Nextcloud

See our Nextcloud page for virtual server hosting packages; our Nextcloud servers are built and configured using the Ansible Playbooks on git.coop.

The Nextcloud discourse support forum has lot of additional advice.

We also have a Nextcloud command line page for help on use of the CLI.

First Steps

When Nextcloud is installed an admin account is created, we suggest that this account is only used for administration purposes and not for file sharing etc.

So the first thing you need to with your new Nextcloud server is create additional user accounts, we suggest one per person and that you start by adding a user account for yourself.

Add user groups and accounts

To do this you need to login:

The access the admin menu using the top right hand corner A icon (A being the first letter of admin, this can be updated to an image by uploading a logo via the profile settings) in order to add other user accounts:

Before you add users you probably want to create groups for the users, you can do this using the Add Group link at the top left of the screen:

Click Add Group and a form appears:

Type the new group name into the form field and click the tick to create the group:

Then you can use the Add User form fields to add a user and select their group(s) at the same time:

You can also optionally make users admins for groups:

Then you need to let your users know that accounts have been created for them. Let them know their passwords and usernames and the URL of your Nextcloud server, and then ask them to login and setup their profile. The most important field they need to fill in is their email address. It would also be good practice for them to change their passwords at this point.

Before you do this you should probably do it for yourself; logout of the admin account and login using the new account you have created.

Login and update your profile

To login to a Nextcloud server when you have your username and password, first go to the URL of the server and login:

Then to access the user profile click the user icon at the top right hand corner of the screen:

Then enter your details:

Desktop and mobile clients

Once you have a Nextcloud account and you have set your profiles details, the next thing to do is to install a client. To do this visit the Nextcloud install page, https://nextcloud.com/install/ and select Desktop Clients or Mobile Clients depending on your type of device.

Collabora Online

Generally it is best to install a Nextcloud app and mount the filesystem, and use local office applications, for example LibreOffice Free Office Suite or an alternative.

However at times, if multiple people need to edit a document at the same time, or if you need access to update documents using only a web browser, then this is where Collabora Online is useful. It allows you to open and edit word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations from with a web browser.

To use Collabora Online you first need to login to your Nextcloud server:

And then select the files icon at the top left:

Then select a directory (folder) by clicking on its name:

Then click on a file name to open it in Collabora Online:

And then you can edit and save your document:

Nextcloud Talk

Advice on the use of Nextcloud Talk to be posted here soon.

JavaScript XMPP Chat

If your Nextcloud has the optional XMPP (Jabber) Prosody server installed and the JavaScript XMPP Chat plugin enabled then you can use the chat facility both within the Nextcloud web interface and with other XMPP clients. We would suggest that you will have a better experience with other clients as they have more features.

By default we setup the Prosody XMPP server with two chatroom domains, conference.nextcloud.example.org.uk; (this is for private chatrooms that are only available to people with accounts on nextcloud.example.org.uk), and public.nextcloud.example.org.uk; (chatrooms on this domain are open to people with XMPP accounts on other servers).

Examples of XMPP clients:

Conversations

Conversations, conversations.im is an XMPP client available for Android from the Play store, Amazon, F-Droid and GitHub.

Gajim

Gajim, gajim.org is an XMPP client which available for multiple Linux distros and Windows. If you are running Linux you might simply use the version that is packaged by your distro.

Swift

Swift is an XMPP client and is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Troubleshooting

Some common issues:

Login Problems

Sometimes the login screen appears to get stuck, nothing appears to happen:

This can usually be solved by reloading the page and trying again.

Collabora Online default language

When you edit document using Collabora Online the language for the spellchecker defaults to German. You can change this via Tools > Language > For all Text > English (UK):

When we get an answer for how to change the default language to en_GB we will add this guidance.