Use diagrams with smart connectors and enjoy easy slide duplication in your collaborative Collabora Online 6.4.8

The latest version of the Collabora Online 6.4.8 adds more possibilities to drawing online, working with comments and presentations, and also includes various other improvements.

 

Drawing shapes and connectors

Draw, with shapes and basic connectors, introduced in the previous version, now has been improved. With Collabora Online 6.4.8 you can connect shapes with a variety of connectors, at multiple glue points on the shapes. The connectors are found at the Home tab.

 

Collabora Online 6.4.8: New glue points making it easy to connect images and shapes

More features and improvements

There’s much more in this new version, including work done by developers during the latest Collabora Hackweek! Mentioning..:

  • Comment popups are now allowing to paste text
  • Newly added comments will by highlighted by default
  • Working in presentations, copying slides can now be done with Ctrl+drag and drop
  • Table handles in Writer have been improved
  • The NotebookBar loads much faster

 

 

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud, providing Collabora Online and a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specializing in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow Collabora Office on Twitter .

CODE 6.4.8 brings more drawing features and fixes

The latest version of the Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) 6.4.8 adds more possibilities to drawing online, and also includes various performance and other improvements.

 

Drawing shapes and connectors

Draw, with shapes and basic connectors, introduced in the previous version, now has been improved. With CODE 6.4.8 you can connect shapes with a variety of connectors, at multiple glue points on the shapes. The connectors are found at the Home tab.

 

CODE 6.4.8: Improved Glue points making it easier to connect to images or shapes

More features and improvements

There’s much more in this new version, also work done by developers in the recent Collabora Hackweek! Mentioning..: comment popups are now allowing to paste text and newly added comments will by highlighted by default. Working in presentations, copying slides can now be done with Ctrl+drag and drop. The table handles in Writer have been improved, the NotebookBar is loading much faster, and various other performance wins.

 

Please check out the latest features – and give your feedback

CODE gives you the latest and greatest features in online collaboration earlier than our supported version Collabora Online. Of course, we would love to hear about your experiences. Please leave your feedback on CODE in the community forum or report any possible issues on GitHub.

 

About CODE

CODE is the Collabora Online Development Edition. It contains the latest developments and is perfect for home users. It enables them to regain control of their own online documents and to host them themselves in a secure and private environment. For tech-enthusiasts, it is a low-threshold way to get involved and familiar with our online office solution. CODE will be improved continuously and our next supported and maintained Collabora Online product will be built from it. All of our code is Open Source, and a vibrant community in participating in growing Collabora Online. Would you like to be part of the story? Join the community!

 

Get CODE 6.4

 

ARM64 an officially supported platform for CODE

We now officially announce the availability of CODE for the ARM64 platform. Users can now benefit from the availability of the latest developments in document collaboration with a feature rich open-source application, offering great support for all major file formats. The availability for the ARM64 platform is possible thanks to the work for the recently announced Collabora Online for the Raspberry Pi.

The ARM64 version can be used with docker or the Nextcloud snap. Find the docker source here.

We also offer CODE packages, of course less convenient to use, and available for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS only. And of course there’s the releases and information on GitHub.

About CODE

CODE is the Collabora Online Development Edition. It contains the latest developments and is perfect for home users. It enables them to regain control of their own online documents and to host them themselves in a secure and private environment. For tech-enthusiasts, it is a low-threshold way to get involved and familiar with our online office solution. CODE will be improved continuously and our next supported and maintained Collabora Online product will be built from it. All of our code is Open Source, and a vibrant community in participating in growing Collabora Online. Would you like to be part of the story? Join the community!

 

Get CODE 6.4

 

Major new features with macros and Draw in Collabora Online update

Collabora Online 6.4.7 brings the users major new functionality with macros, drawings and important UI improvements

The new release of Collabora Online – version 6.4.7 – brings major improvements and great new features. A completely new application, Draw, has been enabled online allowing you to work with vector graphics. Inside documents (if enabled by the administrator), it is possible to run macros from the newly introduced macro selector. With our VBA compatibility that’s particularly useful for spreadsheet formulae. This version also includes many UI improvements, for instance a clear and beautiful Style preview in the NotebookBar. We do regular micro-updates of each release and constantly improve the new features, so do keep an eye on the coming updates.

 

Draw has arrived in Online

You can now edit your .odg files online. Draw online allows working with flowcharts, technical drawings and brochures.

People familiar with Draw from the desktop, will recognize the tools for creating or editing flowcharts, technical drawings, posters, photo galleries or brochures. If you don’t know Draw yet: have a play with a vector graphic drawing online!

