Nextcloud Hub Competes With Office 365 And Google Docs

next cloud recently had a big release probably the most significant release since the initial release of next cloud those of you that are not familiar with next cloud originally it was a file syncing cloud service it's kind of how it started it was your free and open source alternative to things like Dropbox and mega sync and things like that but next cloud just released version 18 of a week or two ago and the new next cloud they're rebranding it they're now calling next cloud next cloud hub and why the change in name well it's significant because they want to emphasize exactly what next cloud is now it's no longer just a place to store files and to sync files next cloud now has an integrated office suite it has built-in video chat it has email client built into it it has a contact list as the ability to do group file sharing and group file editing next cloud hub is really a free and open source alternative to group where office suites like office 365 or Google Docs so let's take a look at it so let me get into my next cloud I have a next cloud server that I've been hosting myself for a few months and I really like next cloud as far as just for cloud storage and file syncing it was my way to get away from proprietary services like Dropbox I was a Dropbox user for years and oh about a year year and a half ago Dropbox really started rubbing me the wrong way with how they treated their Linux customers so I was looking for an alternative something that worked better with Linux and I really was looking for a free and open source alternative and there's not that much out there as far as for file syncing and file sharing next cloud though I've just been blown away by this project initially next cloud was basically what you're seeing on the screen now this tab here it says files has little picture of the file folder here it was just a place to store files and sync files between machines so I have in my file manager on my desktop you know I have a folder called next cloud everything I throw in that folder it will sync to my next cloud server you know just standard file syncing like you would do again with something like Dropbox or mega sync you know your SpiderOak all those file syncing services but now with next cloud hub you have other things other than just the file folder here at the top this tab now you have these other tabs here and they're not here by default you choose to opt in and actually install these plug-ins to enable them I enabled them although I wanted to show you all these features I don't know these are features I personally would use on a daily basis because I'm not in a situation where I need to do group collaboration you know and lucky in an office setting and for me I'm still primarily just here for the file syncing and the file sharing aspects of next cloud the gallery is nothing more than just show me all the images in my files and the gallery is taking a second to load here it's loading a ton of wallpapers that I have stored here is the problem here so it's gonna load all your images it's the same image like the gallery button on your smartphone so I have a Android device you know you hit the gallery button it shows you all the pictures you've saved on your phone all the screenshots you've taken it's that same kind of feature here in next cloud hub with the gallery tab then you also have the talk tab here now this is for your video chat I could start a call here what I will do is I can't start a call here recording this video because my camera and my car obviously occupied by other applications and next cloud talk here is going to ask to take over my camera and microphone to you know do the video chip so what I will do is I will splice in a little bit of video me using the next cloud talk feature right now so just briefly testing out the talk feature here in the next cloud hub when you first connect to talk it's gonna ask for permission to connect to your microphone and to your camera of course you need to give it those permissions you can always mute the audio if you so choose or disable the video standard video chat features you also have the options of screen sharing and it's gonna ask you exactly what do you want to share do you want to share the entire screen the entire monitor or just a specific window on the monitor and it's just a specific window which one in this case I'll share what you're already seeing here which is the next cloud window itself we get this little inception effect though let me stop the screen sharing here of course I don't have any kind of group video call right now but of course that is what this feature would be for you could actually have other participants add other participants you could even add projects so the folks in the video chat could work on a project together you know edit a document as a group the whole point of this of course is the group wear feature of next cloud hub is that everything is about group collaboration so that was next cloud talk then you have the email client and I went ahead I don't know if I would actually use this for an email client I typically check my email using Thunderbird or Geary if I want GUI applications and if I want terminal-based applications I use Neo mutt or even mu for E and E max I've been using a little bit recently but this is the email client I went ahead and synced it to Derek at distro tube comm you know my YouTube email and it works just fine you see my latest email here from libraries I've got new content from my subscriptions and library let's see who put out new videos Oh almost like I'm subscribed to myself I put out a video a few other folks have put up videos there's Chris Titus I guess they released something on library anyway the email client standard email client it works then you have the context this is just a contact list you can add contacts so if I click new contact new contact here I could put a name you know I could put Joe Bob and then of course I would definitely want to add a contact phone and a contact email you know I can the email as email at email dot-com of course that's not real but anyway you see the fact that now I have that contact and the reason you want to add your contacts here in next cloud hub is there is some thought she ring features in next cloud hub and how does it share those files with people with what you just share it with your contacts your contacts you've already entered the email so it just emails them the file that you want to share with them then you have the calendar feature here and there it is and it looks like I have already added a few things to my calendar I added things a few days ago for example I made a note here on the 25th so