuse your past prompts, and ask the Assistant to stop unfinished tasks if no longer needed. We also gave even more functionality to the Assistant, adding built-in image generation and speech to text features.

Synchronous tasks in Text

Text now supports running Nextcloud Assistant tasks in a synchronous way. If your AI provider is able to return the results fast enough, the Assistant can deliver them in the window right away. If it takes longer, you can choose to run the job on the background and get notified once it’s done.

Assistant on-the-go

Access Assistant from any device on the go to draft texts, compose mail responses and create social media messages — with Nextcloud Assistant now available in mobile clients.

Deploying AI

For these AI features to work smoothly, you will need some serious hardware. This unfortunately will not be a fun experience on your Raspberry Pi. But! Luckily, a number of businesses have started to provide AI-as-a-Service, running various open source models that Nextcloud supports in a way that you can connect to remotely. While this is great, unfortunately nearly all these companies are American-based, with a few in China. If you live in the USA, that is of course perfect – the data stays in your jurisdiction, and you have a choice of local providers. But for our users in Europe, this is less than ideal. The US jurisdiction unfortunately treats the data of European users with less than ideal respect for privacy, in no small part thanks to the CLOUD act signed into law by the former US president Donald Trump.

we have been working closely with several major European hosting companies including IONOS, OVHcloud and plusserver to integrate their upcoming AI-as-a-Service solutions. This will make them available to Nextcloud customers and users who wish to take advantage of the advanced AI functionalities in Nextcloud Hub but don’t wish to host AI services themselves.

OVHcloud is thrilled to collaborate with Nextcloud in delivering state-of-the-art Digital Sovereign AI solutions to our customers. We are aligned with Nextcloud’s commitment to offering secure, privacy-conscious AI functionalities that safeguard training data and adhere strictly to GDPR regulations. We are excited to announce that this integration will become available in Q2 2024, marking a significant milestone in our journey towards responsible AI innovation.

Germain Masse, AI Product Marketing Manager at OVHCloud

We are proud to offer Nextcloud customers a solution that complies with European data protection regulations. Reliable, trustworthy, and local AI services will be key to protecting their digital sovereignty for both the public and private sectors in Europe.

IONOS

plusKI brings cutting edge, open source AI technologies in a compliant and digitally sovereign service to the German market. We are excited to work with Nextcloud to make this available to their customers as back-end to the new generation of the Nextcloud Assistant.

Christian Schmitz, Director Open Source at plusserver

Ready for mission-critical deployment

We know that AI works miracles when it comes to automation: it can make your work easier, save your time and hopefully get you back to your family and friends sooner each day. But we’re also aware of its downsides, some similar to the challenges brought about by the big tech firms, some unique to AI.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. We want to offer you the best of AI, but also provide transparency and choice. You’re the one who decides where and how to use AI in Nextcloud and equally how to balance its benefits with privacy, environmental impact, and more.

More about our approach to AI and Ethical AI Rating

Building sovereign AI in collaboration with the German government

Nextcloud teamed up with the government of German state Schleswig-Holstein to build sovereign AI tools for state administration needs. This will allow the state office to amplify process automation, create value for domestic digital economy, and notably set an example for AI strategy building within public sectors in Europe and beyond.

Interactive widgets

No more jumping between apps. With Hub 8, we introduce the ultimate shortcut.

Edit meeting notes in a Talk chat while video conferencing, scroll through a project Deck board on a Collectives page, or add a whole interactive calendar to your planning file in Text — you name it. With interactive widgets in Hub, you can quite literally embed one app into another.

View and edit files

Using widgets, you and other users with access can view the linked file contents and make edits without leaving the app. To prevent accidental edits, file widgets in Talk open in view-only mode by default.

Embedded Calendars

Now you can embed a full calendar in many Hub apps to quickly browse events, dates, and schedules. Respecting your privacy, Nextcloud only shows the embedded calendar to users with access, while for others it will remain blank.

Integrated Deck boards

Manage tasks and deadlines anywhere in Hub. Paste a Deck board to browse the contents, open and manage the cards, and even access search and settings.

Nextcloud Office

Better team and project management in Office. Even more automated, even more connected, and even more collaborative.

Manage like a pro with Teams

Nextcloud Teams is a new step for Circles, with a redesigned team overview, a Dashboard widget, and new features to streamline team management. Browse team resources like Deck boards, Talk rooms and Collectives in the team menu. Add new items to share them in an instant. Shared files and calendars are coming soon.

Publicly share Collectives pages

Sharing knowledge with Collectives is now easier, as we take a lot of extra actions off your shoulders. Share individual Collectives pages with included sub-pages via public links. Manage all link shares via sidebar Share tab. Create multiple links with individual permissions to improve security when sharing externally.

Link Forms to sheets

Link forms to spreadsheets to automatically submit collected data to ODS, XLSX, or CSV files. Re-export, create new sheet copies and edit the linked sheets to add more columns with comments, statuses and any other data you need.

Spreadsheets: cell protection, tooltips, and improved filtering

New features in spreadsheets aim to boost security and integrity of your spreadsheets and greatly improve overall usability. Cell protection allows preventing unwanted changes in selected cells, intentional or not, and managing individual permissions for cells. When typing a function name, a tooltip will show you relevant functions to assist you in search. Filtering has been improved with the AutoFilter feature and new filtering options like Color and Condition.

Documents: layout improvements, better navigation and change tracking

Keep the layout of your documents neat with dedicated section editing, separate headers and footers for pages under one style, and support for STYLEREF fields. Browsing tracked changes is now easier thanks to popover tooltips and improved change highlights in tables.

Manage users you follow when collaborating

It’s now easier to follow and unfollow users in your documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The currently followed user is directly visible, so you always know whom you are following. Unfollowing became more convenient too: just click on the list to resume independent browsing.

More than just Tables

Let’s talk about Tables, a versatile data processing app in the Hub ecosystem that elevates your workflow management. In Hub 8, we included improvements in Tables navigation and data imports, as well as introduce a complete new mechanic: no-code apps based on Tables.

Build custom Tables apps

Need a custom app in your Hub to manage a process, centrally access project data, or build a dedicated knowledge base? Now you can create custom Hub apps based on Tables, streamlining management of individual teams, projects, or processes. Aggregate and combine existing tables and views and add them as a new application to the menu bar for quick access.

Navigate your tables in a pinch

All tables are accessible from a single list that you can filter to find the most relevant items quickly. Add tables to favorites to keep them on top of the list at all times, or archive unused tables to clean your space without losing old data.

With Nextcloud Tables, we’re definitely getting to a point where we can replace traditional specialized software, (German: Fachverfahren), by storing the data structures in Nextcloud.

Sven Thomson, CIO Schleswig-Holstein

New ways to import data

Import tables from external files using the upload feature or from the right click menu from the Files app. We improved file parsing to automatically detect more items from CSV and spreadsheet files, such as dates, percentage, currency and decimals.

Transfer ownership with ease

Now users can change the owners of the tables themselves, making it easier to manage tasks without admin permissions. The setting is available in the Edit window.

Nextcloud Files

New Files, featuring your personal file management space, better navigation, and even more ways to share.

Files, your own

Getting lost in a massive amount of shared documents? Enjoy a clean space for yourself with the Personal files section to find all of your own files and folders. Accessible from the web and Nextcloud clients, your documents, drafts, photos, invoices and other items are always close at hand. Plus, we added file recommendations to help you get to recently edited files faster.