CollaboraOnline 6.4.7 brings new elements such as the Connector Toolbox and the Vertical Textbox hosted in the ‘Home’ and ‘Insert’ tabs. Other drawing features such as Basic Shapes, Fontwork, Lines, Images, Charts and Tables were already available in Online. Currently, Draw Online is the only component allowing you to create the connectors, though re-using them in Writer, Calc and Impress is possible.

Accessing a .odg file from your file storage solution will automatically take you to Draw online. Given the shared code between Draw and Impress, you will discover similarities in the structure of the two user interfaces.

The Connector Toolbox is available from the Home tab in Draw online

Enabling VBA compatible macros for online

Collabora Online 6.4.7 introduces the possibility to use macros in your favourite online collaboration suite. These macros run on the server inside a secure container that is specific to your document, and we are confident in our containment. However, giving you control of the attack surface is important, so this functionality is hard disabled by default, and has to be explicitly enabled by admins in the loolwsd.xml configuration. Once enabled, users can choose to explicitly allow macros in the documents they are loading.

Macros extend the functionality of the office suite by accessing the programmable interface of Collabora Office. They can be useful when you have to repeat the same task in the same way over and over again.

Select & run macros from the Macro Selector in Collabora Online 6.4.7

On the NotebookBar, users find the macros command in the “burger” menu in the top-left corner, following the path Tools > Run Macros. On the classic toolbar, the same Macro Selector dialog can be accessed via the Tools menu.

Running macros in the online documents has several limitations, most of them are due to the nature of editing the documents online. For example, the macros cannot access additional documents (other than the document edited by the user running the macro), use the Shell command, call external programs, and similar functionality. In addition, the VBA APIs were never designed with collaboration in-mind, so their use is ideally limited to cases where a single user is editing a document.

All details of macros, settings, limitations, are published in this How-to post.

Run macros while editing on a mobile device (click to see animation)
Run Macro from the new NotebookBar
Run Macro from the classic toolbar
Select & Run Macro from the Macro Selector dialog

 

Style previews in NotebookBar and even more UI improvement

This version of Collabora Online adds several improvements to the appearance and usability of the user interface. In the NotebookBar the scrolling of the style preview has been improved, making it easier to recognize and pick the style you need.

The new Style preview makes it easy to recognize & pick the style you need

It is no longer necessary to click on navigation arrows, and you can navigate through the styles using the scrollbar or the mouse wheel. Various UI improvements, including a new top bar comment icon (Thank you to Umut Bayramoğlu, easy hack #202), have been developed by community members.

 

Canvas rework and UI improvements on mobile devices

Previous versions of Collabora Online have started to use the HTML5 canvas for rendering of spreadsheets on the desktop browser. This version takes this to the next level. The HTML5 canvas is now used for all the applications (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw) on all the form factors (desktop, tablet, mobile).

To achieve that, large parts of Collabora Online have been completely reworked. This solved a number of corner cases in the user interface with some browser settings, and removed a large amount of legacy code re-writing it into cleaner, more maintainable TypeScript where possible. Furthermore, it also let us enable the Freeze Rows & Columns functionality on phones and tablets, while also making the rendering faster.

Comment handling on mobile phones has also experienced a major usability improvement. These are not part of the document any more; instead, users can see a list of comments with just a single tap on the icon in the toolbar and handle them much more conveniently (thanks Rashesh Padia for all the help here).

Freeze Panes functionality on a tablet displaying the NotebookBar

 

Customize your Shapes

Shapes have become more flexible. It is now possible to customize them according to your needs.

By moving the control adjustment points you can now easily round corners, modify the diameter of arrows… or bring a smile to a sad face.

Customize your shapes using the adjustment points

 

Export Spreadsheets as CSV

It is now possible to export your spreadsheets directly to CSV, making it more convenient to work with the CSV text file format. The new export option is available through the File tab both in the new NotebookBar and the classic toolbar. Thank you to Rizal Muttaqin for the icon design (easy hack #1020).

 

Toolbar look and feel selection per-user

In previous versions, we allowed administrators to choose whether they had a classic (menu + toolbars) UI, familiar from Google Docs, or a Notebookbar UI, familiar to Microsoft Office users.

With this version, applications that embed Collabora Online can give users the choice of which toolbar mode they want. If you are interested in implementing this option in your integration, please check how to use UIMode in the Theming of Collabora Online section of our SDK.

Integrations can go even further, and allow the users to live-change the UI by passing the Action_ChangeUIMode postmessage from their webapp to the Collabora Online iframe. Thank you to Gabriel Masei of 1&1 for this implementation.

 

 

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud, providing Collabora Online and a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specializing in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow Collabora Office on Twitter .

