Are you worried or tired of office suites and traditional online tools? You may not know it, but it's not complicated to install a cloud and an office suite in the cloud on your own server. Here's how to do it, in ten minutes flat.
You are employed in a company, and you have been on the telework plan for a month. Between two conf calls in pajamas under the gaze of your cat delighted with the situation, you write documents and fill in spreadsheets in the cloud of your box to make them available to your colleagues. Finally, when you say "the cloud in your box", it is of course a way of speaking.
Because the days when your company's most sensitive documents were kept warm in locked cabinets and on desktops are over. All roadmaps, project graphics, accounting records are now stored on the servers of a probably Californian giant - Microsoft, Amazon or Google, to quote the three biggest players in the sector.
The welcome interface of OnlyOffice.
The welcome interface of OnlyOffice , the solution we will use to set up an office suite in the Cloud.
The expression is now well known : " the cloud does not exist, it is only someone else's computer ". But it is possible in 2020 that this computer will be yours. In other words, data hosted in a space that you control, while taking advantage of the versatility of the cloud.
HOW TO INSTALL A CLOUD...
A dark night has fallen. You walk out of your house and sneak in the direction of the offices of your company, melting in the shadows. The distances melt as if by magic thanks to your superhero energy. Once at the foot of the building, you hook a back door with a hairpin, then enter the interior.
Like a ghost armed with the flashlight of your smartphone, you pass through this familiar open space and you go to the computer room. In the tangle of cables, you find a beautiful unused server. You wake up the beast, flashing and crackling, which luckily runs on Ubuntu Server . Another Linux operating system for servers, like OpenSUSE or Fedora, could have done the trick.
You take a glance at your smartphone, open the installation page of onlyoffice . This Latvia-based startup offers an online office suite to host yourself, on its own servers, with all the tools a business needs. In addition to the software-as-a-service offers with subscription, OnlyOffice exists in free and open source version under GNU license.
It is this OnlyOffice Community Edition that you are going to set up. It is not very complicated to install, you just need a computer, a server and the night as an ally.
You open a terminal in the server and type the command " wget https://download.onlyoffice.com/install/opensource-install.sh " to download the installation file. It only takes thirty seconds.
Downloading the installation file.
Normally, OnlyOffice comes with a " Mail Server " associated with a DNS domain name. In other words: it is possible to associate the OnlyOffice services installed on the server with a Web address that employees only have to type to access the office suite or the CRM tool, for example.
For the purposes of your small demonstration, this is not necessary. So you skip this step and install directly: " bash opensource-install.sh -ims false ".
When the terminal asks whether to install with Docker, you must answer "Y" for "yes".
The lines that appear during installation.
After typing "Y" to say yes to the few routine questions asked by the terminal, lines in alphanumeric characters scroll across the screen. Then some five minutes later, the phrase " Thank you for installing ONLYOFFICE " appears . It's already over, the server is already configured on its side. Who says Linux is complex?
You let the server run (that's the principle!) And note its IP address, a series of numbers like "123.xxx.xx.xx" which will allow you to go to the server from any Web browser. You take your laptop out of your bag, connect it to Wi-Fi, and type that IP address in the address bar. OnlyOffice appears.
Last configuration step.
A panel launches for a final small step of software configuration: you must indicate your language and time zone, choose a password and enter your email address. This will create your administrator account on the server.
Once these last steps have been completed, OnlyOffice is ready to use. A 5 year old child brought up by a librist could have done it for you.
... AND RUN AN ONLINE BUSINESS
As an administrator, you can create user profiles and invite other people by sending them an email. They can then go to the server address and identify themselves in OnlyOffice using the password they have defined. The software alone brings together just about all of the tools that an SME, or even a larger business, may need.
Starting with the essential triad of text editor, spreadsheet and slides that takes the well proven codes of a Microsoft Office while allowing collaboration. It should also be noted that the office suite of OnlyOffice is capable of reading, modifying and saving in the majority of the types of document formats of the moment: docx, xlsx, odt, csv, pdf, etc.
The spreadsheet...
Documents can easily be stored in folders, associated with projects, or shared with other users. Admittedly, it is much more elegant than the online solutions currently used.
... Word processing...
Among the tools more specific to the business world, we find everything necessary for the project manager, with Gantt charts and reports generated automatically. Ditto for customer relations, contact management, sales tracking and invoices. It is intuitive to use, even for a neophyte who would work for example in an association.
... And the slides.
Communication side, no need for Slack: instant messaging based on Jabber is integrated, as is an email client (for which Mail Server must have been installed). The software provides enough to post internal blog posts, events, and conduct surveys. A calendar function allows you to summarize everything.
The interface where you can view and store your documents.
The free Community Edition version allows you to discover all of the software's functions and supports up to 20 simultaneous connections. OnlyOffice also comes in three Enterprise Edition offers by subscription, with technical support included, backup service, and up to 200 simultaneous connections. A number that can be extended beyond 200 depending on the demands and needs of your business.
Your superheroic night getaway is over. All you have to do is wait for the day to break and convince your hierarchy to officially adopt OnlyOffice.
