With interest in Collabora Online growing fast, more and more people want an easy way to play with the software before setting it up themselves at-home, on-premise or from a hosting partner. We expect some of hosting partners to use this too as an easy way to show-case their locally hosted server solutions.
We are always looking into ways to make setup easier, and we are now happy to announce the availability of demo servers from Nextcloud’s Collabora Online (richdocuments) App! We are grateful to work side by side with Nextcloud to deliver this to their users, and will be working with our other partners to integrate similar functionality in due course.
Users can now easily checkout the latest builds of Collabora Online Development Edition directly from their own Nextcloud installation, without the need to install a full Collabora Online server.
Demo user: choose a server and agree to experiment
Users of the demo servers must agree to the terms of service upon first use, as well as after each product update. Clearly these are not for production use – we recommend our hosting partners for real, hosted production use. We remind users that their documents are stored (temporarily, while open for editing) on the demo servers of Collabora or on those of one of our partners. This clearly contrasts with an on-premise solution where you can keep all of your documents on your own site as well as controlling performance and networking. Collabora Online really is the ideal solution for using your own servers for securely working on documents online.
With these demo servers, users may experience mixed performance, depending on the number of users using the service, but of course we can use that same usage-data in order to further optimize product performance. Users are not asked for any personal data (email address, etc.).
Sysadmins information
To activate the new demo-server feature, just two clicks of the sysadmin are enough to allow users to choose to connect to a server with a fully functional version of Collabora Online. This option is, of course, available on the administration page of the Collabora Online App.
Solving connection issues
We’ve seen reports of connection problems, caused by an incorrect/out of date configuration. The solution (in short): /hosting/capabilities/ endpoint should be readable (the reverse proxy setup in use is out of date)! You can find the necessary info on our pages for Setting up Nginx .. and Setting up Apache .. reverse proxy.
(Interested in discussion and background info? Pls read here.)
For partners, in cooperation with partners
We encourage our partners to help us provide demo servers in their local geography, and add them to our list to broadcast the benefits of their local provision of Collabora Online to a wider circle.
If you would like to integrate this with your solution – please checkout the server list (JSON). Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or ideas.
Not yet a partner? Please check out all partner advantages and contact us for more info.
After a lot of encouraging feedback we received on the major 4.2.0 Online release, we’re happy to now announce the first update!
New Features
Context menu option to put a shape or image to the background of text on Writer. (Wrap → Wrap Through + In Background, Arrange → To Background and To Foreground)
Shape moved to the background of a Writer document. Click on the image to start animation!
Writer documents can be exported to EPUB format. Use File > Download as > EPUB (.epub)
This uses the default similar to File > Export As > Export Directly As EPUB in LibreOffice / Collabora Office.
Export as EPUB in Collabora Online!
Improved features
Consistent Calc formula bar focusing in all cases
Possibility to easily navigate across wide merged cells in Calc
You can use Table of Contents links in Writer document
Updated translations
Fixes
In some cases the font dropdown contained only 2 fonts instead of all fonts installed. This has been fixed
Search bar did not accept letter ‘r’. This has been fixed
Fixed slide reordering by drag-and-drop in Impress
Fixed printing in Internet Explorer 11
Collabora Online never supported opening .oxt files (LibreOffice extensions) and .odb files (LibreOffice database files). We removed these file types from WOPI discovery.xml
Fixed the z-index of some pop-up dialogs, e.g. the warning to exceeded document/connection limit dialog is visible again
Fixed download action when server is running with no capabilities
On CentOS 8, Ubuntu 18.04, and Debian 10, which have OpenSSL 1.1.1, now we link loolwsd with Poco 1.10.1. That solves SSL connection issues, e.g. connecting to sites that have certificates made with elliptic curve key
On some systems the “child-root” jails were not cleaned up after use. This has been fixed
4.2.0 information
Since this version is an update. you may be interested in the information on the major release 4.2.0.
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 @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.
A perfect combination of functionality and privacy
Cambridge, United Kingdom, March 5, 2020 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind bringing LibreOffice to the cloud, is excited to announce a major new release of the enterprise-ready online suite Collabora Online 4.2.0. This release includes a fresh look, mobile improvements and better interoperability alongside new dialogs and functionality. Collabora Online enables users and enterprises to work on rich documents in the cloud and to collaborate effectively hosting their own services on-premise. Collabora Online is the perfect online document solution for organizations and services that want to choose digital sovereignty, respect for their users privacy and want to stay in control of their own documents and data.
