Category: Integration

How to Manage Bibliographic Data With Zotero and Collabora Online

Marc Rodrigues Leave a comment

 

Collabora Online & Zotero

Zotero is an open-source reference management software allowing users to manage bibliographic data and related research materials. It allows users to share bibliography libraries and notes, choosing from different citation styles. Collabora Online can now browse all the existing records of one’s Zotero library, enabling users to insert, remove, and refresh references, citations, and notes or to automatically generate bibliographies. This makes Collabora Online an excellent solution for research and academia alike, as well as an ideal option when working with Zotero research assistant.

 

Setting-up Zotero for Collabora Online

Setting up Zotero for Collabora Online in Nextcloud

At the time of writing, the Zotero integration is available to Nextcloud users with installed Richdocuments (v7.1.0 and up). All that is required to use this feature is Collabora Online, Nextcloud with Nextcloud Office app (richdocuments) installed and a valid Zotero API Key. Zotero users can create or edit their API keys at zotero.org/settings/keys and then simply copy it into the respective field inside the office settings (Administration Settings > Office) of their Nextcloud instance. All private properties related to the user remain private at all times, while public properties remain accessible to other users and are handled separately.

Inserting Citation and Choosing Citation Style

Choosing the citation style before inserting a first citation with Zotero in Collabora Online

Place the cursor on the position in your Writer document where you would like to highlight a citation. In the “Reference” menu or tab – depending on which user interface you are using – choose “Add Citation”. If this is the first time a citation is added to the document, a style prompt will show up, allowing you to choose from numerous citations styles – for example, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA Style, ISO-690, APA Style, Oxford Style Guide and many more. Setting the citation style needs only be done once, the chosen citation style will be stored inside the document. The work to be cited can be chosen from a pop-up dialog including your personal and shared libraries on Zotero. Large libraries can be filtered using the search bar.

Adding Citation from the Zotero library in Collabora Online (Tabbed UI)
Choosing a work to cite from the Zotero library in Collabora Online
Select footnotes or endnotes in the preferred style

 

Refreshing Citations and Style

Refreshing citations from the Zotero library in Collabora Online

It’s a common workflow for authors to add a series of incomplete records to their library as a first step, and then adding additional metadata. Another common request is to be able to change the citation style for a document. This is important when submitting works for different publications, but also if for instance a citation style gets updated to a newer edition. Collabora Online allows these updates to be made easily.

Pressing the button “Refresh Citations” (or selecting the respective item inside the menu of the Compact View UI) fetches the updates from your Zotero library. A message at the button of the document keeps the user informed about the progress of this process. Updating the Citation Style is also straightforward. The option “Citation Preference” opens the above-mentioned Citation Style dialog, allowing users to switch styles for the whole document at any time.

 

Creating a Bibliography and Inserting Notes

Adding an auto-generated bibliography inside Collabora Online

The Zotero integration allows users to make a clear distinction between notes and citations in Collabora Online. Inserting a note works similar to inserting a citation. Choosing this option from the UI will open the dialog and grant access to the notes of the user’s Zotero library. Notes are quite flexible items that can include HTML, formatting and emojis.

A bibliography of the works cited in the document can be generated automatically with a simple click. It appears at the position where the cursor is located. Collabora generates only the pure bibliography without additional text or placeholders, so the heading can be added according to your preferences (index, glossary, bibliography).

 

Try it in Collabora Online or CODE

The Zotero integration has been introduced to Collabora Online with the release of Collabora Online 22.05.10 in February 2023. You can test the feature in our free demo. Tech enthusiasts may also like to test it inside an installation of CODE, the free Collabora Online Development Edition, intended for home users and Developers who would like to help to test the latest features first. Find all the instructions here.

 

 

Collabora Online Powers Diagrams in ownCloud 10.9

Marc Rodrigues Leave a comment

New Frontend and Diagrams in ownCloud 10.9

The latest version of ownCloud Server brings various performance improvements, including significantly speeding up how ownCloud clients examine the contents of user accounts. This is especially beneficial for those users with a lot of files and large directory structures. The update has also introduced a new frontend. The “richdocuments” extension of Collabora Online supports both the old and new frontend and integrates flawlessly into either of them. At the same time, a new document type has been introduced. The ownCloud Server can now open and edit Diagrams.

Using Diagrams with ownCloud & Collabora Online

The use of the new Diagram file type is very straightforward. Below we are describing how to create a Diagram from scratch inside the new and the old interface and how to edit exiting Diagrams through the ownCloud server web interface.

