Hey guys, as an organisation we are moving away from the Google Suite and looking at implementing NextCloud.
One of the drawbacks with googleDrive is that there is no metadata on the files. So this makes it really hard to search for files with specific metadata in mind, you are stuck with searching for filename and maybe the contents of the file.
This has led us to create a bespoke excel spreadsheet where for each file in GDrive, we store upto 20 columns of metadata. Then we can search using this metadata. You can image this is a nightmare to manage!
This functionality is a standard in a document management system, such as openKM which I’m currently evaluating. I figured why not just build this capability within nextCloud as I’m not the only person that is requesting this.
Here you can see a post about someone else wanting the same thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/twkjhn/does_nextcloud_have_custom_metadata_fields/
This plugins already exists however it does not allow you to set the metadata using APIs or the UI: Custom Properties - Apps - App Store - Nextcloud
Our requirements:
We need to build a plugin for NextCloud which would allow setting metadata on files and then being able to search files using metadata.
- Allow defining the metadata in some type of XML or JSON file
- Allow a user to select a metadata category for each file e.g. Legal Contracts, Invoices etc.
- Allow use to fill out this metadata on the file
- Allow search using metadata
If you are interested in this work, please get in touch with me. Happy to answer any questions, have detailed discussions etc.