One-time links and QR-codes

Sharing is even more secure now with one-time download links. When you wish to share a download with a single user and don’t want the link passed around, check the corresponding box in the link settings. What’s more, now you can generate QR-codes on the spot to share links with ease on web pages, slides, printed materials, and more.

Pictures where you want them

In Hub 8, we added one of the most anticipated features for the Photos app: a dedicated Media folder for all your pictures. Your space no longer shows those annoying memes your colleague keeps sending over, and instead displays photos from the chosen folder. Previews also run smoothly now with ‘blur hash’ so you can scroll through your library more quickly.

Photos widget for Dashboard

While we were at it, we also created a nice Dashboard widget for Photos: it shows you a picture from the past. Good memories, we hope!

Nextcloud Talk

Meet an optimized Talk with much smoother team meetings, Federated chatting, new mechanics in messages including editing, Flavored Markdown and much more.

Message editing

Here’s to cleaner chat! Now you can edit messages in talk to correct typos, update information and add new lines without following up in a separate message. Edits are possible for 6 hours after the message is sent.

Federated chatting

Federated Hub becomes even more united. Now users from all teams can create group chats across federated Talk instances and use many Talk features like mentions, polls, and chat notifications. And even more to come in the future!

For federated chatting, we use the open standard Open Cloud Mesh (OCM) developed at CERN with the help of Nextcloud and other open source projects. The same standard is in use for federated file sharing. In the future, we are planning to expand this into federated Calendar sharing and other features.

Smoother team meetings

Now you can drag the speaker video to pick the best position to fit shared screen content. Current speaker is highlighted in the list for more visibility during large group calls. Call UI is greatly improved: access chat descriptions and post polls during calls, navigate chat messages without interruptions, and more.

New text styles

With Flavored Markdown now supported in Talk, you can make your messaging even more visually rich and informative. With syntax included in Flavored Markdown, you can create tables, add interactive check boxes and format text as a strikethrough.

About using Markdown in Talk

Nextcloud Groupware

In Hub 8, we focused on improving the performance of the whole Groupware bundle, delivering faster Mail with notable design adjustments, more automation and comfort in Calendar, better external compatibility, and more.

Faster, smarter, sleeker Mail

Find the right words with reply suggestions

Don’t have time to compose a well worded, professional reply? Hint: Use AI! Nextcloud Assistant in Mail now generates reply suggestions for you, so you can send a response to incoming mail based on your context in no time.

Enjoy a much faster sync

IMAP accounts without CONDSTORE extension can now sync 2x faster to enjoy a much more agile Mail experience.

Create events with automatic info

Enjoy even more automation! Now you can quickly create an event from the email thread using the More actions >> Create event action. Nextcloud Assistant will automatically pick the event title and description, and even create an agenda based on your conversation.

Save the date: Calendar improvements

Redesigned event window

We improved the event overview window and sidebar view, rendering a more comfortable layout and introducing two window modes: View mode and Edit mode.

Suggestions for free/busy times

In Nextcloud Mail, you can view the free/busy times of attendees to arrange the best time for your meeting. What if the time slot you picked doesn’t work for everybody? In Hub 8, Calendar automatically suggests the next suitable time slot on their availability and let’s you adjust the event in one click.

What’s more, in the redesigned availability window you can quickly manage the event: change the event time or add and remove the attendees.

Nextcloud ecosystem

Together with the Hub 8 release, we roll out new features for external apps, add new integrations, and amplify our whole app ecosystem with new mechanics.

Pop-up update summaries

The change log pop-up feature enables you to deliver update summaries straight to your users in a form of a notification. List new features, bug fixes and improvements and ship them in the appropriate format depending on the user’s role: admin or general user.

Discover in App Store

The new Discover section aims to create a more engaging experience for App Store users. It features curated app suggestions, themed collections, and various related content such as interviews, podcasts, and resources. To app developers, it is also an opportunity to greatly amplify visibility of their apps.

New integrations

Paperless-ngx is an open-source document management solution designed to help you organize and navigate your paperwork with a variety of complimentary features like OCR.

• Transform physical documents into a digital archive
• Organize and customize your library, enjoy advanced navigation
• Use a variety of extra features like OCR and Tesseract

Build apps for Nextcloud!

Whether you want to create mobile apps that connect to Nextcloud, integrate independent apps in Hub, or build dedicated apps, we’ve got you covered! You can build applications in any programming language, make use of our complete API documentation, and follow ready tutorials to get inspired.

Speaking of which, we are constantly extending our library of app tutorials, and this time we added two awesome new guides: a hello world app tutorial and a guide to using Github Codespaces as a developer environment.

New app ecosystem features

The app ecosystem update gives new liberties to app developers. With declarative syntax, now you can define custom setting screens for admins and end users. Opening opportunities for deeper integration with Nextcloud, we made it possible to inject a full user interface in Nextcloud. To aid the contributing developers in localization efforts, we also let you get help from our translator community using Transifex.

Nextcloud Clients

We worked on Nextcloud clients for all platforms, adding some great features to extend functionality and improve performance.

VFS support in macOS app

With Hub 8, we are releasing a new client for macOS that has support for the Virtual File System (VFS). The new sync engine adds more agility to file browsing, presenting all of the files available on the server without downloading them and taking extra disk space. These files will only be downloaded when you need to interact with them.

Easier app updates on Windows

Great news for our Windows users: new versions of the desktop client can now be installed without user intervention in most cases, making the update process smooth without disrupting your work.

MDM in the Android app

Enterprise customers will be glad to read that the Android app now has Mobile Device Management (MDM) integrated. The feature allows you to manage the mobile devices connected to your Nextcloud and therefore greatly improve security controls.

Design improvements for iOS client

iOS client for Files received major design rework in many areas:

• Cleaner navigation bar with new dropdown menu
• New account switcher
• Ability to show/hide the description
• Optimized action sheet
• Improved grid view for files
• Improved icons throughout the app

New level of performance

Organizations big and small rely on Nextcloud to supercharge their collaboration. That’s why we take performance and stability very seriously. Efficient software is not only about getting things done fast and serving a large base of users, it is also about reducing energy consumption and running on diverse infrastructures without losing efficiency.

With this release, we started working on the Database Sharding which lets you split Nextcloud database into several smaller databases and to distribute it among a few smaller servers. The basis for Database Sharding is already here, and we are planning to work on it moving forward to bring the opportunity to our users.

Another noteworthy improvement is in continuous work on the Read-After-Write behavior. Current architecture requires synchronous replication, which reduces the number of database cluster nodes to 4. In the future, we will support an unlimited number of Read nodes that are using asynchronous replication.

These efforts in boosting Nextcloud performance will allow us to accommodate up to 10x more users within a single cluster, moving the scalability of Nextcloud to a whole new level.

This, and numerous smaller but meaningful updates in the frontend make the Nextcloud experience much smoother, not only tackling the challenges of the large setups but also improving the performance for every user. After all, it’s all about giving you more time, achieved with scrutiny of every detail.

Ready to get the feel of the new Hub?

From continuous work on AI features and interface optimization, to various new shortcuts between apps and performance improvements — we tried to make Hub 8 worth your while. This is a result of the meticulous work of our growing team of engineers and designers, our contributors, and the whole of Nextcloud and its community.

Thank you for reading and sticking to the end! We took some of your time with this hefty blog, but we promise to give some of it back with Hub 8!

Get Nextcloud Hub 8

Download and install Nextcloud Hub 8 here!