A fresh clean look, feature rich side-bar, and much much more
This major update of Collabora Online comes with a fresh new user interface and is built on top of the stability and performance of our LTS version of LibreOffice: Collabora Office 6.2. This new Collabora Online includes many improvements in functionality and user-friendliness as well as a raft of bug fixes and polish. The most obvious new feature is the powerful sidebar, which allows users to easily change settings for text, tables, colours, charts and other objects in the documents. It gives Collabora Online almost the same feature- richness available in Collabora Office on the desktop. Furthermore there is a redesigned status bar, much-improved toolbars and a powerful function wizard now available in Calc online. Copy and paste of rich text and content is added for online functions, and our responsive user interface adapts attractively to smaller and mobile screen sizes.
Extending our great interoperability
Among the all improvements, there is also much improved interoperability with Microsoft Office files. Smart art, rotated and left-right text in tables, pivot tables, special sections and headers in text files, math and gradients in Powerpoint files and muchmore.
Rich chart functions from the sidebar
The sidebar now gives you access to a wide range of features for charts. Select the chart and it is easy to choose from chart types such as bars, lines and points, pies and more, and also whether the diagram should be displayed in 3D. The sidebar also provides other elements and details, for example titles and legends, colours, transparency, axes and grids. All you need for rich chart editing, is available in Collabora Online.
Editing Charts in Collabora Online
Click to see it in action:
Magic in Calc online with a powerful function wizard for your formulae
If you work on formulae, especially more complex formulae with many parameters, the function wizard in Calc is extremely helpful. It makes handling complex formulae as simple as possible by offering access to all elements of the structure and showing detailed explanation for the different arguments. This makes using the full set of hundreds of interoperable formulae easy!
Powerful function wizard in Collabora Online spreadsheets
In excellent condition: Calc brings full conditional formatting
Conditional formatting is a very effective way to understand and visualize your data: you can choose what formatting or icons your cells will receive for certain values.
Collabora Online already offered a limited palette of conditional formats in the tool bar, but the new version of Collabora Online now gives you access to the full set of possibilities by displaying the dialogs for the feature. All you need for creating and adapting conditional formatting is now available in Collabora Online.
Collabora Online offers full conditional formatting features
Smooth zooming in Calc: scaling of spreadsheets improves significantly
The scaling of spreadsheets sees a major improvement in Collabora Online 4.2.0. While previously (as in other products) the choice was 100% or 200%, now you can select a zoom level that best suits you. This improvement is accessible with a comfortable quick selector in the lower right corner.
Proudly presenting the cool and handy Impress sidebar
Collabora Online now brings you lots of new functionality via the new sidebar in Impress. You can adjust character settings, font-types, objects, sizes, colours, spacing and more from the sidebar. In addition changing the slide layout and even choosing and editing Master Slides is also possible. This provides unprecedented functionality for online editing and is very convenient! All you need to use and edit presentations is available in Collabora Online.
The sidebar in Collabora Online offers users great control for presentations
A fantastic image: working with pictures is easier and more precise
Images are fun, and working with them across all types of documents has been massively improved in Collabora Online 4.2.0. Rotating is easy with the clear handles and the new sidebar allows you to adjust colours, brightness, contrast and transparency. You can also use the sidebar module to arrange the foreground or background positioning of your images.
Paste how you like: rich copy/paste features between different documents
When doing work online, you frequently have multiple documents open that need to be combined via copy and paste. In the browser, however, rich copy and paste features are far from trivial. Now the great news is that Collabora Online introduces copying and pasting of rich formatted content like images, charts, and other complex elements across different types of document. Almost all you can wish for working in multiple documents, is now available in Collabora Online.
Rich copy and paste in calc
Enhanced online colour picker
Selecting your desired colour for an object is much more convenient in Collabora Online 4.2.0. In addition to the usual colour selector offering a palette, a new colour picker to choose any custom colour is now available. Use it with text and background in presentations, lines in spreadsheets and presentations, text and background for floating frames in text documents.
Improved collaborative editing with clear links in text documents
Launching links in previous versions required a control-click, which was hard to discover. In Collabora Online 4.2.0, when you collaborate on a document and you want to know the destination of a link, then our new release shows it at a glance. If the mouse cursor is over a link, you will see a pop-up displaying the links target. The pop-up also allows you to see and access the destination with a single click.
Redesigned and clear new icons and a attractive theme
The new design of the icons embellishes the upper toolbar. The new theme is tidier, generally clearer and has more generous spacing, with more distinct highlighting of selected buttons. All of this increases productivity and reduces friction.
New buttons and theming make things more attractive and easier to work with
The status bar benefits from our visual redesign too. Not only does it look cleaner, it also improves quick access to more functions. For example, the language in documents can now also be set via a pop-up.
Table editing: faster with the sidebar and in-document handles
In Collabora Online Writer it is now possible to manipulate tables extensively from the sidebar and we have also added easy-to-use in-document selection handles that make adjusting row height and column width very user-friendly. These features are a convenient extension of the table dialogue, that still also offer access to the tiniest details.
