Author: Richard Brock

Empowering Education with Collabora Online: A Case Study

Richard Brock Leave a comment

During the global pandemic, the Friedrich-List-Gemeinschaftsschule in Mössingen, Germany, seamlessly embraced the challenge of transitioning to online learning. Throughout this process, privacy, reliability, and accessibility were held up, with an open-source strategy leveraging Collabora Online as a vital component of their educational toolkit.

“It simply works. And it is reliable. That is crucial for us. In combination with Nextcloud, it works wonderfully and is very performant.”
– David Binder, teacher and IT officer

Embracing Open Source for Education

The Friedrich-List-Gemeinschaftsschule has long been an advocate for open-source solutions, fostering an environment where students are prepared not only for academic challenges but also for the demands of a rapidly evolving digital world. With a robust IT infrastructure based on free software, including Linux clients and LibreOffice, the school was well-positioned to address the sudden shift to online education triggered by the global pandemic.

Reliability and Security as Key Factors

What sets Collabora Online apart for the Friedrich-List-Gemeinschaftsschule is its reliability and security. With approximately 70 teachers and 600 students actively using the platform, Collabora Online has seamlessly become part of the school’s everyday workflow. The software’s integration into the existing infrastructure, coupled with its commitment to data and document security, has provided the school with a reliable and privacy-conscious solution for online collaboration.

Collabora Online for Educational Empowerment

In an educational landscape where flexibility, reliability, and privacy are paramount, Collabora Online stands out as a tool that empowers both educators and students. Its usage at Friedrich-List-Gemeinschaftsschule showcases the adaptability of Collabora Online in addressing the unique challenges of modern education. As institutions continue to navigate the complexities of online learning, Collabora Online proves to be a reliable and secure solution, contributing to the evolution of education in the digital age.

Download the Full White Paper

Explore the full details of how Collabora Online enhances secure collaboration within educational institutions. Dive into the full white paper to uncover the benefits and insights.

 

Case Study

“Open Source helps students learn from home during lockdown”

Why the German Staatendokumentation (State Documentation) Chooses Collabora Online

Richard Brock 1 Comment

Discover how the Bundesamt für Fremdenwesen und Asyl (Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum) leverages Collabora Online, a secure and GDPR-compliant cloud office solution, to streamline operations and protect sensitive data.

“Collabora Online is the solution for uncomplicated use of documents in a public authority environment, which fits seamlessly into the existing environment and can be flexibly extended with required extras, such as the Duden Korrektor.”
– Thomas Schrott, Head of Dept for BFA Staatendokumentation

The State Documentation Challenge

The State Documentation team handles a vast amount of sensitive information, making data security and privacy paramount. With governments dealing with an increasing volume of data daily, it is crucial to maintain effective control over the processing of personal data to protect against unauthorized access, theft, and breaches, while also adhering to data protection laws such as GDPR.

Privacy, Security, Compliance

Collabora Online, hosted locally and GDPR compliant, emerges as the ultimate SaaS cloud-based solution. This choice not only ensures control over data location but also guarantees adherence to the stringent data protection laws governing government institutions.

Integration with Nextcloud: Collabora Online seamlessly integrates with Nextcloud, providing a collaborative environment that ensures data privacy and security. This is particularly vital for international exchanges where privacy concerns are heightened.

Open Source Advantage: By leveraging open-source software, BFA retains full control over sensitive data within the EU. This choice aligns with the growing trend among government institutions to opt for open solutions, reducing dependency on proprietary platforms.

The Duden Korrektor Integration

One of the distinctive features of the BFA’s implementation is the integration of Duden Korrektor. This widely used software tool aids in correcting written German and ensures consistency in spelling across all documents produced by the department. Especially with technical terms or names, Duden Korrektor helps standardize company-wide terms. The implementation of the Duden Korrektor into Collabora Online has been co-financed by the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF).

