As far back in 2019 NC announced with big fanfare that VDR functionality was coming. However, there is no substantial techncal information to be found anywhere, and attempts to contact NC sales support for some guidance has only returned automated answers of absolutely no value.
Is the VDR functionality for real? Is it an app/extension/plugin? How is it installed/configured/setup?
If anyone can shed a light on this I am all ears, as I have been tasked with setting up a VDR for one of my clients.
Appreciate the suggestion, but a VDR is something very specific, with unique features for security, auditing, watermarking, document signing using certificates, and more. The Workspace app does not meet these requirements.
It may appear that NC can meet the above, if you combine a number of other apps, but I had hoped that a more complete had been implemented, particularly because NC GmBH themselves announced it.
(only small portion of text - rest available only for Enterprise subscription customers only - maybe ask Nextcloud representatives for access / copy of it?)
I then followed the links to “Get more information” or “See Enterprise pricing” but ultimately you always end up in a generic “Get a quote” form. 3 times I have entered my contact information and described my need in different ways, and 3 times I have gotten a generic “we dont care about customers with less than 100 people”. This is such a turn off.
At this point I turned to the forum, and at least there is someone who responds here, thank you!
@just this does make sense, and how we are already using NC in other contexts. However this does not comprise a full-fledged VDR.
the chairman of the BoD wants real industry-standard VDR functionality, which is also like “how long time do clients spend on reading a document before they sign”, “who have read it and when”, “have they signed it”, etc.
When you are negotiating multi-million deals in the pharma industry, absolute secrecy, confidentiality and accountability are #1 requirements. And you don’t have to be a 100+ employee company to do so
While it would be possible to figure out some of the features mentioned in list in blog post and website (for example watermarked read-only viewing of documents, with “who and when accessed them” recorded in flow app), the complexity of installing and settings of all necesery apps (and tweaking for particular case) would be error prone for someone without previous experience with this and without guidance. It is really unfortunate, that Nextcloud company has not established processes to be effective enough to be able to server smaller companies too (i.e. their processes are so expensive for them, that for smaller companies they cannot gain enough money from these business cases to finance necessary amount of their work).
The last chance would be to talk directly (don’t know, from whom you get previous three negative answers) someone from Acount Management and Sales Enginering teams - https://nextcloud.com/team/ for access at least to mentioned configuration guide (this wouldn’t make any expenses to them) to “Do it yourself”.
Nextcloud is relatively small company - even so it cannot serve other small companies. Are there on market other companies (smaller or bigger), who are able to server small companies in this regard?
p-bo, I respectfully disagree. Why is any documentation behind a paywall in the first place? Seems to me Nextcloud are alienating potential customers by asking them to subscribe to a vague service of dubious value and quality, e.g. the VDR configuration page actually says, “this article is a work in progress”!
Nextcloud should be encouraging hundreds of small installations, with less than 100 users, to drive adoption.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you @smchugh . It is AGPL with Nextcloud. I think it is simply wrong of Nextcloud GmbH to market features that are largely programmed by volunteers and available in every Nextcloud version in a way that practically forces customers to use Nextcloud Enterprise.
I do not want to be misunderstood. Nextcloud Enterprise is certainly a good solution for many companies. But I do think that free software should be free, and the associated documentation should be free as well.
I think that if Nextcloud GmbH can market free software from many volunteer programmers, then Nextcloud GmbH should also make the corresponding documentation available to the general public in return.
Yes. But parts of the software were programmed by free programmers. If the programmers release their software, perhaps Nextcloud GmbH should also release the documentation, which is probably far less extensive. Or does Nextcloud GmbH only do this to earn money? Is Nextcloud GmbH afraid that it will sign fewer contracts? For users who do not use Enterprise Support, these free components may be useless. I don’t know if i would program on these components as a freelance programmer.
As far as I understand it, VDR is a concept, which has to be implemented with a combination of existing Nextcloud features and additional apps. And as it happens to be with concepts like that, there often is no one-click-fits-them-all solution, because the details of the implementation are highly dependent on the individual requirements of the company that uses it.
Well why don’t you start building something, and share it with the community? I mean technically it’s all there.
However, I think with this topic also legal and industry-specific requirements come into play, which probably could fill a whole book by them self. That beeing said, I don’t think there are many cases. where a regular admin of a small SME can or should implement something like this, without external consulting.
But yes, they could probably do more to push the addoption of this specifc feature set, However there will probably never be a one-click app or extensive documentation that covers every aspect of it.