Accessing documents with Collabora Online from ownCloud’s new frontend

Create or Open a Diagram in the Old Frontend

To create a new diagram inside the old web frontend, simply click the plus icon within the folder navigation above the file list. In addition to the familiar document types (word processing, spreadsheet & presentation), you will now also notice an orange Diagram option. Select this to open an empty diagram document. Diagrams are displayed in a light orange icon and include the extension .odg in their file name. Existing Diagrams will be opened through a click on the file.

Create or Open a Diagram in the New Frontend

The handling within the new frontend is very similar. The new web interface includes an updated new button over the file listing. Click it and choose the new Diagram option to start a Diagram from scratch inside the current folder. Diagrams are also displayed in a light orange icon and include the extension .odg in their file name. Existing Diagrams will be opened through a click on the file or through a context menu that opens with a right-click.

A Diagram opened in Collabora Online 21.11

Edit Diagrams with Collabora Online and ownCloud

Diagrams can also be created outside ownCloud and Collabora Online using Collabora Office Draw or LibreOffice Draw. Diagrams offer a variety of options to edit documents with (vectorized) graphics, shapes, text, FontArt and the smart connector tool that has been introduced in Collabora Online 6.4.8. Furthermore, it is of course possible to work with tables and charts. Diagrams is suitable for creating print products such as flyers or posters, but also organigrams, flow charts or technical drawings. Working within the Diagrams module is very intuitive as it is similar to the approach of creating a presentation in Impress. Further information on the range of functions can be found in the Draw online help.

Discover Collabora Online and ownCloud

Collabora and ownCloud are proud to offer a combined commercial solution including Collabora Online. Based on the LibreOffice technology core, we continue to develop this functionality in response to the evolving needs of our customers. Find out more and request your free demo.

 

 

About ownCloud

ownCloud develops and provides open-source software for content collaboration, allowing teams to easily share and work on files seamlessly regardless of device or location. Hundreds of millions of users worldwide already use ownCloud as an alternative to public clouds – and thereby opt for more digital sovereignty, security and data protection. Find more information online at owncloud.com or follow @ownCloud on Twitter.

About Collabora Online

Collabora Online 21.11 is our latest enterprise-quality release. It’s suitable for large-scale deployment, and comes with SLA, enterprise support with signed security updates as well as interaction with product management, helping to direct our development priorities. Collabora Online integrates flawlessly into Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, and many of the major file sync & share, groupware and hosting solutions. It’s ideal for organisations that want to collaborate on documents, without losing control over them or compromising on privacy. With the ability to host it on your own hardware or to integrate it into a trusted environment, Collabora Online is the ideal online office suite for digital sovereignty. Enterprises interested in using Collabora Online can check out our home page for more information on partner integrations and online demos. Hosting and Cloud businesses that wish to add Collabora Online to their product portfolio can become a partner. For any questions or tailored solutions, do not hesitate to contact hello@collaboraoffice.com. Keep up to date on all latest developments by following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Mastodon.

HiDrive Office by Collabora Online

Marc Rodrigues Leave a comment

Collabora Online Available Through STRATO HiDrive Office

Working in partnership with Collabora Productivity, STRATO has launched its collaborative office documents solution – HiDrive Office. Based on Collabora Online, HiDrive Office provides business customers with a powerful office document solution that delivers a complete range of collaborative functionality. HiDrive Office supports productivity whilst protecting data security, and it represents a real alternative to organisations looking for an office document solution that is ideally suited to today’s distributed working environment.

STRATO HiDrive supports all major document formats and offers a large range of professional features in a familiar, tried and tested environment.

Commenting on the partnership with STRATO and the launch of HiDrive Office, Michael Meeks, General Manager of Collabora Productivity, said:

Our partnership with STRATO means their business customers can now benefit from the secure office collaboration functionality offered by Collabora Online, which is increasingly being used by organisations keen to support the productivity of their staff, many of whom now work at home.

Collabora Online is available by default for HiDrive Business customers without additional cost. Users of the HiDrive consumer tariffs can order Collabora Online as a paid add-on.

Supported Document Formats

Clients using HiDrive Office by Collabora Online can now edit text documents, presentations and spreadsheets both in Microsoft’s OOXML format and in the Open Document Format and benefit from Collabora’s excellent interoperability. Every of these documents can be opened and edited together with team members inside the browser. Additionally, also 2D vector drawings and illustrations saved in the ODG format can be opened and edited online in Collabora Online’s Draw module. Collabora Online provides HiDrive users with a secure and feature-rich office solution in the Cloud that includes real-time collaboration, spellchecking, versioning, conditional formatting, charts, pivot tables, pdf and epub export, a vast support for different image formats and all the features you would expect from a professional office suite on the desktop.

Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, 2D Vector Graphic Editor – The Four Components of Collabora Online

Word processing in HiDrive Office by Collabora Online
Spreadsheets in HiDrive Office by Collabora Online
Presentations in HiDrive Office by Collabora Online
Graphic editor in HiDrive Office by Collabora Online

Opening and Editing Documents in HiDrive

The different document types stored in HiDrive can be distinguished by their individual icons. Apart from the file endings – visible in list view – the different document types are easily distinguished by their individual icons:

  • Text document (doc, docx, odt): Icon displaying a blue “A”
  • Spreadsheets (xls, xlsx, ods): Icon displaying an orange bar chart
  • Presentations (ppt, pptx, odp): Icon displaying a green pie chart
  • 2D vector drawings (.odg): Icon displaying a yellow sun
Document icons in HiDrive’s cloud storage web interface

To view or edit these document types in Collabora Online just click on the stored file. This will take you to an intermediate screen allowing you to choose from opening or downloading the respective file. Inside this screen, it is also possible to browse through the files, delete them or access additional information. Alternatively, it is possible to open files directly by opening a dialog with a right-click.

Right-clicking a document file in HiDrive opens a dialog allowing to open the document directly in Collabora Online, or copying or renaming it.
Clicking on a document opens an interface allowing to download a document, see more information or edit it in Collabora Online.

How to get HiDrive Office by Collabora Online

The HiDrive Business Cloud by STRATO is available in different tiers ranging from 1 to 10 TB of storage. Some of the offerings are designed for the efficient teamwork of small teams, while others aim towards the storage of video, project data or back-ups. All of STRATO’s servers are located in Germany in datacentres that are ISO 27001 certified by German TÜV-Nord. Furthermore, STRATO’s service is certified as “trusted cloud” by German TÜV-Saarland. For testing purposes, STRATO offers its Starter tier free of charge for one month and reduced pricing on yearly subscriptions.

 

Try HiDrive Office by Collabora Online

 

STRATO

STRATO is a reliable web host for everyone who wants to be successful online. STRATO makes web hosting fair and simple – at the best price and without unnecessary bells and whistles. The product range extends from domain, mail, website and server to online marketing tools and Germany’s largest cloud storage HiDrive. The complete packages include flexible contract terms, a 30-day money-back guarantee and six-time award-winning customer service.

Collabora Online Partners Shine at Open Source Experience Paris 2021

Cor Nouws Leave a comment

The Open source Experience 2021 in Paris was wonderful. Of course we met a large number of people, but various of Collabora Online partners too! We love to tell you about them.

If you did not visit last week’s open source experience event in Paris, you should do so next year. It was great! And if you did, there is a good change that you saw various active Collabora Online partners! We love to show the good work of no less then five of them, who help their customers and end users in a number of different ways.

First, let us begin by giving credit where it is deserved.

Arawa team

Arawa won the award for best open source innovation strategy in Paris! They deserve it for helping many medium and large size organizations as well as public administrations with moving and consolidating on open source.

Learn more about Arawa

We were also very exited to see friends from Jeci and their nice booth. They are working hard on the next version of their Alfresco-Collabora Online integration.

Learn more about Jeci

Individuals that want a pure and solid hosted Collabora Online, canfind a good one at Workteks, showing their latest service news within Paris.

Learn more about Worteks

Of a complete different magnitude, is the cooperation, project management and teams software offered by Algoo. Their lovely Tracim nicely integrates with Collabora Online.

Learn more about Tracim

Last but not least: we were really pleased to have been invited by Nextcloud to share a booth at the Open Source Experience in Paris. We shared an attractive booth with them, answering all your questions, exhibiting demos, and handing out some t-shirt, stickers & more.

The good people over at Nextcloud are working hard on finishing their next major release, including some wonderful office news 😉

Thanks everyone! We’re really glad that so many have found the way to your secure, privacy respecting software.

Grateful for the rich and diverse partners and support for our work

We are happy to have met many of you & others at the Paris event. Further we feel greatly honoured that our software helps so many businesses in doing great things for their customers and end users alike!

 

If you are looking for a partner, do check our partner page.

If you want to benefit from partnering with Collabora and from all the possibilities of Collabora Online,
do contact our sales team!