Get Hub 8

You can download Nextcloud Hub 8 from our installation page. Among available options, you can use a zip file or the all-in-one image for fresh installation.

Over the coming weeks, we will make it available to our home users via updater using the usual staged roll-out process. You can switch to the beta channel temporarily if you want to try the new Hub right away. Don’t forget to switch back to stable after you’ve updated to Hub 8!

Note: Nextcloud caches the results coming from our updater server, so it can take some time for the new version to show up and you likely have to refresh the page, wait a bit, then try again.

How to update: AIO users

For new Nextcloud All-in-One (AIO) users, you can install Hub 8 directly by checking the “Install Nextcloud 29” box.

We have a dedicated setup guide for AIO users. Follow the guidelines to easily set up Hub 8.

The Nextcloud Enterprise version of Hub 8 will become available soon, once we successfully run the additional testing and complete certification.

Nextcloud One: a fully managed cloud platform

Nextcloud One is a fully managed Nextcloud offering from our new partner EpikShare. It is a comprehensive service where the hosting, maintenance and management of a Nextcloud instance are fully handled.

Nextcloud One ensures strict compliance with global data protection standards, including GDPR. This platform integrates workflow management tools, such as rule-based file tagging and access controls, with auditing capabilities, ensuring data oversight and security.

Nextcloud One is hosted within the stringent, privacy-focused jurisdiction of Germany and as such provides a secure, efficient and fully managed Nextcloud environment.

Discover the power of Nextcloud One! We invite professionals who work alone or in small teams to explore how Nextcloud One can help them collaborate in a digitally sovereign, compliant way. Visit their website today and start your journey for free with a fully managed Nextcloud solution.

Thank you to our community!

Nextcloud runs on community power. Users, contributors and developers who dedicate themselves to making Nextcloud better every day are the life force that drives our project. With our whole heart, we thank everyone involved in making the new Hub happen.

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The post Regain control over your time with Nextcloud Hub 8 appeared first on Nextcloud.

Today, we bring you a major update to the Nextcloud AI Assistant with Context Chat, Context Write, GPU acceleration, the ability to split off the Nextcloud server & AI server, and MUCH more! And for those without $100K GPU’s (you know who you are), we have also incredible news: we are working with several prominent European hosting companies, including IONOS, OVHcloud and plusserver to deliver AI-as-a-Service solutions that respect your privacy and digital sovereignty! For our US users and customers, there are already several companies offering AI-as-a-Service and some we support (OpenAI in particular) while others are in the works.

Introducing Assistant 2.0

With a nearly complete overhaul of the user interface AND how our AI Assistant works on the back-end, plus a ton of new, big features, we decided that this is the moment to call this the Assistant 2.0. Let’s go over what’s new, but first a short summary of where we are today!

Nextcloud has a ton of AI features, some big and elaborate, others more basic. Some train a neural network on your data, on your own server to give you a smart inbox in Mail or warnings about unexpected logins from Suspicious Login Detection. Others rely on a pre-trained network that can recognize faces and objects in photos, generate a transcript of your video call or modify text. We can also generate images, translate text and chat messages, and much more. Many of the features are accessible through our easy to use Nextcloud Assistant interface!

Many of these features can help you, save you time, or improve your productivity. And best of all: as always we focus on making all these services available of running on your own server. Given even the US Congress doesn’t trust ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot, there are good reasons to want control over the data send to and from an AI service! Our Ethical AI Rating system provides you transparency about the AI used to generate your text, image or classify your photos:

• Is it open source? Can I study how it works and re-train or optimize the model for my needs?
• Is the model freely available? Can I run it on my own server?
• Is the training data open and available so I can inspect it for issues and re-train or optimize the model?

Learn more in our blog post about our approach to AI.

Context Chat and Context Write

And now, let’s explore what’s new: The two biggest new features are Context Write and Context Chat. These both share a lot in common, both providing AI-assisted outputs for you, but they’re also distinctly different.

Context Chat, in short, is the ability for the Assistant to answer questions about your data. You can ask the Assistant questions about a document you have: Say, you have a PDF with the manual of your new digital watch… you’ll be able to ask the Assistant how to set it up, or how to replace the battery. And if your company has a nicely documented reimbursement process in its documentation in Collectives, you can ask the Assistant questions about this process. This is an absolutely amazing ability!

It is not just limited to your files either: we developed an API so apps like Mail, Calendar, Talk and Deck can make their data available too. You’ll then be able to ask “When do I have my next meeting with my boss?” (from the Calendar) and “What tasks did she ask me to work on as high priority this week?” (from Mail). Or “Give me a summary of the status of project X.” (Deck + chat perhaps?)

Context Write, on the other hand, lets the Assistant rewrite something in a certain requested context, or style. Say, you have a nice poem and want to write another in that same particular style. By providing the original poem, then new text of what you want to say, the Assistant will then create a masterpiece. But you can also give it a form, give it your data, and ask it to provide the text you would need to fill in the form. Impressive, and useful!

Big user interface overhaul

Over the last year and a half, we have introduced a wide range of AI features in Nextcloud. Translation, transcription of audio, text and image generation, and more. Then the Nextcloud Assistant came – and we’ve now integrated most of our AI features into the Assistant itself, all available from a unified interface. It is no longer limited to text, but can also generate images and transcribe audio.

Another improvement many of you will appreciate is that you can now see a history, a list of earlier generated images, text or audio transcripts in the Assistant interface. You can even go back and generate more based on your earlier prompts. It is now also possible to cancel a running operation, if desired.

Lastly, as possible inputs to the Assistant you can paste or type text or record audio, and now… select one or more documents as input too!

Behind the scenes

We also did significant work behind the scenes. We made it possible for administrators to make use of AI models we’ve not yet explicitly integrated into Nextcloud, giving more flexibility and versatility to your choice of models to use.

Especially for larger deployments, we have made it possible to run the LLM and other AI operations like Transcription and Context Chat on a separate server, using our new external app ecosystem for one-click, Docker-based deployments. You can also now use a GPU for text generation, transcription and context chat. This means transcribing an hour-long audio file could, on a CPU, take many minutes while taking only seconds on a GPU!

More coming soon

And, of course, this is not all. We have developed an API which can be used by apps like Deck, Calendar or Mail to support Context Chat. This will allow the Assistant to answer questions about your mail, tasks or upcoming appointments! We look forward to these and other apps implementing support for this feature.

Nextcloud Hub 8 – our next version out very soon – will also feature two more app integrations of the Assistant: First, Nextcloud Talk will be able to show you summaries of conversation in Talk rooms, and Nextcloud Mail will introduce email ‘suggested answers’! If you haven’t yet registered for our Nextcloud Hub 8 Launch Event on April 24, this is the time to do so to find out more!

How to get it

So now, you ask: When can I get it? We have good news! Nearly all these features have been backported to Nextcloud Hub 7, meaning they are available in the Nextcloud app store right now. All you need to do is update. If you have not yet tried out the assistant, perhaps this is the time to do it!

To run the AI locally, it’s easiest to use LocalAI. A community container exists for our All-in-one, so users of the AIO can simply go to this page to learn more about adding extra containers and then enable the LocalAI container. Be sure to check out our documentation and ask questions in the forums – you could just start below this post!

