An Introduction to ONLYOFFICE Document Editors

After our first article ONLYOFFICE joins the Univention family, we are going to give you this time a closer insight on ONLYOFFICE: how we created our editors, what was chosen as a technological basis and how it benefits businesses and individual users in creation of their everyday documents. But first, a little bit of history.

When did it all begin?

The launch of the project dates back to 2009, when a group of ambitious developers with Lev Bannov in charge created a platform for office collaboration called TeamLab. The product was then merged with document editing software, and in 2012 the suite was presented at CeBIT. Two years later, the project opened the source code and was rebranded as ONLYOFFICE. Since then, the team concentrated on document editing as a very center of the solution, looking for the ways to complement the market with highly compatible and rich editing instrument.

The key technology behind ONLYOFFICE editors

ONLYOFFICE Document Server incorporates a 3-in-1 online office suite with text document, spreadsheet and presentation editors. HTML5 Canvas element, on which the suite is built, helps ONLYOFFICE process every visible element with scrutiny and assure that the document will look identical, no matter from where it is opened or printed. Office Open XML formats (.DOCX, .XLSX, .PPTX) are taken as a core of the editors. This provides clean processing of most of the existing documents, while other formats go through inner conversion.

What it brings to our users

Such technological concept ensures wide applicability of ONLYOFFICE editors, making them utilizable in diversified working environments and occupations. People deal with intense flow of documents in their professional life: the software in use must be able to faultlessly process them preserving the initial formatting and objects.
Further editing of the document elements is another vital part of ‘distant’ collaboration, when one needs to work with information coming from outside sources. For example, to quickly extract data from the graph or correct the autoshape-based schemes.
However, co-editing ‘in-house’ is paramount too. And the more fluent it is, the more resources a business is able to save. ONLYOFFICE developed an architecture that assures slight, real-time connection between participants and minimizes server loading.

For whom did we create ONLYOFFICE?

Focusing on format compatibility, richness of editing capabilities and collaborative features makes ONLYOFFICE a universal product that suits both individuals and teams and provides tools for any office work: from routine reports, calculations and presentations to professional writing and bookkeeping. The by default free and open-source version of ONLYOFFICE is aimed at small and medium teams and allows collaboration with up to 20 simultaneous connections. Bigger capabilities are provided in Integration edition, a more business-oriented package that is customizable in number of users and offers number of additional editing features along with enhanced editor interface.

Our role in the world of office documents

We created a product that becomes a reliable platform for handling documents and boosting collaboration in every company. Our principle is always giving our users a freedom of choice of how and where to use ONLYOFFICE. This is why our solutions are scalable and implementable in various environments . We created a product that becomes a reliable platform for handling documents and boosting collaboration in every company. Our principle is always giving our users a freedom of choice of how and where to use ONLYOFFICE. This is why our solutions are scalable and implementable in various environments.

Within Univention ONLYOFFICE connects with Nextcloud or ownCloud to carry out the data storage and sharing, which has proved to be the perfect symbiosis already outside Univention. With UCS this combination became easier to install and configure and the user management is already included provided by UCS’ powerful identity management. If you are new to us, try ONLYOFFICE in UCS environment now to see how it works yourself!

Test ONLYOFFICE Now

P.S. ONLYOFFICE is headed at the Univention Summit in Bremen in February 2018. This is a great opportunity to meet and know a bit more about our products in person.