you get into that that I needed to record a video about do me max last Saturday and I even blocked out the time I'm gonna record from 10:00 a.m. you know in the morning till 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon it typically takes about four hours for me to record a video edit it know that I try to give myself a four hour block of time so I put that on the calendar and then the next day I reminded myself I was gonna do my monthly chat with the patrons of the channel so I scheduled that livestream at 10 a.m. Sunday and I put it on the calendar to make sure I remembered to do that and of course you see right here today is the 30th and it is marked with the blue highlighting I can just click the calendar here and I could add an event if I wanted to add something one nice touch here is contact birthdays so if you had your birthdays for all your contacts you know in your contact list here you know you would actually get a little bit of a reminder here in the calendar hey today is Joe Bob's birthday so that is kind of cool now if I go back to the file browser portion of next cloud hub here let me show you some of the sharing aspects and the group editing aspects of the new next cloud hub so if I just click on something I'm gonna click on the image file right here that's next cloud dot pain just one of the stock images that were installed when I installed next cloud and of course it you get an image pre you as you would expect if you wanted to you could actually start a slideshow and cycle through everything in this directory but what you really want to do is open the sidebar here you see the little sidebar has got a picture of a person here and this is for doing some of the group aspects of next cloud hub so you can chat with folks I guess about this image you could actually leave a comment about this image you of course could share this image this is probably the feature most people would use and you could send it to whoever is in your contact list so I added Joe Bob earlier I could type Joe Bob it's got his email address here that's not a real email address and I don't even know if I set up SMTP and you know outgoing email and next cloud hub just yet solutely even if it was a legit email it may not go through so I'm not gonna bother sending that but that's how that feature works very easy just type the name it searches through your contact list you hit enter and it just goes ahead and emails them about this file so let me get back to the file manager here and I don't have any plain text documents to play around in let me create one so if I hit the plus symbol here at the top it's gonna ask me what do I want to do do I want to upload a file or do I want to create a new folder or a new text document I want to create a new text document what do I want to create how about will title it test dot MD hit enter and now we have this new markdown document and you see this is some of the office integration so we could start typing here so if I wanted to I could type a headline here I could type this is a line of text in anyway so you've got your little built-in kind of office editing stuff going on here and once again you have the group aspects of this so you could chat about this document you could come in about this document you could share this document as a group multiple people could actually edit this document at the same time and I from what I've read about next cloud hub and you will actually see multiple cursors on the screen you know multiple people editing in real time so it's really kind of neat and it's really this office groupware suite that is designed to compete against the big proprietary suites like office 365 and Google Docs so that was just a brief look at the new next cloud version 18 what they have now rebranded as next cloud hug really really cool I kind of like what they're doing with this at first when when I heard the the announcement of next cloud hub I was skeptical because I'm a proponent of the UNIX philosophy do one thing do one thing will and next cloud was just superb as far as just storing files you know hosting your own clouds file storage and file syncing service and it was great at that and I didn't want it to get away from that aspect you know focus on all these other things that quite frankly I don't need I don't need to have an email client in my next cloud I don't need the calendar feature in the contact list and I don't need all this group stuff going on I don't need a group video chat in my file syncing cloud storage service but at the same time I really get it there there are people that actually need this there are businesses that actually need this and next cloud is offering a legit free and open-source alternative to office 365 and Google Docs and group where platforms like that and I think they are really set to succeed here so I have my next cloud server of course I have the desktop client here on my machines my main production machine my laptops I have the mobile client on my phone so it really makes sense you know as far as just the integration of everything having your email and your files and your calendar and everything on one app like that one app on all your devices I get what they're doing quite frankly I think this is the right move for next cloud I think that they are about to blow up in a big way I think it's going to start becoming more than just those of us that are free and open-source enthusiasts you know Linux enthusiasts things like that I think you're gonna see more adoption of next cloud by the normies out there now before I go I do need to thank a few special people this show was made possible by Chris DJ Donnie Dylan George Kaplan a cor Binney and lamda Michael Mitchell Rob Sean Stallman and Willie these guys they're the producers of the show without them this episode about next cloud hub would not have been possible shows also brought to you by all those other names you're seeing on the screen right now those fine ladies and gentlemen those guys support me over on patreon I want to thank each and every one of those guys you'd like to support the channel consider doing so look for distro tube over on patreon alright guys peace you

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 63,757

Keywords: nextcloud, nextcloud hub, google docs, office 365, cloud collaboration, open source software, nextcloud review, nextcloud 18 hub, nextcloud talk, nextcloud apps, nextcloud calendar, nextcloud group collaboration, nextcloud groupware, nextcloud setup, nextcloud tutorial, nextcloud integration, nextcloud documents, nextcloud file sync, nextcloud file sharing, nextcloud files, group collaboration

Id: cJPbLbStA48

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020