IONOS, OVHcloud, plusserver and others bring you…

This brings us to the final piece of the puzzle: For these AI features to work smoothly, you will need some serious hardware. This unfortunately will not be a fun experience on your Raspberry Pi. But! Luckily, a number of businesses have started to provide AI-as-a-Service, running various open source models that Nextcloud supports in a way that you can connect to remotely. While this is great, unfortunately nearly all these companies are American-based, with a few in China. If you live in the USA, that is of course perfect – the data stays in your jurisdiction, and you have a choice of local providers. But for our users in Europe, this is less than ideal. The US jurisdiction unfortunately treats the data of European users with less than ideal respect for privacy, in no small part thanks to the CLOUD act signed into law by the former US president Donald Trump.

But today, we announce that we have been working closely with several major European hosting companies including IONOS, OVHcloud and plusserver to integrate their upcoming AI-as-a-Service solutions. This will make them available to Nextcloud customers and users who wish to take advantage of the advanced AI functionalities in Nextcloud Hub but don’t wish to host AI services themselves. Several Nextcloud customers have expressed interest in these features and are preparing to or in the process of testing them. Here’s what our partners and customers have to say:

OVHcloud is thrilled to collaborate with Nextcloud in delivering state-of-the-art Digital Sovereign AI solutions to our customers. We are aligned with Nextcloud’s commitment to offering secure, privacy-conscious AI functionalities that safeguard training data and adhere strictly to GDPR regulations. We are excited to announce that this integration will become available in Q2 2024, marking a significant milestone in our journey towards responsible AI innovation.

Germain Masse, AI Product Marketing Manager at OVHCloud

We are proud to offer Nextcloud customers a solution that complies with European data protection regulations. Reliable, trustworthy, and local AI services will be key to protecting their digital sovereignty for both the public and private sectors in Europe.

IONOS

plusKI brings cutting edge, open source AI technologies in a compliant and digitally sovereign service to the German market. We are excited to work with Nextcloud to make this available to their customers as back-end to the new generation of the Nextcloud Assistant.

Christian Schmitz, Director Open Source at plusserver

We at SUNET are happy that that Nextcloud Assistant is 100% Free and Open Source, runs on-premise and provides useful features that we hope will benefit our users going forward. We enjoy the very productive collaboration with Nextcloud.

Mike Nordin, Sunet, the Swedish University Computer Network

In the future, we will make AI services available to colleagues in the state administration directly at the workplace. We want to drive the development of digitally sovereign and open solutions in addition to the use of existing AI services such as ChatGPT. Because, the administration of the future will work in an automated, algorithmized, cloudified and data-based way. To make this vision of the future a reality, we must provide the appropriate tools. This also creates value and jobs in our domestic digital economy.

Minister of Digitisation and Head of the State Chancellery Dirk Schrödter, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

US technology firms have a large head start on European companies offering large language models and other AI services to smaller firms and end customers. There is a significant number of offerings either using their own models like OpenAI, or providing one or a choice of open models like Llama, Gemma or Mistral as a service. In Europe, Mistral and Aleph Alpha are still working on offering their own models while only a few large hosting providers are looking to offer various open LLM’s in an AI-as-a-service model.

At the same time, there is a growing demand from our customers and users for European AI services. Running AI locally is expensive, and AI-as-a-Service from foreign tech firms is not a solution for most Nextcloud customers in Europe, given the privacy and sovereignty risks inherent to shipping large amounts of crucial data overseas. For this reason, we have been working with a handful of providers to offer their AI services. To speed up the process, we connected them with potential customers. As you can imagine, offering a service when it is unclear who its customers might be is not easy. But several universities are interested in the ability to outsource some heavy AI operations, so there is now movement towards AI services. This means not only our users, but the wider European ecosystem will be able to benefit from this!

Public availability of the European AI services is expected in the course of spring and summer, with some even aiming for late April/early May!

Thank you!

We are super excited about this release and we’d like to thank everybody who contributed, with testing, reviewing code but also the universities who are willing to test the AI services, and of course OVHcloud, IONOS, plusserver and our other partners who’d like to provide these services!

The post Nextcloud releases Assistant 2.0 and pushes AI-as-a-Service appeared first on Nextcloud.

Nextcloud calls upon the regulators to look through this charade and not be deterred in their efforts to reign in the anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft.

Antitrust cases against Microsoft

There is a series of antitrust cases against Microsoft. The case by Slack resulted, 3 years after filing, in an investigation and is behind Microsoft making a minor concession here, following similar approaches by Apple as it tries to comply in the most minimal way with new EU regulations.

Early 2021, Nextcloud filed an antitrust complaint and, later that year, together with a coalition of some 30 NGO’s and other European tech companies, called publicly on the EU to take action. But, while it also has been well over 3 years, unfortunately there has not been any progress. It is unclear whether that is because the complaint came from a number of smaller companies, due to delay tactics by Microsoft or simply slow bureaucracy.

What it is definitely clear is that the regulators are not able to keep up with the pace at which technology moves and big tech firms abuse their power.

The post Microsoft slows antitrust case by unbundling Teams appeared first on Nextcloud.

We’re thrilled to reveal T-Systems, part of Deutsche Telekom and a prominent global IT service provider, as a sponsor of Nextcloud Enterprise Day. Join us on April 24, 2024, in Munich, Germany, for this pivotal event.

T-Systems is one of the bigger Nextcloud clients; they’re diligently working on their content migration services, which involves transforming and transporting substantial volumes of structured and unstructured data across various platforms, seamlessly integrating them into the Nextcloud Hub.

About T-Systems

T-Systems, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, is a respected name in the global ICT landscape. Operating in over 20 countries, their diverse portfolio encompasses digital solutions, cloud infrastructure, mobility solutions, and cybersecurity. T-Systems aids businesses worldwide in harnessing the power of their Nextcloud servers within secure, certified data centers. T-Systems and Nextcloud are staunch advocates of data sovereignty, firmly believing organizations should regain control over their data.

About Nextcloud Enterprise Day

Nextcloud Enterprise Day 2024 boasts a wide-ranging array of topics, covering the spectrum of enterprise applications. Our seasoned industry experts, technology partners (including T-Systems representatives), and dedicated in-house engineers will be on hand to address queries and share insightful perspectives.

The event is a great opportunity to influence the Nextcloud roadmap and gain a deeper understanding of Nextcloud Hub as the quintessential suite for self-hosted collaboration.

Join us in envisioning the future of digital collaboration and data sovereignty. Let’s meet in Munich!

The post Announcing T-Systems as a Sponsor at Nextcloud Enterprise Day 2024 appeared first on Nextcloud.

The German tabloid Bild featured an article covering the press release published by the German Ministry of Defence about the recent leaks of WebEX calls between army generals. The Bild noted that the password the Ministry of Defence used for the shared Nextcloud link was “1234”, assuming this was meant to ‘secure’ the link.

While a press release is obviously meant to be public, which is why the simple password was chosen, you might wonder why the ministry didn’t just use a completely password-less link for their Nextcloud share?

Secure sharing with Nextcloud

Nextcloud differentiates itself from public clouds like Microsoft 365, Dropbox or Google Drive with a focus on privacy and data sovereignty. Unlike public clouds, Nextcloud often runs on private cloud environments, giving the organization deploying it direct control over the data. It wouldn’t make sense for the German government (or any other) to hand over important data to foreign tech firms, which is why Nextcloud is widely deployed in the European public sector.

Protect your public links with passwords

With Nextcloud, users can share directly with other users. This makes sure no data leaves the government data center. But sometimes data must be shared outside the organization, either to a single individual or fully in public like with a press release.

