Nextcloud 22 introduces knowledge management

Originally published at: https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-22-introduces-knowledge-management/

The nature of work has changed, many organizations are adjusting to a more flexible mode of collaboration. One element in this is making information available where it is needed. When colleagues work different days, different hours or in a different location, it becomes harder to ask something in-person and having workflows and procedures documented is much more important.

To help with this, Nextcloud 22 introduces Collectives, an app that enables users to share a set of handbooks with each other. Collectives is closely tied with the newly integrated custom group feature in Nextcloud 22, Circles, and builds on Nextcloud Text.

 


We created a nice screen cast to show you Collectives in action!

With Collectives, organizations can reduce the ‘bus factor’ by sharing knowledge in a way that fits a modern, paperless office and support asynchronous collaboration!

Collectives features

Collectives presents an easy user interface. On the left, it shows you the different collections of documents – each shared with a circle. Once you selected a collection, you find a list of the pages on the left. You can easily create new pages, and pages can have sub-pages to structure the knowledge.

Collectives app screenshot

Within a page, you can link to other pages to connect information. Collectives uses the Nextcloud Text editor, so it supports collaborative editing and author colors by default.

Different versions of documents can be seen and recovered in the right sidebar, accessed by the hamburger menu on the top right of the document. All the data is fully portable because it is saved in Files! This means you can access and edit your pages from any device using the Nextcloud mobile apps and desktop client. And if you are looking for something from a handbook, you can simply use the unified search in Nextcloud and see the results from your documentation!

Collectives app screenshot

Access to a collection of documents is managed with Circles, which is now nicely integrated into Contacts.

Conclusion

The Collectives app makes knowledge management in modern organizations a breeze! The integration in Nextcloud puts knowledge available to everyone in a moments’ notice, providing easy search, sharing and portable access. The paperless office runs on Nextcloud, and Collectives is a key component of this.

The Collectives app is developed by Azul and Jonas and supported by Prototype fund and Nextcloud.

5 Likes

Why is it not available as separate app?

How do you mean that? It is a seperate app. But it integrates with the custom group feature and Circles, which are both part of the base system now. I also think it makes sense using the Markdown engine of Nextcloud Text, beacuse it is already there. Otherwise, each app would have to bring its own Markdown/text engine, which would bloat the system and make the user experience inconsistent.

I didn’t found it in the app store.

Markdown is deep integrated and should be added by default, true. Have extensions for mermaid md add-ons would be awesome.

1 Like

I think it is this app: Collectives

There are also versions for Nextcloud 20 and Nextcloud 21 ??!!!???

3 Likes

Yes, the app in question is the Collectives app.

For now we maintain two versions, one for Nextcloud 20+21 and one for Nextcloud 22. The only difference between those two is the way how they interact with the Circles app internally. From a user perspective, both versions should be same.

1 Like

why why there is no multiple file sharing ! like in onedrive google photos. seems you are doing product for programmer. product manager. but not for simple user

Hahaha and mimimi,
“my wish is valid for all users and most important!” :wink: SCNR

Please see issues at GitHub and add your input there.

this app is supported by the “prototype fund”.
i saw that you make kind of break between the prototype fund iterations.

can you already say what will happend when the prototype fund is over
or you do not get another iteration?

what will then happen with the development of this app?

thanks a lot! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Could that be used to modify PicoCMS? May could be a nice tool to manage data for internals, and have a Public Part for the website.

I’d love to try it out without setting up a dedicated instance or upgrading one of my production instances yet. Does someone know when it’s going to be available through the demo instance at the Nextcloud homepage? https://try.nextcloud.com/

Hey @M4x,

I don’t know the plans for try.nextcloud.com, but if you have Nextcloud 20 or 21 instances available, you can try out Collectives there. The app is available for Nextcloud > 20 and from a user perspective it’s almost similar to the version for Nextcloud 22. See https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/collectives/releases?platform=21#21 for a full changelog of the 20+21 version.

I wasn’t aware of that, thank you! I’ll have a look :slight_smile: Maybe this is an Zim alternative to combine it with Nextcloud. And if it’s not, it may be an alternative for the “text document tutorials” we’re using at our local hackerspace to document stuff.