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Evaluate the integration between Nextcloud and Collabora, instead of Nextcloud and OnlyOffice
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Description

It would be nice to evaluate the integration between Nextcloud and Collabora, instead of Nextcloud and OnlyOffice.

Collabora bonus points:

Collabora cons points:

  • we get one more migration
  • ...

OnlyOffice bonus points:

  • we don't need to migrate anything
  • ...

OnlyOffice cons points:

Notified here to our local community:

https://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Discussioni_associazione:Nextcloud_(archivio)

Event Timeline

It seems Collabora is not so good in handling selection on weird cells. For example here @dario.crespi.wmit tried to click on B4 - resulting in D5:

Spreadsheet cell D5 highlighted by mistake.png (444×232 px, 73 KB)

This is the document:

It seems to me that:

  • Collabora: perfect in render, not perfect in selection
  • OnlyOffice: perfect in selection, not perfect in render

I cannot reproduce that issue in the official demo of Collabora anymore.

Using Collabora was always our first choice, it just wasn't available from the provider back in 2020. Nowadays it's their default, IIRC, so it should be easy to switch.

I see archivio.wikimedia.it is already using Collabora 22.5.802. Judging from the update notifications, "Collabora Online - Built-in CODE Server" was installed some time before 2022-07-21 and OnlyOffice was removed some time after 2022-06-21. The availability of Collabora by default was announced on 2022-10-10.

So, what remains to be done here?

Uh! Thanks for this info.

So, I just need an account to try Collabora in archivio :D

(My account doesn't need any particular permission, to any directory. I just need 1MB of quota to test things.)

If you can create one, I'm boz at reyboz.it as usual

(Also reported by Piergiovanna Grossi from mailing list "tech" 👍 - P.S. to access the mailing list archive, you must subscribe - https://mailman.wikimedia.it/private/tech/2025-July/001554.html )

I've contacted c68 for a live demo of Nextcloud+Collabora. The invitees of this demo are board+staff at least.

In September 2025, Wikimedia Italia concluded the A/B testing between the latest stable version of OnlyOffice (already adopted) and the same for Collabora Online (proposed).

The news is somehow counter-intuitive. In short, staff discarded Collabora Online, for slowness, issues with tables, and issues with presentations.

https://mailman.wikimedia.it/private/tech/2025-September/001575.html

Attaching the original message, in Italian:


(IT)

Ciao a tutti,
in questa settimana di test su collabora abbiamo rilevato e ci sono stati
segnalati numerosi problemi nella modifica di documenti di testo
(specialmente con molte tabelle), presentazioni (problemi di rendering e
intoppi, caricamento infinito all'attivazione della modalità presentazione
su file pesanti, ...) e fogli di calcolo (problemi nella copia di celle,
ricerca e filtraggio, ...).

Pertanto come Direttivo riteniamo Collabora non pronto per sostituire
OnlyOffice come strumento predefinito e chiederemo al fornitore di
Nextcloud di terminare il test e ritornare allo stato originale.

Ciao,
Daniele