Nextcloud allows users to create one, or more, public links for this purpose. A public link lets a third party who has the link view and (depending on the settings) download and edit the file. As you might share a document for editing with one person, and create another link with only viewing permissions to a second, each link can have its own protections. Including a password, expiration date and more!

The system administrator can put in additional controls, to ensure data is always protected. The File Access Control can use rules to stop files from being accessed outside Germany, for example. Or a mandatory 30 day expiration date can make sure links get cleaned up after a while. And last, but very relevant, administrators can enforce a password on each public link.

This setting is clearly enabled on the Nextcloud server used by the German Ministry of Defense, and explains why a simple password (1234) had to be chosen. Note that administrators can even enforce a certain degree of password quality, blocking such simple passwords from being chosen by users!

In other words. Mr. Pistorius does not use the password ‘1234’ to protect any data – it was meant to make it easy to access the press release.

We hope the readers at Bild appreciate out explanation!

For a more detailed exploration of our file sharing features available throughout Nextcloud, see our in-depth docs on File Sharing or our Sharing features overview.

The post Educating Bild: password-protected sharing appeared first on Nextcloud.

In order to provide a strong enterprise user experience, Nextcloud offers theming and branding capabilities for both servers and clients. The theming and branding can be distributed using our deployment options for both desktop and mobile platforms.

Integrated theming

Our integrated theming app offers a quick and user-friendly method to customize your Nextcloud server’s appearance. It allows you to configure your organization’s logo, color palette, name and key URLs, including your privacy policy and imprint.

Additionally, the Nextcloud mobile apps are designed to automatically sync with your server’s theme. This means they adopt the server’s color scheme and display your customized logo and background, ensuring a consistent and branded user experience across all platforms.

• Logo, colors, login graphics and name
• Add custom links for privacy policy, imprint and terms of service
• Default / example files every user gets on first login can be modified
• Mobile apps and web interface adjust to theme settings (except app icon on mobile)

Enterprise branding

Nextcloud Hub offers branding capabilities for through its Nextcloud Enterprise subscription. These branding options provide a more corporate experience for your users. This option features clients that are tailor-made for your organization, with pre-configured server settings. This means end-users can bypass the server selection step and directly enter their login details, streamlining their access process and enhancing overall user efficiency.

Our branded clients will showcase your organization’s identity, featuring your logo and name in the app drawer, replacing the standard Nextcloud branding. This personalized approach extends beyond aesthetics, as further customizations are available to align with your specific brand ethos.

Additionally, Nextcloud facilitates an integration into your digital ecosystem by offering the apps as APK files for Android and Xcode projects for iOS. This allows for direct publishing through your organization’s developer account, ensuring a streamlined deployment process

• Pre-configured server address for faster setup
• Removal of links to Nextcloud community, community hosting solutions and private servers
• Custom logo and name in app drawer
• Custom help page and contact email
• Optional custom Push Proxy
• Full control over release management and app store entry
• Support for MDM solutions for mobile (Premium)
• MSI deployment for desktop (Premium)

Theming versus Branding

In Nextcloud, theming and branding are distinct yet complementary features that enhance user experience and your corporate identity. While often used interchangeably, they serve unique functions.

Theming

Nextcloud Hub’s built-in theming app is the recommended approach for customizing the look and feel of your server’s interface. This app ensures compatibility with Web User Interface changes and allows for easy customizations. You can adjust visual elements like the logo, color scheme, organization’s name, and essential URLs such as privacy policies and imprints. The Web User Interface also allows tailoring the color and logos in various emails sent by Nextcloud (e.g., share information, activities, welcome emails).

Theming is all about giving a personalized touch to your Nextcloud server, aligning it visually with your organization’s aesthetic and ensuring a cohesive brand experience across all user touchpoints.

Branding

Going a step further, Nextcloud’s branding capabilities offer a deeper level of customization. Branding involves incorporating custom visual assets like logos and icons into the client interface, creating a custom help page, and implementing pre-configured settings for seamless integration within your organization. This ensures that when users access Nextcloud, they are immediately met with an interface that reflects your organization’s identity, bypassing the need to select a server and entering login credentials directly.

Branded clients replace the standard Nextcloud logo and name in the app drawer with your organization’s branding, offering a more tailored experience.

Overall, branding in Nextcloud extends beyond the visual appeal, providing an experience that feels like an integral part of your organization. It supports a wide range of platforms including Android, iOS and desktop environments like Linux, Mac and Windows.

Available as part of our Standard and Premium subscriptions, branding elevates the user experience to a level where Nextcloud Hub not only functions but also feels like an extension of your organization’s corporate style.

Deployment and device management

Nextcloud simplifies the deployment process for desktop and mobile platforms, offering robust solutions tailored to organizational needs.

For desktops, we utilize the Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI), providing branded desktop client packages that facilitate deployment across large-scale environments.

Nextcloud extends its capabilities to mobile platforms through comprehensive Mobile Device Management (MDM) support. This enables management and deployment of mobile applications.

All these deployment technologies are available through our subscription plans. This ensures that organizations of all sizes have access to the tools they need for efficient deployment and management of Nextcloud branding services.

Overview of Nextcloud branding features

Clients

Web user interface

This article has been updated and expanded to provide more information on how to migrate from ownCloud to Nextcloud.

The post Branding and theming Nextcloud Hub appeared first on Nextcloud.

Our commitment to democratic values

Nextcloud is committed to democracy, pluralism, and a humane society, actively supporting public sector stakeholders to strengthen democratic institutions. We believe that addressing the underlying issues inherent in fascist ideologies requires meaningful engagement and constructive dialogue. We champion the cause of peaceful, respectful coexistence, and oppose any form of exclusion or racism.

The significance of diversity and inclusion

At Nextcloud, diversity is not just a reality but a valued asset. Our commitment to inclusivity is in line with the values championed by the demonstrators. Our diverse team, representing over 22 countries, collaborates as a community that embodies a global perspective reinforcing our support for the demonstrations against exclusionary and undemocratic ideologies. We stand in solidarity with those opposing the AfD, sharing their dedication to protecting democracy and combating hatred.

Looking forward

We urge other major players in the tech industry to break their silence and join us in taking a clear stance against exclusionary ideologies. Such a stand is not only vital for the health of German and European economies but also for our society as a whole. Let´s stand together for a brighter tomorrow: Nextcloud calls on you – our partners, customers, and the tech community at large! Together, we can build a society that values openness, respect, and diversity. Every action, no matter its size, plays a crucial role in this journey. Let’s make a lasting difference in the world.

The post Statement: Nextcloud stands for an open and free society appeared first on Nextcloud.

Dropbox has recently ‘dropped’ a new enabled-by-default feature that has users worried about their data privacy. As almost every company in tech these days, Dropbox is latching onto the new capabilities of AI – specifically OpenAI – with a questionable approach to user privacy.

Last Wednesday, social media buzzed with apprehension over Dropbox’s new AI feature that shares data with OpenAI to perform an experimental AI-powered universal search across user data on the platform. As reported by Ars Technica and other media, the on-by-default setting led to understandable upset from many Dropbox users.

While Dropbox does offer the option to opt-out of their new feature, something that sends your data to a third party company shouldn’t be on by default without first checking with the user if they’re okay with it. At the very least, they could have enabled a pop-up dialog the first time they showed the feature, explaining the consequences and offering that opt-out in an easy way.

