FAQ
Which programs are included in the office suite?
We include Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw - for text documents, spreadsheets and charts, as well as presentations and drawings.
Which formats can the programs of Collabora Online read?
All of the key Microsoft file formats both OpenXML and legacy binary file formats - DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX as well as RTF and macro enabled versions of these (although we disable macros online by default). Clearly we prefer nicely standardized Open Document formats - ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG. In addition it is possible to import Visio, MS Publisher, WordPerfect files as well as many other flavors. We spend lots of time working on improving our filters and making our interoperability excellent.
In which formats can documents etc. be exported?
We save back to the core Microsoft file formats, as well as OpenDocument equivalents. We provide PDF download as well.
Do the programs run in a browser and / or as local clients?
Collabora Online runs on the server in your data center, and is interacted with through a standard browser - there is no need for any client installation. It is necessary however to integrate Collabora Online with another product that will do data storage, and access control for users.
Do the programs require an uninterrupted network connection?
Our design requires an uninterrupted network connection to get access to your document data. This has many security advantages over more complex DRM based models - potentially allowing an admin to audit and control all access to the document perpetually. It does require a network connection however. If collaboration is not required, then downloading via a sync and share integration (eg. ownCloud, Nextcloud, EGroupware, pydio, Seafile and many others) makes sense - then you can edit off-line and sync when you return.
Can you add a storage system?
Collabora Online is not tied to any particular storage or authentication system we use a WOPI-like protocol to defer both storage and authentication to the provider we are integrated with.
Can you write and use your own plug-ins with the programs?
Absolutely, we have a huge programming API surface based on the existing LibreOffice UNO APIs. Bespoke uses of Collabora Online can introduce buttons, and rich scripting interactions to communicate from client to server, using the existing standard UNO APIs for LibreOffice.
High availability, fault tolerance, upgrade-ability?
Clearly you want a high availability setup, not only to provide extra scalability, but also to provide redundancy against faults. Collabora Online has a clean and attractive architecture – which scales with your routing network:
Each document is served by a single node to which all requests and edits are sent for that document by the HA gateway: F5, HA proxy etc..
Each node is ultimately stateless and needs only limited local storage).
Collabora Online requires no third party services except of course it needs to connect to your existing file-storage solution.
Collabora Online regularly saves documents to your existing storage.
Collabora Online requires only a standard, basic Linux base-system to run on top of.
Is it safe to restart the service without losing data?
Collabora Online is designed with data-safety first. When restarting the coolwsd service, the SIGINT signal is sent to the process. This initiates the shutdown procedure within coolwsd, which commences by flagging all documents to save and unload.
Each document that at that point has unsaved modifications would need to issue an internal save (much like auto-save) and, upon finishing the saving of the document successfully to disk, it will upload to Storage and, upon the successfully completion of uploading the document, it would unload it and disconnect all clients.
A message is typically displayed on the user’s clients (i.e. browser window) that the service is in maintenance and will return soon. The client logic tries to reconnect and reload the document at some interval and should automatically load the document and display it soon after coolwsd is back online.
Please note that restarting the coolwsd service has a maximum timeout (current defult is 120 seconds). If saving and uploading of a document does not finish within that timeout (f.e. due to network issues), the coolwsd process will be killed by systemd as it would have exceeded its maximum shutdown timeout. This could result in data-loss, unless the Quarantine feature is enabled and the document had been saved to disk by that point.
The service shutdown-timeout can be changed through systemd configuration (the entry in question is TimeoutStopSec under [Service]).
Note that coolwsd has a forced-shutdown mode. If multiple SIGINT (or SIGTERM) signals are sent, the process will not wait for the documents to save, upload, and unload, but will exit promptly. This is normally not necessary and not recommended as it will not wait until the completion of document save and upload, resulting in data loss.
Do the documents leave the server?
Collabora Online uses an adapted versions of the WOPI standard protocol, and we can use data stores which can provide their own policies. When your document data comes down into Collabora Online we isolate and protect your document in your on-premise server inside a series of concentric security onion shells:
Collabora keeps your document data on the server, and can send only tiled images to the client. These can also be watermarked with the viewer’s name. With granular permissions to restrict copy & paste, download, print and so on – Collabora protects your documents like no other.
What is CODE? Are there non-development editions too?
We offer our free version CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition). CODE is a continuously updated, rolling release where we try out our latest feature work, and has no SLA or long term support. As such, we don’t recommend CODE for business or production environments, but you can use it.
If you are familiar with Linux, then CODE would be like our Fedora or openSUSE version - rather than RHEL or SLES, and lots of people use it.
More information here: https://www.collaboraonline.com/code/
What are the possibilities to test your products?
For test purpose, we offer our on-line demo (the only solution hosted by us) and CODE (on-premise), our development edition.
Our online demo is the only solution hosted by Collabora, focused on providing to our potential customers and partners an easy way to test Collabora Online with different FSS solutions such as Nextcloud or ownCloud. We don’t have a time limit on our demo account, so you can try it out as long as you like. The only limitation we have is space. A demo account has 10MB of space free for testing out your office files. So, it has only test purposes.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/demo/
We offer our free version CODE. CODE is a continuously updated, rolling release where we try out our latest feature work, and has no SLA or long term support. As such, we don’t recommend CODE for business or production environments, but you can use it.
If you are familiar with Linux, then CODE would be like our Fedora or openSUSE version - rather than RHEL or SLES, and lots of people use it.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/code/
And, finally, we offer Collabora Online supported version as a subscription plan based on the number of users per year with SLA, maintenance, Long term support, software and security updates and much more.
Can I host your product on my own environment?
We offer an on-premise solution, we don’t host the product. Collabora Online is a software component which can be integrated into your web application and enables viewing and editing of, and cooperation on office documents in dozens of file formats. Collabora Online uses unparalleled file format support and rendering capabilities of LibreOffice. The way to integrate into your app is to implement WOPI support, which is very easy and straightforward, and we have the documentation to help you.
It’s the very point of Collabora Online to allow editing of documents, and nothing more – the rest, like the document storage, authentication etc. is the responsibility of the those who integrate Collabora Online into their product.