Kolab and Collabora target streamlined Kolab filecloud connection at Kolab Summit

The Kolab Summit in The Hague on May 2-3 sets the stage for intensified collaboration between Kolab Systems AG and Collabora Productivity.

The Kolab collaboration suite is a community driven, fully featured groupware solution. Born free, it has been the first choice of security oriented professionals for years, and seen adoption by companies and governments around the world, making it a leading corporate light in the field of Free Software and Open Standards.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora is the professionally supported, enterprise-hardened edition of the world’s most popular Open Source office suite. These two open source products are a natural fit, bringing communication and document editing together.

Users of LibreOffice-from-Collabora can already read and write Kolab-hosted documents directly via the Open Standard WebDAV protocol. To further improve the user experience and ease of configuration of LibreOffice products, engineers from the two companies will be working on an automated Kolab filecloud setup process at the Kolab Summit in a dedicated development room. Collabora is also an official Bronze sponsor of the event.

“This will not only bring an improved document workflow to users of both Kolab and LibreOffice-from-Collabora, but also serves as the first step towards future integration work involving these two leading Free software products,” noted Aaron Seigo, a senior technologist with Kolab Systems.

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.
About Kolab Systems
Kolab Systems AG is an Open Source Independent Software Vendor (ISV) developing, maintaining, supporting and providing a wide range of services around the Kolab Groupware Solution. Fully committed to Open Source / Free Software and Open Standards, it is the global competency leader and custodian for a process open to community participation. The results of that process reach our customers as a quality assured solution that brings all the benefits true Open Source. Part of a company group that excels in security and cross platform solutions, Kolab Systems is prepared to provide you with the level of mission critical data integrity you deserve.

Good news for Windows Server Administrators: Group Policy template for LibreOffice available

Today we’ve published a new configuration template for Windows Server administrators, making configuration of LibreOffice copies on Windows a snap. By leveraging the flexible configuration back-end built into LibreOffice, thousands of computers can be configured to run LibreOffice in a particular way at once. Any of 25,000 LibreOffice settings can be controlled in this way using Windows Registry keys. Knowing which key does what is a lot less obvious however, which is where the new template comes in.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora Product Development Manager Andras Timar had collected and documented the most important LibreOffice settings into a Group Policy ADMX template file. This can be easily installed into Windows Server to expose those settings in plain English, including language, security, and file format options.

Help make deploying LibreOffice on Windows easier: share your template translations and improvements with libreoffice@collabora.com.

LibreOffice settings management

Internally, LibreOffice-from-Collabora stores its configuration data in XML files, which are organized in hierarchical layers. Each layer can store configuration data for any of 25,000 available settings. Layers stored lower in the stack overrule those above them. In this way the hierarchy shares the model used by the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) style sheet language.

Different configuration layers may have different access rights. It’s possible to lock a setting in a lower layer, so that it can’t be modified by higher layers. This allows administrators to use low-layer settings to overrule high-layer settings desired by users and groups.

The very lowest layer is the application’s own configuration layer, which is pre-defined in its install set. The very highest layer is the user’s layer, where individual user profile settings are stored. Between these two layers many othes may exist, including a layer for software extension configuration.

How Windows Registry keys are used

Group Policy helps to control the work environment of users and computers in Windows’ Active Directory. LibreOffice-from-Collabora features a configuration reader back-end, which can load settings from the Windows registry, and apply those settings to its own configuration when it starts.

Registry key translation and use

LibreOffice-from-Collabora policies are stored in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\LibreOffice. This registry tree corresponds to the structure of XML in the application’s own configuration files. The last element of each Key is its prop. The first part is the path and optionally the nodes (when the node has oor:op attribute).

The following values may be set: Value (string) and Final (dword, optional). Final means that the setting is locked, and cannot be modified by higher layers. In practice this means that the user cannot modify the setting from their LibreOffice-from-Collabora user interface.

Here is a setting from the Windows registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\LibreOffice\org.openoffice.UserProfile\Data\o]
"Value"="Example Corp."
"Final"=dword:00000001

And the same setting applied to LibreOffice-from-Collabora’s XML configuration file:

<!-- set the Company name -->
<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.UserProfile/Data">
    <prop oor:name="o" oor:finalized="true">
        <value>Example Corp.</value>
    </prop>
</item>

Another Windows registry setting:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Policies\LibreOffice\org.openoffice.Office.OptionsDialog\OptionsDialogGroups\ProductName/#fuse\Pages\Java/#fuse\Hide]
"Value"="true"

And the same setting applied to the application’s own XML configuration file:

<!-- Hide Tools - Options - LibreOffice - Advanced panel -->
<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.OptionsDialog/OptionsDialogGroups">
    <node oor:name="ProductName" oor:op="fuse">
        <node oor:name="Pages">
            <node oor:name="Java" oor:op="fuse">
                <prop oor:name="Hide">
                    <value>true</value>
                </prop>
            </node>
        </node>
    </node>
</item>

Creditable work

The Windows registry-reading backend which supports these templates was developed by order of the Hungarian E-Governmental Free Software Competence Centre in LibreOffice 4.2. Thanks to those engineers for adding this important feature.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora launches in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps

Collabora Productivity today launched a new edition of its enterprise office suite, LibreOffice-from-Collabora, for Amazon WorkSpaces users, available in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps. LibreOffice-from-Collabora brings support for more than 100 document formats, including Microsoft Office files, to virtual desktops on a range of operating systems and devices via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) edition. Maintenance and patch updates are included, while international code fix support is available from Collabora’s engineers, with competitive pricing for enterprises.

“We are pleased to welcome Collabora’s solutions to AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps,” said Dave McCann, Vice President, AWS Marketplace, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By making their software available in AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, Collabora’s users can take advantage of a streamlined selection and procurement process for high-performance desktop apps.”

The release furthers the expansion of LibreOffice-based products to new platforms, following Collabora’s LibreOffice Viewer for Android, published in January, and RollApp’s web-browser-based LibreOffice applications launched early last year.

“The global footprint of Amazon WorkSpaces virtual desktops in the AWS Cloud along with AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps expands LibreOffice’s reach to an important, rapidly growing market,” said Michael Meeks, Vice President of Collabra Productivity. “Today’s launch means there are few customers LibreOffice cannot reach — whatever the platform, budget, or file-format, LibreOffice provides a competitive solution.”

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity delivers LibreOffice products and consulting. With the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice code base and community. LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides a business-hardened office suite with long term multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora Ltd., the global software consultancy specializing in providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in automotive, semiconductors, digital TV and consumer electronics industries.

New translations of ODF toolkit infographic

For Document Freedom Day on March 25th we worked with Open Forum Europe and Open Source Consortium to produce a new toolkit for Government technology leaders. Now the first translations are in: German and Danish editions of the toolkit’s infographic are available, thanks to Svitlana Pavelko and Leif Lodahl.

ODF Toolkit infographic in English
ODF infographic in English
ODF Toolkit infographic in German
…in German
ODF Toolkit infographic in Danish
…and in Danish

The toolkit aims to help Government technology leaders speed adoption of Open Document Format (ODF), the required standard for sharing Government documents since last July. It includes the newly translated infographic, as well a folder with principles and benefits of ODF, and a comparison of supporting office suites and document file extensions.

We’re delighted to have been given the opportunity to contribute to the project, and the Plugfest which inspired it, and look forward to more resources being added in future.

Comparison table of ODF 1.2 support in applications
Comparison of ODF 1.2 support in applications

As work on LibreOffice for Android and LibreOffice Online progresses, we can expect two more ODF editors to add to the list of options.