When we at Nextcloud introduced our AI feature set in early 2023, we recognized the challenges intrinsic to Artificial Intelligence, and from day 1 have prioritized total transparency, choice, availability to users, and the honoring of adjoining ethical implications. Nextcloud Hub features rich AI offerings with an always privacy-first approach: while many are available, our remote-AI features are optional and disabled-by-default, never exposing user data without your knowledge or consent.

For example, we released an article recently that reiterates our AI approach and explains the difference between our completely self-hosted AI options versus those implemented as integrations from external parties. We then dove into each new AI feature to illustrate their utility, the different options to enable them, and any potential AI and privacy-related implications, aided by our Ethical AI Rating system.

In Nextcloud Hub 7, we just released our advanced, Unified Search that allows you to search for any file, person and more in Nextcloud. Since the data is only indexed on your server, no data leaves your server. Nextcloud can store all your data from contacts to documents and notes, so you don’t even have a need for using or interacting with a 3^rd party service if you don’t want to.

Similarly, the Nextcloud AI Assistant uses the collective data from your server to help you enhance and speed up your work with all-local AI options. You can get language assistance in your documents, summarize your email threads and Talk chats, and more.

We just shared a tech preview of our Nextcloud AI Assistant with Context Chat, a new initiative developed together with the German state Schleswig-Holstein that enables local AI models within Nextcloud to search users’ local data across the platform. While on the surface this appear similar to Dropbox Dash – their new cross-platform search utility – the key implication and difference is in the implementation: Dropbox relies solely on sending user data to OpenAI for AI-assisted processing, while Nextcloud’s Assistant with Context Chat can rely completely on in-house, self-hosted local AI models, a real privacy [boon].

What we are illustrating here is that yes, AI can give great productivity benefits. And you can bring that to users in a responsible way. Even if you’re not willing or able to offer AI features in-house or on-premises and instead want to rely on OpenAI or other big AI companies, there is no need for sharing your users’ data to such a third party without a warning.

Thank you for reading and staying up-to-date about current data privacy news that we, like you, care deeply about. We hope you find Nextcloud solves your needs and provides you unmatched opportunities to use and work with AI securely, easily, and privately. We would also love to continue the conversation: send us your thoughts via Mastodon and X (Twitter).

The post Dropbox handing data to OpenAI: the risks of AI in practice appeared first on Nextcloud.

Hello everybody

This year is nearly over and the last months have been busy! Our community, Nextcloud and Frank have been recognized for their accomplishments by the European Software Freedom award and, just last week, the Acteurs du Libre award. Meanwhile, our team keeps growing quickly; the company is on track to grow its customer base by over 60% with more than 5 million new users getting access to Nextcloud this year!

Though this isn’t all the news! Our yearly Nextcloud Conference was a great success and we just published a podcast interview with one of its keynote speakers: privacy lawyer Max Schrems.

In other really big news, open source email giant Roundcube also joined our wonderful Nextcloud community!

Today though, we’re diving into Nextcloud Hub as our 7th Hub release is shared with the world. We’re sure you are super excited to learn about all that is new, so let’s get to it!

Thank you all for your amazing support this year!

The Nextcloud team

Connected, efficient and productive

Today, we’re introducing our most integrated platform yet – Nextcloud Hub 7. Imagine your work space interconnected, with your files seamlessly accessible in Talk, your calendars integrated in Mail and your tasks visible in your Calendar.

Nextcloud is designed as a unified platform, bridging all the functionality you need to get your tasks done. With Hub 7 we improved our Unified Search which finds chat messages, emails, calendar items, documents and even external content like support tickets or memes. You can bring up search wherever you are in Nextcloud.

Another major improvement was done around your out-of-office status. This can now be configured in your availability settings. It is applied not only in an out-of-office email, but also in Calendar (with an automatic out-of-office Calendar item) and in Talk, where others get notified that you’re not around.

Are you the backup for your colleague that is on vacation? Covering for them has never been so easy. Find all items you two share in their profile via Contacts: files, tasks, events, emails, and more.

From new integration features to AI enhancements and a completely rewritten Files app, Hub 7 delivers the solutions you need to foster efficiency, collaboration and productivity. Read on to discover how you can transform your work through Nextcloud Hub 7.

Search everywhere with Unified Search

Unified Search brings items from all core apps and even external locations at your fingertips. Now you can find every file, task, or communication related to your inquiry through a single search box with convenient filtering at your disposal — all in one window.

Unified Search is accessible through the magnifier icon on the toolbar’s top right corner. When searching for a popular item, it helps you stay in focused with adjustable date range. Filter search by people to find items belonging to selected authors.

Explore all of Hub…

Search and preview any items In Hub. Find apps and their contents, use multiple filters to narrow down or expand your search the way you need.

Where you can search

• Files
• Tags
• Emails
• Contacts
• Talk conversations and messages
• Deck boards and cards
• Collectives
• Circles
• Tables
• Notes
• Events
• Apps

…and beyond

Search in integrated locations like GitHub, GitLab, Giphy, Reddit, and more. Once a service is connected to Nextcloud Hub, a new search filter will be available in the list of possible search locations under “Apps and Settings”.

The out-of-office message that everybody catches

Embark on your next vacation – stress free. Set a out-of-office status that will pop up around Hub, letting everybody know you are away and who to contact instead. Configurable in the “Availability” section of your personal settings, your absence status will automatically be updated throughout the platform, with an auto-responder in Mail and a dedicated calendar event for your selected dates.

Add a catchy user status

Use a short, custom message to notify everybody about your absence. It will work as a status message for your account visible everywhere under your name: user search results, profile, contact list, and more. Add an emoji to give it a personal visual twist!

Get the details right

Use the long description to give more details: absence period, status of your tasks, and a colleague or the team who will be your replacement. Even share some details about your vacation if you want to! Everyone is informed when you are back and whom to contact instead while you are away.

In Mail

Your out-of-office message automatically takes over auto-responder during your holiday period.

In Talk

Auto-responder also works in Talk chat, popping up to everybody who enters a private conversation with you.

In Calendar

A calendar event is also created for your absence period with your status as a title and full text in description.

So, next time you’re about to go on vacation, wrap up your work quickly with Nextcloud’s automated out-of-office features. Just provide a simple message and Nextcloud does the rest.

AI and Nextcloud Assistant

Our AI team at Nextcloud has an ongoing focus on research and a dedication to evolving our AI offerings thoughtfully with every release of Hub. With new challenges arising in AI, from privacy to Big Tech centralization and environmental considerations, we must not let users fear technology with such a great potential. Or worse — carelessly give away their data. Like everything else works in Nextcloud, we don’t stop with a cool feature — we keep bringing more to the table.

Welcome Aleph Alpha and local Stable Diffusion

We help our users make informed choices while expanding their options to power up the AI functionality in Nextcloud. In Hub 7, the available selection of models is updated with inclusion of Aleph Alpha, a Large Language Model developed in Germany that can be used by the Nextcloud Assistant. This option fits users who wish to use a remote AI services but be confident that confident their data remains in Europe.

Now, you can also run an on-premises Stable Diffusion model by Stability AI for local image generation.

All open source AI models available in Nextcloud

• Llama-2
• Gpt4ALL-J
• Stable Diffusion
• Airoboros
• Whisper
• Dolly
• Bark
• Piper
• Falcon
• Bert
• GPT-NeoX
• MPT

Costs under control

While running organization-wide AI is costly, we now give you more control over expenses with request limits. Define number of requests users can submit in the admin settings to make budget planning more accurate.