Collabora Online Tables in text documents
You want to insert rows or columns from here? Of course! Or delete some or all of them? A click! Furthermore, the sidebar also allows you to set the background colour, to fine-tune the sizes of rows and columns, as well as merging cells or distributing them evenly. Really all you would wish for if you are working with tables, is available in Collabora Online.
Table of contents
Collabora Online now allows you to configure the full table of contents in text documents, thanks to the new Table of Contents dialog. So even online, you can customize your complex table of contents in a few clicks according to your wishes. For example, you can edit the entries and change style, background or columns. In the same way you can update indices of figures, tables and so forth. This brings the full power of rich table of contents and index creation to Collabora Online.
Collabora Online offers rich table of contents for text document
Get Collabora Online 4.2
Collabora Online 4.2.0 is our first release of our next development series, 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. (Customers can find the URL for the repository in the customer portal.)
Collabora Online integrates flawlessly into Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile, and many of the major file sync & share, groupware and hosting solutions. It is ideal for organizations 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 sales@collaboraoffice.com.
Get access to the online demo of Collabora Online 4.2.0 and discover its potential!
Collabora has invested significantly in bringing a host of new features and functionality to this latest release, and accounts for the overwhelming volume of contributions. However we want to acknowledge all of our friends and colleagues who helped to contribute not only to this, but also to the underlying LibreOffice document technology, you can checkout LibreOffice community credits. We cannot thank everyone involved enough for their passionate work. All of our code is contributed to LibreOffice, and can be expected in LibreOffice 7, although we have our own branding and theme. Would you like to be part of the story ? Get involved today!
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 @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.
Cambridge, United Kingdom, December 16, 2019 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind bringing LibreOffice to the cloud, is excited to announce a new, major release of our product CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition) 4.2.0 This release includes a fresh look, mobile improvements, improved inter-operability, new dialogs and functionality as well as a raft of bug fixes and polish. The release gives you an insight into our soon-to-be released enterprise version Collabora Online 4.2.0. CODE and Collabora Online offer privacy as well as the only truly open-source solution for working with and collaborating on rich documents in the cloud.
What’s new?
This major update of Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) comes with a rich new user interface and is built onto of the stability and performance of our LTS version of LibreOffice: Collabora Office 6.2. It includes many improvements in functionality and user-friendliness. The most obvious new feature is the powerful sidebar on the right. Many settings for text and all kind of properties of objects in the documents can be easily updated here. The sidebar makes it much easier to change tables, colour settings and charts elements in the browser, with close to the same feature richness that is available in Collabora Office on the desktop. The status bar has been redesigned and our powerful function wizard is now available in Calc online. Copy and paste of rich text and content is added for online, and our responsive user interface adapts nicely to mobile phones and tablets.
Rich chart functions from the side bar
When charts are selected, the sidebar now gives access to a wide range of features. For example, you can easily choose chart types from bars, lines and points, pies and more, or whether the diagram should be displayed in 3D.
Other elements of charts can now also be adjusted from the sidebar. You can now determine how and where titles and legends are displayed. Furthermore, many of the visual elements of the diagram can be adjusted here. The sidebar also allows you to define the surface colour, transparency, line types and grid lines.
Click to see that in action:
Online function wizard: a powerful tool for formulas
Working with formulas is important and especially for the more complex types, having help with the tenth optional parameter is good. The new function wizard does that and it is new available in Calc from now on. The function wizard grants easy access to all elements of also the most complex formulas. It shows the structure and meaning of different parts of a formula, and more.
Conditions apply: Enhanced formatting options in Calc
Conditional formatting is a powerful feature in Calc. It is enables you to quickly visualize data in a spreadsheet by setting various useful rules on your sheet to adapt the cells formatting, colour, or even add icons when certain criteria are met. While a simplified set of conditional formats was previously available via an icon in the toolbar, you can now also make use of the full dialogs, to be found in the Format menu, to define and manage conditions fully.
Better display in Calc: smooth scaling of spreadsheets
The scaling of spreadsheets has been significantly improved in CODE 4.2.0. While in Calc you could previously only choose between two zoom factors of 100% and 200%, now fine adjustment is are possible to suit. Using the convenient (and redesigned) quick selector in the lower right corner, you can now choose your favourite zoom percentage between 33% and 200%.
More presentation functions in the sidebar
The new sidebar adds many useful functions to Impress. For shapes and outlines, the size, position, colours, transparency, wrapping and so on are easy to change.
The possibilities to alter the slide master and lay out, from the sidebar, are also completely new in CODE 4.2. You can now access extensive layout functionality for slides such selecting masters, layouts and even editing your own master pages. Needless to say, that character settings, fonts types, sizes, colours and spacing can also be easily adjusted from the sidebar.
Handier working with images
Working with images in all document types is easier, more convenient and more precise. The sidebar allows to adjust colour options, such as brightness, contrast or transparency or the red, blue and green portion of the image. Another handy feature is the adjustment of the layer settings of the images. Bring them to the foreground or arrange them in the background – all via the sidebar.