Download the Full White Paper

Explore the full details of how Collabora Online enhances secure collaboration within government institutions. Dive into the full white paper to uncover the benefits and insights.

 

Case Study

“Collabora Productivity Ltd provides Duden Korrektor functionality for BFA Staatendokumentation”

How SURF keeps 66,000 users productive in Dutch universities

Richard Brock Leave a comment

 

SURF, the collaborative ICT organization for Dutch education and research institutions, plays a vital role in supporting 14 universities, 36 universities of applied sciences, and 70 research institutions by managing their IT infrastructure. To address the need for secure data exchange within this academic ecosystem, SURF deployed SURFdrive, an ownCloud-based file-sharing platform. However, they also required an online office productivity suite to enable real-time collaborative editing of documents, tables, and presentations.

In response to stringent data security requirements, SURF sought a solution that could be self-hosted, ensuring efficient and secure data exchange while allowing simultaneous real-time collaboration. ownCloud met their file-sharing needs, but they still needed an office productivity suite. Collabora Online emerged as the ideal solution, seamlessly integrating with ownCloud to enable users to access, create, and edit office documents collaboratively. Multiple authorized users could work on the same documents simultaneously, eliminating version conflicts.

 

Find out how the combination of ownCloud and Collabora Online has been highly successful for SurfNet, allowing SURFdrive to connect 59 institutions and serving 66,000 users in the Dutch academic landscape.

Download the Full White Paper

Explore the full details of how Collabora Online is helping in The Netherlands. Dive into the full white paper to uncover the benefits and insights.

 

Case Study

“Together with ownCloud and Collabora Online, we have created an IT infrastructure that meets [and] can keep up with the large enterprises in terms of performance and usability”

Collabora Office 23.05.6 Introduces STYLEREF and Advanced Header/Footer Functionality

Richard Brock Leave a comment

Our latest and greatest version of Collabora Office is now ready for your document editing needs. Bringing ever-increasing interoperability with Microsoft Office, further advanced options for floating frames, headers and footers, STYLEREF fields and more, your favourite open-source document editor just got better!

Support of STYLEREF fields in Writer

STYLEREF fields allow users to automatically insert the content of a heading or style into another part of the document. This feature is used to create dynamic headers or footers that automatically update based on changes in the document.

For example, if you have a document with multiple headings, you can use STYLEREF to insert the text of a specific heading into the header or footer. If the content of that heading changes, the STYLEREF field will automatically update to reflect the new content.

Improved support of floating frames in Writer

Part of the openDesk project, this new feature – first brought in for the 23.05 release – has now been thoroughly work-hardened after much testing and fixing of any issues that arose. Being crash tested against more than 800,000 files, there are currently no known crashes related to this feature. 36 community bug reports have been resolved, and the Insert Frame dialog now includes the option to ‘allow frame to split across pages’, as well as being able to turn a floating table into an inline one using a new menu item.

Insert Frame dialog now includes the option at the bottom to ‘Allow frame to split across pages’
Turn a floating table into an inline one, using a new menu item
Behaviour of floating tables in Collabora Office now fully mirrors that in Microsoft Word

 

First page header and footer

Useful to those of us who use frequently use or create legal documents, booklets, leaflets, and more, Collabora Office now supports separate first page, left page, and right page header and footer content under one page style.

Header and footer content for first, left and right pages can be independently edited

23.05.6 now imports and supports many additional pages styles, for example only first page headers and footers enabled, or only left and right enabled. Whilst much of this functionality has existed in Collabora Office for some time, this latest update, as part of the openDesk project, serves to close one of the remaining divergences between Collabora and Microsoft Office

Additional changes

  • All fixes from upstream LibreOffice 7.5.9
  • Conditional formatting rule priority in Calc now matches Excel
  • Improved fontwork text placement (tdf#148000)
  • Support writing SVG images into OOXML using the MS OOXML extension (tdf#126084)
  • Crash fixes
  • Performance fixes

For more information about previous releases, see the full release notes page.