Task notifications

Depending on available resources, you may have a powerful AI engine delivering instant results or choose to limit its capabilities to reduce costs. Depending on your setup, the processing time varies. If instead of waiting the user chooses to be notified, they will receive a push notification on their mobile, desktop, or web interface letting them know that the task is complete.

What’s coming next? Context Chat

Our collaboration with the German state of Schleswig-Holstein is starting to deliver its first results. Today, we are releasing a tech preview of a powerful feature for the Nextcloud Assistant: Context Chat. This feature allows the Nextcloud assistant to refer to your emails, files, chat messages and more to answer your questions about these items. It allows you to query your own data, to present your personal and organizational context to an AI model and have it help you gain personalized, unique insights that are completely private, never sent to a third party unless you so choose. Storing the data in a local vector database, Context Chat works with most available large language models, both those you can self-host and some remote options.

Nextcloud Photos

Live Photo support on iOS

Want to save your Live Photos on your Nextcloud? Now it’s possible to upload and save live photos from your iPhone to Nextcloud, and view them in the Photos app. To enable this feature, just go to Settings → Advanced and select the “Live Photo” option. From there, you can upload any photo as normal and a live photo will appear with a special eye icon. The Live Photos can be seen on the Photos app where you’ll see a Play button in the photo.

Introducing EXIF metadata support

The Photos app now displays where and when your pictures were taken, if that data is available in its metadata. The EXIF metadata associated with each picture also contains information about photographs like the camera settings, time and date, and location, which we can show:

• The time and date the photo was taken
• A map of where the photo was taken (using OpenStreetMap)
• Information about the camera used i.e. type of camera and other technical details

In addition, your photos will be sorted according to the date each photo was taken, not when the Nextcloud file was created. This is especially helpful when you want to find a photo and can only remember when you took it. You can find your EXIF data once you’ve opened a photo and go to the sidebar under the tab “details.”

Nextcloud Files

Nextcloud Files is the premier file sync & share solution

Let’s explore what’s new in Nextcloud Files, where your documents, videos and photos live. Nextcloud Files is a powerful document management system, making it easy to access, share and work with your documents wherever you are.

Files – now backed by Vue.js

The Nextcloud Files app has been rewritten, thereby migrating to Vue.js, a popular, modern web toolkit packed with possibilities. This brings a number of performance benefits you’ll appreciate:

• The code is more modular, requiring less javascript to be loaded. That means faster loading times. The devs saw the Files app loading about 65% faster!
• Preview loading and caching was improved and large folders also render a lot faster.
• A more accurate progress indicator with more information when uploading files, with also improved error handling
• We can more easily add integrations with other apps, again requiring less code to be loaded

A ton of small improvements all over the place was done, from little animations when you drag and drop files to tons of accessibility improvements that should help users who rely on a screen reader or keyboard control. A few examples:

• Support more actions with selections (add to favorites, restore from trashbin…)
• Better selection handling (shift + select to select range)
• Better error handling (if you have a selection and some actions fails, the failures will stay selected and the error message will tell you that some files had an error)
• New tags view
• Grid view support in all views (favorites, trash, recent etc)
• Unified design across all views
• Support remembering files settings per view (like sorting)
• Improved dark mode

Our goal was to make Files easier to maintain but keep the same user experience you know and love. So, while you won’t immediately notice a big change, we hope you’ll appreciate all the little touches!

For developers, the improved documentation should also help add things like file actions for example.

We hope you enjoy the new and improved Nextcloud Files.

Annotate your PDF!

Special in this release is PDF annotation support! Thanks to one of our amazing community members, it’s now possible to fill out a form or draw directly on a PDF right in your Nextcloud.

The next time you need to annotate a PDF, enable the freehand drawing feature or use text boxes to add information. Once it’s complete, you can save the updated PDF to your Nextcloud.

Customize your navigation bar

When you login to your Nextcloud, is your dashboard the first stop for you? Would you prefer Talk, Calendar or Files? With our new app order configuration, you can decide which app is the default when you login and when you click on the Nextcloud logo. You can also order the apps to have your most used apps to the left. Admins can also set some key apps in this order to ensure the experience is consistent across the server.

You can customize the order of your applications in the main navigation bar so you have your most used apps first.

Just click on your profile icon in the top right corner of your Nextcloud and select “Appearance and accessibility” for the navigation bar settings. You can easily move your apps with up and down arrows or drag and drop to find the perfect order for all your apps.

Comments and activity tabs in sidebar merged

One of Nextcloud’s most unique features in Files is the sidebar where you can see any activity on the document – like when and who did the last edit, any comments about the file, internal and external sharing options, and a tab for all the files versions. In the Hub 7 release, we decided to merge the “activity” and “comments” tabs so it’s easy to see both.

Nextcloud Office

Nextcloud Office brings collaboration to a whole new level, with several new features

Nextcloud Office is more than creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Our Office stack also consists off:

Tables

The impressive Microsoft SharePoint Lists or Airtables alternative

Collectives

The knowledge management space for your organization

Notes

The ideal note-taking app with simple features and markdown

Text

The editor extraordinaire integrated in Nextcloud Deck, Files, Collectives and Notes

QR code generation

One of the simplest ways to share a survey or landing page is through a QR code. QR codes can be easily scanned on the go and are hassle free for most audiences. So, next time you’re planning an event or simply need to share the wifi password in your office – you can create a QR code directly in your Nextcloud Office document. Simply go to “Insert” and click “QR and Barcode” where a pop-up window will allow you to add a link and generate a QR or barcode link, as well as add other details.

Conditional formatting in spreadsheets

Need to visualize a ton of data? Want to throw in some colors? Now in spreadsheets, you can select a single cell or range of cells of data and pair it with a color scheme to showcase your data more vibrantly and uniform. The conditional formatting feature is basically a way to adjust the style of a cell or range of cells based on its value. For example, if you have accounting data, easily visualize the ebs and flows of your expenses and profits by color. The conditional formatting feature is available through quick access menu in the menu bar with various presets to pick from.

Share your notes

We often brainstorm ideas individually and drop them in our notes for a quick fix. But what if you want to share those brilliant thoughts and ideas with a colleague or friend? You can now share of one of your notes in the media tab on the right hand side of your notes. Share with a colleague or with somebody externally through a link just like you do in Nextcloud Files. You can even work together on the note!

Besides, now you have access to activity and versions in Notes directly from the sidebar.

Improved re-connection experience

It can be frustrating when you’re working on a document and have connection issues. Sometimes you’re traveling on a train and lose connection or you take a break from your laptop with a document still open and come back to it having to re-load it. With this release, we’ve made significant improvements to providing you a better re-connection experience. This will allow you to get straight back to work without having to re-load your document with any further delay.

Accessibility improvements

We take accessibility seriously. Our goal is that everyone can enjoy the benefits of Nextcloud! For this release, we worked on much improved support for screen readers. This means more accurate reading of documents and access. Second, new keyboard shortcuts have been added that show up in yellow for easy access. Click on ALT to get hints for navigating though the menu with the keyboard.

For even more updates on new features, bug fixes and improvements, you can check out Collabora’s latest release.

New in Collectives

What’s new in the modern wiki-like knowledge base app Collectives? If you’re an avid user of Collectives, you’ll be glad to hear we’ve made some usability improvements.

Page in full width

Experience your Collectives pages in full width (like a full screen movie for effect!) to comfortably view bulky content like large tables.