Canonical, Nextcloud and Collabora deliver work-from-home solution to Raspberry Pi and enterprise ARM users


The Internet, March 25 – Canonical, Collabora and Nextcloud announce the immediate availability of a content collaboration platform for 64bit ARM for both consumers and enterprises. Building on the prior Nextcloud Ubuntu Appliance and with Collabora Online, it adds the first viable self-hosted web office solution on the popular Raspberry Pi 4 platform.

The Raspberry Pi series has transformed tech, bringing down the cost of anything from IoT devices to small home servers. Ubuntu has been leading the space offering easy to install and zero-management snap software packages, lowering barrier to entry further. Interest in Nextcloud on the Raspberry Pi has been evident from hundreds of online tutorials appearing over the years, as well as enthusiasm around an earlier collaboration between Canonical, Nextcloud and Western Digital on a solution for the platform. With the introduction of the Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance, easy deployment of the Nextcloud Hub became available for x86 devices like Intel NUC’s as well as ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi, but the latter lacked support for a viable online office document editor. Today, the lack of a viable office solution is resolved with the availability of the widely used, open source, web office document editor Collabora Online.

This enables tens of thousands of Raspberry Pi users to turn their Pi 4 into a self-hosted content collaboration and document editing solution in minutes. With the growing availability of 64bit ARM devices in the enterprise server space, larger organizations are also set to benefit from the availability of this platform. Obviously, we encourage users and organizations to act responsible with regard to data protection by using e.g. proper networks, encryption and backups.

Installation Tutorial

Before you start, note the following system requirements for the installation:

  • 3.0 flash drive (2GB minimum)
  • A Raspberry Pi 4, preferably with 2 or 4 GB RAM
  • A Mini HDMI to HDMI cable
  • A monitor with VGA or HDMI interface
  • A VGA or HDMI cable
  • A USB keyboard and mouse
  • A network connection with Internet access
  • An Ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktop image

Find a full tutorial on the Ubuntu website for installing the Nextcloud Ubuntu Appliance image on a Raspberry Pi. Read how to quickly set up step by step and stay fully productive by having video calls in Talk, sharing documents with Files, editing it with others using Collabora Online, reading your emails or planning meetings and many more! Make sure you don’t miss the details in the announcements by Ubuntu and Nextcloud!
Mind that you may also install the Appliance one a RPI 3 however, that for running the Collabora Online office solution, that hardware is really not ideal.

Easy built-in installation

The Ubuntu Nextcloud Appliance comes with the Collabora Online built-in server.This makes getting started really easy. This installation is perfect for personal use or use with small teams. If you are looking for a larger deployment, contact us for details about a full, scalable installation:

Screenshot of a Nextcloud installation: Install and select CODE-Built-in-server
Install and select CODE-Built-in-server

Great feature richness

The really easy installation comes with a great feature richness, full WYSIWYG functionality and a modern and flexible user interface! Collabora Online is built using LibreOffice technology and therefore the document support and features are similar to what that desktop suite offers. To mention a few:

  • Powerful spreadsheets, also offering possibilities as validation, pivot tables, password protection
  • Working with images with close to no limitations
  • Text files with track changes, page formatting, charts, styles
  • Vector drawings, with shapes, 3D, flow charts
  • Presentations including master pages, charts, transitions and animations
Tip: keep an eye on our new releases for more new features.

Working with images in Collabora Online, knows few limitations. Position, on the page, resize, rotate, proper wrapping and more. It all works nicely, and you can visualize your documents as you edit.

Tremendous options to work with images

Find more examples in the earlier announcement for the Intel NUC, for example on sharing and collaborating.

 

About Canonical

Canonical is the publisher of Ubuntu, the OS for most public cloud workloads as well as the emerging categories of smart gateways, self-driving cars and advanced robots. Canonical provides enterprise security, support and services to commercial users of Ubuntu. Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.

About Nextcloud

Nextcloud Hub is the industry-leading, fully open source, on-premises team productivity platform, combining the easy user interface of consumer-grade cloud solutions with the security and compliance measures enterprises need. Nextcloud Hub brings together universal access to data through mobile, desktop and web interfaces with next-generation, on-premise secure communication and collaboration features like real-time document editing, chat and video calls, putting them under direct control of IT and integrated with existing infrastructure.
Nextcloud’s easy and quick deployment, open, modular architecture and emphasis on security and advanced federation capabilities enable modern enterprises to leverage their existing file storage assets within and across the borders of their organization. For more information, visit nextcloud.com or follow @Nextclouders on Twitter.

About Collabora

Collabora Productivity created Collabora Online and is therefore the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud. Collabora provides a range of products as well as consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, Collabora is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term support. Collabora’s multi-platform policy is completed with Collabora Office for iOS and Android. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specializing in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.