Collabora Office 23.05 Release Notes

About Collabora Productivity

Collabora Productivity is a leading provider of innovative software solutions, catering to the needs of individuals and businesses worldwide. With a focus on usability, performance, and security, Collabora Office and Online empower users to accomplish their goals efficiently and effectively.

Collabora Office is the latest enterprise release of our desktop office suite based on LibreOffice Technology, for professional, mobile, and online use. Collabora Office 23.05 provides businesses and professionals with the best features, interoperability, LTS and L3 support. Collabora is privileged to work with so many great contributors to the LibreOffice project and appreciates all the outstanding work done by so many that is included into Collabora Office 23.05. Our annual release, contains code that was contributed to LibreOffice 7.4, 7.5 and 7.6. For a deep dive on all details and credits, please do take a look at the release notes.

It’s easy to migrate to Collabora Office or try Collabora Office for yourself! Just head to the Collabora Office page and request your demo today, or download on the Windows or Mac App store.

If you would like to help test out the very latest Collabora Office versions before official release, you can download the development snapshots.

Try the Demo

 

Get on the Windows Store  Get on the Mac App Store

Empowering National Defence: The Strongest Solution with Collabora Online

Richard Brock Leave a comment
In our exploration of how Collabora Online empowers various sectors, we’ve already uncovered its pivotal role in government initiatives and educational institutions. Now, let’s delve into how Collabora Online extends its capabilities to strengthen the digital sovereignty of military and national defence infrastructure. Just as we seamlessly integrate with the workflows of governments and elevate the educational experience, Collabora Online stands ready to meet the unique demands of military applications. From on-premise hosting anywhere in the world to robust data security and interoperability, Collabora Online emerges as a steadfast ally in the strategic landscape of military and national defence operations.

 

1. Host Anywhere in the World

Collabora Online offers unmatched flexibility in deployment. Whether in a remote desert outpost, a naval vessel, or a submarine with no possibility of a reliable connection to a traditional cloud, Collabora Online proves to be the best and only secure solution. This capability is vital for military operations that demand collaborative access to documents, with real-time editing, but without dependency on any third party infrastructure system. Sensitive data can be securely shared, whilst always staying within secure boundaries with Collabora Online.

Furthermore, with our new Collabora Online Controller, deployment and management in a Kubernetes cluster in a container on the battlefield is now easier than ever.

2. Data Security and Privacy

Perhaps an obvious point, but seemingly overlooked in many cases. Governments are rightfully concerned about data security and privacy, especially in military and defence applications. In this arena, Collabora Online stands out as the only solution with real-time collaborative editing and the highest levels of security (find out more here). Its on-premise hosting capability ensures that sensitive information remains within the control of national defence authorities, removing dependence on third-party services with potential security or jurisdictional concerns.

3. Open Source Code for Unmatched Adaptability

The open-source nature of Collabora Online empowers military applications with unparalleled adaptability. Its interoperability with other systems, both proprietary and open source, enables seamless collaboration and data exchange. Additionally, our out-of-the-box source code escrow means your software is continually maintained, whilst the ability to customize and modify the source code ensures that Collabora Online aligns precisely with the unique needs and requirements of military and national defence institutions.

4. Cost-Efficiency in Defence Operations

It is no secret that cost-efficiency is a top priority for governments, which has a direct effect on military and defence spending. Collabora Online offers a cost-effective solution without compromising on quality. By reducing licensing costs associated with proprietary software, governments can allocate resources more efficiently without losing access to a powerful and fully-featured office suite for document creation, editing, and collaboration.

 

As we continue to empower organisations in their journey toward digital sovereignty, Collabora Online stands as the reliable partner for military and national defence applications, offering control, adaptability, and security in an ever-evolving landscape.

Keep your data secure with Collabora Online.

Try the Online Demo

Collabora Online – Safe, Powerful, Flexible.