Create new file: Office formats?

[Stephan-P]

Today I managed to install OpenCloud (opencloud-compose) as a separate container behind external proxy. Collabora CODE and Euro-Office are also installed separately and active behind external proxy, however OpenCloud seems to be unaware of this.
When I "Create New File:" only TXT and MD formats are offered:

In the environment file, Collabora and Euro-Office are cofigured as follows

...
### Collabora Settings ###
COLLABORA_DOMAIN=collabora.MY_DOMAIN.TLD
COLLABORA_ADMIN_USER=ADMIN
COLLABORA_ADMIN_PASSWORD=PASSWORD
COLLABORA_SSL_ENABLE=false
COLLABORA_SSL_VERIFICATION=false
COLLABORA_HOME_MODE=false
...
### Euro Office Settings ###
EURO_OFFICE_DOMAIN=eurooffice.MY_DOMAIN.TLD
EURO_OFFICE_JWT_SECRET=CHANGEME
EURO_OFFICE_DOCKER_IMAGE=
EURO_OFFICE_DOCKER_TAG=

• Following the Admin documentation, I have created a file ./config/opencloud/app-registry.yaml and made sure it is owned by 'appuser', but that didn't help.
• Searching the Discussions here, I have added the following (undocumented/depricated?) volume bind to the compose file, but that didn't help.

      - ./config/opencloud/app-registry.yaml:/etc/opencloud/app-registry.yaml

What is needed to make OpenCloud aware of more file formats to create and Collabora/Euro-Office to open these?

[Stephan-P]

I think I have found some interesting information in /opencloud-compose/weboffice.
The files collabora.yaml and euroffice.yaml (sic) look like Compose yaml files.
I'm going to experiment with adding the relevant parts of it to my opencloud compose file.

[Stephan-P]

Ooh, collabora.yaml and euroffice.yaml are in conflict!
Does this imply that currently there is NO way to integrate both Collabora AND Euro-Office?

• collabora.yaml:

      COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "CollaboraOnline"
      COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "Collabora"
      COLLABORATION_APP_ADDR: https://${COLLABORA_DOMAIN:-collabora.opencloud.test}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:+:}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:-}
      COLLABORATION_APP_ICON: https://${COLLABORA_DOMAIN:-collabora.opencloud.test}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:+:}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:-}/favicon.ico

• euroffice.yaml:

      COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "Euro-Office"
      COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "OnlyOffice"
      COLLABORATION_APP_ADDR: https://${EURO_OFFICE_DOMAIN:-euro-office.opencloud.test}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:+:}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:-}
      COLLABORATION_APP_ICON: https://${EURO_OFFICE_DOMAIN:-euro-office.opencloud.test}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:+:}${TRAEFIK_PORT_HTTPS:-}/web-apps/apps/documenteditor/main/resources/img/favicon.ico

[micbar]

The whole concept of the compose project is merging multiple compose files together.

Check the docs, there is a step by step guide.

[Stephan-P]

It was confusing to me that Docker installation and Docker Compose installation and Behind Reverse Proxy are not cleanly presented in the form of a workflow. What also doesn't help is various instalation guides everywhere on the internet, including user forums, as well as this Discussion forum. They add to confusion (to the amateur/entry level selfhoster) and OpenCloud itself should be de self designated party to provide clarity above all.

As I experienced that things weren't working as expected, I ended up following bits and bobs from these three quite separate parts of the docs, which caused among others an nginx misconfiguration stealing port 80, access denied because I did not fully understand that my appuser:users (1000:100) would need to be given ownership of certain directories and more...
BTW, why doesn't opencloud installation itself take care of these chown of directories?

For me and I assume for other users as well it'd be better if the admin docs were organised so as to cater to the type of usage/installation:

1. You want to install it using bare bones docker, read the full story here
2. You are starting a home sevrer pretty much from scratch, here's the full Docker Compose method incl. necessary 3rd party components such as Traefik, Collabora, Euro-Office, Radicale, ... The all-in-one solution.
3. You already have a homeserver with rev proxy and other containers and you want to add OC to that? Here's this simple Docker Compose (OC only) plus additional guidance about a joint docker bridge network, external rev. proxy requirements and the integration with Collabora, Euro-Office, Radicale, whatnot installed independently

And yes, that'll lead to a lot of repeated words for each installation workflow, which is a maintenance nightmare for the writers, but at least it's clear and consice for the reader..

So, I was led astray by the docs as well as various guides on forum. And so I decided to just go with the opencloud-compose repo together with .env.example. Carefully studying and understanding all of that, I created an elaborate openmediavault Compose project with only a few modifications as well as the full environment file filled to best understanding. And after some 'chown' commands that actually worked right away.

[micbar]

This guide was exactly meant for you :-)

https://docs.opencloud.eu/docs/next/admin/getting-started/container/docker-compose/external-proxy

[micbar]

The normal install assumes that you do not use bind volume mounts but just named docker volumes. There is no permissions issue when just using the default named volumes.

When using bind volumes, this guide is applicable and comprehensive https://docs.opencloud.eu/docs/next/admin/getting-started/container/docker-compose/docker-compose-volume-permissions

[Stephan-P]

This guide was exactly meant for you :-)
https://docs.opencloud.eu/docs/next/admin/getting-started/container/docker-compose/external-proxy

And this part of the guide actually set me up with a faulty nginx config hijacking port 80.
I started along this path, but couldn't continue for lack of certbot on my openmediavault system. I don't know why.
But hey, my Nginx Proxy Manager has been handing SSL certificates quite nicely, so why should I need it?
Being the mere beginner, I wasn't able to overcome this hurdle and it was only later that I found out that I couldn't reach my Nginx Proxy Manager anymore, because port 80 was reserved for a certbot service that hadn't been setup properly.