Reorganize pages

Do you ever create a new page and find a better spot for it later? You can now move or copy pages to a new location, just like in Nextcloud Files. There’s super simple up and down arrows to reorder your pages just to where you like them.

Recent pages in Dashboard

In your Dashboard, you can add a new widget: Recent Collectives pages. Hop right back to a page you or others were working on in a flash.

Improved rendering of images and other files

• Improved image appearance and quality
• Improved preview and layout for printing

Nextcloud Groupware

Nextcloud Groupware consists of Mail, Calendar and Contacts

Teamwork in Hub is as efficient as ever with the new Groupware features. Those include both platform-wide improvements and app-specific ones.

New in Contacts: Automatic “Busy” status and shared items

User profiles in contacts now display the items that you share with the contact — owned both by them and by you. Those include files, Calendar events, Talk rooms, and Deck cards. Quickly jump to any item by simply clicking on it.

User status also gets more automation and visibility. From now on, it is visible in the Contacts menu right away instead of the email. Statuses automatically change to “Busy” when a busy calendar event starts. If you have an absence period configured for a certain period of time, your status symbol and text will align with the out-of-office message you added.

Even more powerful Mail

Search in message body

Enable search in the body of Priority inbox emails to find everything you need in your communication history, even if it’s not mentioned in the title. Open Mail settings and tick the corresponding box on the very top to set up the feature. Quick search will include email body results as well as the title results.

This feature is not enabled by default as it sends the search request to your email server – and some can unfortunately be quite slow to respond.

Sorting by date

Need to sort your emails from oldest to newest for quicker access to older correspondence? With the new sorting setting, you can switch between two sorting modes to fine-tune your search results. Find the switch in the Mail settings on the top left of the Mail app interface.

Improved tag management

Edit tag colors to visually categorize emails by your personal preference. Feel safe from accidental clicks: if you attempt to delete a tag, you will see a pop-up letting you know that it will disappear across the whole mailbox.

Smart picker and emoji picker

Create rich emails without leaving the message editor. Now you can use the Smart Picker feature and add emojis to your mails, just like you do in Text. To summon Smart Picker, just type “/” and choose from available options to insert: Talk rooms, Deck cards, Calendar events, GIFs, Files, Collectives pages, and much more. Start typing “:” to add an emoji — add an option from recent emojis or continue typing the full emoji name to find the one you need.

Smarter and brighter Deck

Card images, Completed status, and keyboard shortcuts: working with tasks in Deck becomes muck more intuitive and informative. Besides, we polished the card design to make them more compact and less distractive.

Card cover images

Deck boards have just become richer with cover images! An image will be picked automatically from the first image attached to the card. If there are no images, add one and it will be used as a cover without any need to put it in the description text. Enable cover images in Deck’s display settings on the top right.

“Completed” status

You can also now mark cards as “Completed” to let yourself and others know that the work is done. When there’s a due date set for the card, it will keep you stress-free and your task planning transparent. You can then add the completed cards to archive if you wish to keep your board clean.

Keyboard shortcuts

In Deck, we also introduced keyboard shortcuts to helping you perform quick actions with cards and boards. To use a shortcut for a card, hover your mouse over it. To use board shortcuts, you only need the board page to be active.

Nextcloud Talk

Nextcloud Talk is the best chat and video communication tool that keeps your data yours!

Talk meetings and chats became much more alive and capable. We added many popular features based on user requests: from recording consent and ability to call phone numbers, to screen sharing speaker picture-in-picture and file captions.

Get personal with speaker video feed

Personal connection is always there during the stream with a speaker picture-in-picture present on the screen even when screen sharing. Once your video is on, participants will be able to see you while you are showing your screen or running a slide show.

Recording consent

Nextcloud Talk: Recording consent

Recording consent for a meeting is a nice gesture to your guests’ privacy, but often it is also necessary to comply with your and their company regulations. Now you can request recording consent for your meetings, streams and online events to help everyone feel safe and secure.

Configure it in the conversation settings to apply the rule for all meetings in the current room. Participants will not be able to join the call unless they grant their consent via the pop-up window whether the call is currently being recorded or not. An administrator can export a list of people that consented with the recording from the command line.

Upon starting a call, you can enable the recording right away.

Invite to calls via phone number

Now you can let everybody participate in Talk calls even without a camera, browser or even internet connection. Call one or multiple phone numbers right from the Talk room using Telephone dial-out.

This adds to the existing dial-in feature, where people can dial a specific phone number to join a Talk room.

You remain in full control to save money and keep your meeting organized. You can add users to the room using their mobile numbers, hang up or mute them during the call. The feature can be restricted to selected user groups to keep the costs under control.

The telephone dial-out and dial-in features requires an enterprise SIP setup.

Guest names in meetings

Avoid awkwardness and the struggle to find call participants with custom guest names during large calls and webinars. Talk now asks external users to give a name before joining so everybody in the room knows who is who.

Link to call in notifications

When a meeting including you starts in Talk, you will get a direct call link in the Notifications, so you can join immediately without navigating rooms and buttons. Stress-free communication is what we designed Talk for!

Animated reactions

Animated reactions in video calls adds a little magic to your meetings. React with an emoji from the toolbar and see what happens!

Note to self

The new “Note to self” chat in Talk is your personal safe space in Talk. Use it as a diary or a place to store links and assets, or forward important messages from colleagues to quickly find them later. What’s more, you can add bots, change the avatar and pick a new name, just like in any other Talk room.

File captions

Sharing files in chats is more convenient with file captions. When uploading media, you can write a message describing what it is or what tasks are associated with it. It works the same with text messages — add a file while writing and it will be attached to the message.

New integrations

Nextcloud Hub is a powerful application platform, closely integrating with tons of third party applications and tools. Take a look at what’s new!

Aleph Alpha

• Use this German alternative to OpenAI with Nextcloud Assistant
• Get results with this multi modal large language model (LLM)

Install the app

Memegen

• Easily generate the perfect memes for your chats, emails and documents
• Fill in custom text captions using the Smart Picker functionality

Install the app

New app ecosystem – examples provided!

In our last release, we introduced our new app ecosystem and all the new possibilities to create apps in any programming language of your choice. To take it a step further, in this release we’re providing some example apps to help anyone get started.

Besides everything currently supported in the Open Collaboration Services API, like accessing and sharing files for example, you can now also implement these 3 features in your new app:

Note: we are working on more capabilities and you can suggest more on GitHub.

How to get Hub 7

Get Nextcloud Hub 7

Download and install Nextcloud Hub 7 here!

Get Hub 7

You can download the latest Nextcloud Hub 7 from our install page right now! There you can find a zip file or the all-in-one image for fresh installation.

Over the coming weeks we will make it available to our home users via updater using the usual staged roll-out. If you can’t wait you can switch to the beta channel temporarily. Don’t forget to switch back to stable after you updated to Hub 7!

Note: Your Nextcloud caches the results coming from our updater server, so it can take some time for the new version to show up and you likely have to refresh the page, wait a bit and do that again.

AIO users

For new Nextcloud All-in-One (AIO) users, you can install Hub 7 directly by checking the box “Install Nextcloud 28”

For existing AIO users, we have a guide for you! Follow along to set it up today!

The Nextcloud Enterprise version of Hub 7 will become available in about 4 weeks, once the additional testing and certification are complete.

Thank you to our community!

Nextcloud would not be the same without our dedicated, encouraging community. A huge thank you to the thousands of community members for making this release the best it can be and continuing to show your talents and passion for Nextcloud.

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