Rich copy and paste between docx and xlsx documents and more… in the browser
People that work online, often have many documents open simultaneously, and want to mash them together into bigger, better documents. So you’ll be glad to learn the CODE 4.2.0 introduces copying of rich formatted content along with images, charts, and other complex elements, between your online spreadsheets, documents and presentations.
New online colour picker
For certain elements there is not only the usual colour selector, offering a palette, but also the colour picker to chose any custom colours needed. Use it with text and background in presentations, lines in spreadsheets and presentations, text and background for floating frames in text documents.
Handling links in Writer has just become more pleasant
CODE 4.2.0 brings very nice enhancements when working with hyperlinks. Whenever the mouse cursor is located next to a link or on it, you will be kindly notified by a pop-up dialogue allowing the real target to be inspected and launched conveniently with a single click.
Beautiful new icons and a redesigned theme
The new design of the icons embellishes the upper toolbar. The new theme is tidier has more generous spacing, and is clearer in general. It should increase productivity and reduce friction. Buttons that are selected have a clearer and more distinct highlight too.
The status bar also benefits from our visual redesign. Not only does it look cleaner, it also improves quick access to the functions located there. The language of documents can now also be set via a popup.
Table editing in the side bar and table handles
In Writer it is now possible to manipulate tables extensively from the sidebar and we also added easy to use in-document selection handles, choose either or both. Previously the table dialog had to be used, which was far less convenient. These handles make adjusting row height and column width very user-friendly.
You want to insert rows or columns from here? Of course! Or delete some or all of them? a click! Furthermore, the sidebar also allows you to set the background colour of the cells or to fine-tune their height and width of rows and columns. It becomes even more interesting if you select several cells. Then you can also merge them from the sidebar or distribute them evenly.
Table of contents
In text documents, the full table of contents can now be configured with the new dialogs. So even online, you can customize your complex table of contents in a few clicks according to your wishes. For example edit the entries and change style, background or columns.
About CODE
CODE is the Collabora Online Development Edition. It contains the latest developments and is perfect for home users that want to start to run their own online office suite. It enables them to regain control of their own online documents and host them themselves in their own controlled and private environment. For them and also for tech-enthusiast, it is a low-threshold way to get involved and familiar with our online office solution. CODE gives the possibility to be the first to use new features. It will be improved continuously and our next enterprise Collabora Online product will be built from it. Note that we recommend our supported and maintained enterprise release: Collabora Online for business and production environments. CODE warns users that they might want support after 10 concurrent documents or 20 concurrent users. Find out how about the different ways to install CODE on our product page.
Discover and test the new Collabora Online 4.2 features in our regular snapshots!
The next big point release of Collabora Online is approaching. With version 4.2.0 we implement a lot of new features. Be among the first to experience and try them out in our latest snapshot. The quality of new software depends largely on the valuable feedback from users like you. So do you notice anything unexpected? Something does not seem to work as it should? Please be so kind and tell us about it! Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Happy testing!
Some of many new features
The 4.2.0 release of Collabora Online will include many fixes and a lot of new features in terms of design, functionality and usability. The sidebar will see major updates and improve working with documents both from desktop and mobile devices. The list of new functions is long. Here are just a few of the new features already included in the snapshot we would like to point your attention to.
Features
Table manipulation in sidebar
In Collabora Online 4.2 you will be able to access many of the options to manipulate tables in writer documents from a new “Table” panel in the sidebar. You are able to insert and delete columns and rows, merge and distribute cells, adjust height and width.
Handling of hyperlinks
Version 4.2 of Collabora Online brings nice enhancements when working with hyperlinks. Whenever the cursor is located next to or on a link, you will be notified by a dialogue. You can access the linked URL directly from that pop-up window with a single click.
Chart properties in the sidebar
Many chart properties can now be modified from the sidebar. The chart type and various other elements from the chart wizard can now be selected and adjusted there.
Quick / Bottom toolbar
The bottom toolbar has been re-designed. It does now look more appealing, features a new icon design, and enables quick access to the language selection and zoom magnitudes.
Colour pickers
The colour picker has been added for various properties both in dialogs and in the sidebar.
Rich table of contents handling
The dialog with settings for the table of contents is available online now, giving you full control over all the important details while working online.
Powerful new function wizard
The powerful functions wizard now is available for spreadsheets online. Start it, fill in the arguments, investigate the formula’s structure and let the magic happen.
Conditional formatting
Conditional formatting online has been extended enormously. Apart from the direct menu choice, the full options of the dialog now allows you to add (almost) any formatting condition.
Start using and testing the new features
You can get a snapshot of Collabora Office and try it right now – and we love to hear your feedback. Regular updates will be released – so stay tuned!