I don't understand the difference between bind volume mounts and named docker volumes. I only know that the default docker volumes were problematic for me because of them being created by root at install and later on needed to be accessed by docker appuser, which was denied. This was my first reason for asking "where can I have these files stored more conventiently, so that I can at least see what's going on?"

But I think I shouldn't continue this conversation where I'm trying to explain myself as a beginner selfhoster against an expert. If I don't understand the docs, then the docs apparently are not for me. I'm very happy that I managed installing OC using the docker-compose repo combined with the few things I had learned along the way:

• chown ./confg, chown ./radicale, chown data/opencloud
• create a pre-defined docker bridge network opencloud-net and join this
• also join the pre-defined bridge network web-proxy (for NPM purposes)
• Just create the neccesary Proxy Hosts in NPM
• No harm in using omv system variable substitutions

[micbar]

Please don’t get me wrong😇

I am really asking because the docs should be improved.

[micbar]

And there is support for only one web office at the time.

[Stephan-P]

That's a real bummer, as well as a competitive disadvantage.
I hope that you will find a solution to this rather sooner than later.

[micbar]

Maybe that is a misunderstanding. You can use different web office solutions. You can also tweak the setup to use two of them in parallel, the code can do that. We didn't implement it in the compose project.

From an end user perspective, it doesn't make sense to offer more than one. That could be very confusing for the average user.

[Stephan-P]

I'm evaluating Collabora and Euro-Office within OpenCloud, as well as another platform.
From this perspective it would be nice to have both available at the same time, if possible through an option popup dialogue, e.g.

I would be interested to learn what I would need to do in my compose files for OpenCloud, Collabora and Euro-Office to get this working.

[Stephan-P]

@micbar would you teach me how to establish the integration of OpenCloud with Collabora and Euro-Office on a homeserver system with separate docker containers on a joint bridge network and with an independent reverse proxy server (like Nginx Proxy Manager)?
If you consider this not appropriate for this public Discussion forum, then please feel free to sideline this into a one-on-one (e-mail or otherwise)

[Stephan-P]

@micbar Could you help me understand the file app-registry.yaml?
If we look at the file .config/euro-office/app-registry.yaml, we see different definitions for the variable 'default_app'; Collabora and Euro-Office.
So, by the looks of this file it should be possible to integrate OpenCloud with these two Web-Office editors, not? If possible I'd like to learn more about this, as tese two Web-Office apps each have their benefits and downsides.

I am also confused by the two options for the variable 'default_app'; "Collabora" or "Euro-Office". What are these names?
In ./weboffice/collabora.yaml the following is specified:

      COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "CollaboraOnline"
      COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "Collabora"

In .weboffice/euroffice.yaml there is:

      COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "Euro-Office"
      COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "OnlyOffice"

This variable default_app is declared inconsistently with COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "Collabora" or with COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "Euro-Office". I cannot imagine that this is correct.

EDIT: I tried setting all default_app: OnlyOffice, combined with a opencloud-compose adapted to Euro-Office integration, but this too does not start Euro-Office as editor for .docx or .odt files.
Collabora works fine, but I cannot get Euro-Office running with OpenCloud. (Both work just fine with Sync-in)

[micbar]

@Stephan-P Let me chime in here.

Euro-Office is a fork of OnlyOffice. So the code currently doesn't have an option to use EuroOffice as a default_app. Please use OnlyOffice also for Euro Office.
The app registry defines the defaults if the apps are registered. That is important. The apps are registering themselves dynamically after starting.

Regarding the registering of formats.

1. The collaboration service is a WOPI Server and an app provider
2. The App Provider in that service uses COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: "CollaboraOnline" and COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: "Collabora" to register the mimetypes which collabora provides.
3. In the opencloud process, we can start one collaboration service. So we can register one WebOffice solution in one opencloud process.
4. If you want more than one app, you need to start a second collaboration service external to opencloud, connect the service registry of the second collaboration service to the main opencloud container, the regitstry (NATS service) needs to be exposed on the main opencloud container, and create a second domain for the second WOPI server and connect the second WebOffice App to the second WOPI server allowing the wopi host to be in the allowed domains for the second WebOffice

[Stephan-P]

@micbar than you for clarifying.

So, does "Please use OnlyOffice also for Euro Office" imply that the app_registry.yaml is in fact faulty?
Or does "The App Provider in that service uses COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: 'CollaboraOnline' and COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: 'Collabora' to register the mimetypes which collabora provides" mean that the variable default_app may equally be defined by its defined NAME or PRODUCT?

And does "The apps are registering themselves dynamically after starting" imply that some specific startup order between OpenCloud and Collabora/Euro-Office need be maintained?

Ad 4. That's probably too difficult for me.

Ad 3. Would OpenCloud consider opening things up for multiple collaboration processes?

[micbar]

So, does "Please use OnlyOffice also for Euro Office" imply that the app_registry.yaml is in fact faulty?

Not faulty, but Euro Office is currently the same config like OnlyOffice because it it basically the same product.

Or does "The App Provider in that service uses COLLABORATION_APP_NAME: 'CollaboraOnline' and COLLABORATION_APP_PRODUCT: 'Collabora' to register the mimetypes which collabora provides" mean that the variable default_app may equally be defined by its defined NAME or PRODUCT?

I don’t understand the question. The app name is just for the display name. As app product we have 3 possible options: Collabora, OnlyOffice, MicrosotOfficeOnline.

Ad 3. Would OpenCloud consider opening things up for multiple collaboration processes?

product wise the decision has been made to only have one web office at the time. They open basically the same formats so it would be confusing for the end user to have 2 apps for the same purpose. Code wise this is possible and could be configured like I wrote earlier.