ownCloud

In a nutshell, ownCloud is what an enterprise, government, organization or privacy concerned individual needs. With the release of version 7 Community Edition, ownCloud has add many new capabilities to this Open Source solution.

oC 7 in action!This is the bi-weekly ownCloud community update for the weeks of June 30 to July 13. These updates pull together activities from development mailing lists, blogs, coding work and everything else community members share with us. Tips ... [More] are very much welcome! Ping Jos with your input. Biggest items last week were the work leading up to the release, with sneak previews on the ownCloud blog and further stabilization work. There was also activity in the ownCloud app area. Read the report on week 25 and 26 here. Development As we’re getting ready for the release of ownCloud 7 (tomorrow!), most changes are related to improving stability and behavior as well as fine-tuning the user interface and interaction. On July 3rd, Frank created the stable 7 branches, opening development for new features, a bit of which has already started to happen. Core and apps Lots of small interface improvements like mobile UI improvement to the text editor, making the birtday picker in the calendar app default to dates in the past and a fix for a visual issue with the controls bar Addition of an activity notification mail template Also new is support for AD primary groups Our first-run wizard now asks users to help promote ownCloud Webhooks now tell apps who owns a share The gallery app now has a white background when you share files, fitting with the normal view The Android app can now show files shared with you by other users There now is webapp support for android and iOS Build your ownCloud app!On apps.owncloud.com: The Javascript XMPP Chat app was updated to 0.8, adding a Spanish translation, VCard view, more emoticons, some ui and bug fixes, preparation work for ownCloud 7 and much more The Embedded Videostream app now supports shared files The Collaboration app was updated with some fixes and you can now easily do pull requests on github if you have any input Incidentally also at 2.4.1. Storage Charts uses real names instead of the user name Roundcube updated to 2.4.1 with some bug fixes. The CAS user and group backend was updated to 1.1 bringing ownCloud 7 compatibility and some bug fixes. APK Info was updated to version 1.2 with changes far larger than the version jump seems to indicate. Rewritten core library and fixes for many issues. Over social media, we were notified that aykit released version 1.3.1 of MyOwnNotes. Get the app here for Android Other development updates help promote ownCloud 7!The release of ownCloud 7 is Wednesday the 23rd (yep, that’s tomorrow) You can join us for a live release hangout! Over the last week Frank released a series of release candidates and calls for testing, see the mailing list archive of the ownCloud test pilots. If you want to help test ownCloud in the future, join this list! There has been quite a bit of discussion on the ownCloud Read Later design mockups, triggered via the mailing list. If you are interested in application user interface design, consider joining the design team. Other ownCloud happenings Muktware wrote about WebODF integration in ownCloud. On the ownCloud community blog we featured a series of sneak previews of the upcoming ownCloud 7 release: ownCloud 7 for developers ownCloud 7 for system administrators online collaboration with Documents Performance and Ease of use More sharing! Improved sharing We also proposed to organize release parties and asked for help promoting ownCloud 7. There are ownCloud events taking place! You can meet fellow ownCloud users and developers at ownCloud meetups or see us at conferences. We are also organizing an ownCloud Contributor Conference for existing and interested potential contributors to ownCloud. It takes place from August 26 to 31 in Berlin, Germany. Find a calendar of ownCloud on owncloud.org/events. ownCloud meetups are a chance to learn more about ownCloud or even to get coding work done. If you know of other (regular or not) meetups or are interested in organizing one yourself, check out this page on how to get involved. [Less]

ownCloud 7 is less than a week from now, and we’ve been doing some sneak peeks to give you insight in the many new features and improvements. This final installment is for developers: what has changed for ownCloud app developers and coders writing ... [More] ownCloud support into applications? Integration An important area of changes in this release allows better ownCloud integration in applications. For native/desktop applications, the Overlay Icon API was introduced. Now that the shared folder has been removed from the ownCloud file view, users will need a visual representation in the desktop client to indicate which files are owned by the user, and which files are shared with the user but owned by someone else. This API provides the desktop and mobile clients with the ability to know which files are shared, so that the desktop client and mobile app can place the shared file or shared folder icon appropriately on files stored on ownCloud files. For ownCloud App developers and integrators Webhooks enable easier ownCloud integration into their applications and tools. It follows a publication / subscription model (pubsubhub) where apps can publish an event, and other apps can subscribe to this event. Developers create an app that registers itself with the published event manager. From that point forward, any time the event occurs, a POST is made to the URL provided by the subscriber to notify them of the event. Apps can subscribe to the notification event, unsubscribe, set a URL to respond to, set a lease time for the subscription, and provide an optional digest used for security purposes.Build your ownCloud app! Easier development Another main area of improvement is better access to the ownCloud innards, making it easier and faster to write apps or talk to the database. The most important changes: Better controllers for App Framework We provide an easier interface to implement controller classes, making app development a little easier. Simple database layer for App Framework This makes it easier for app developers to interact with the database, not requiring them to write all SQL statements by hand. See here for documentation. Support DB connections via sockets We can now connect to MySQL via sockets, not just through the network layer. Easy CORS implementation for App Framework The CORS implementation allows a developer to implement a web api which can be used by other pages/apps running on a different domain. By default today’s browsers disallow communication to other domains. CORS allows more flexibility than only same-origin requests, but is more secure than simply allowing all such cross-origin requests. Up to date app development documentation Last but not least, the developer documentation got updated, providing a big help for app and core developers. Get started here! ownCloud 7 is not just exciting for users and administrators: it brings significant improvements for developers. We are looking forward to see what apps and functionality you come up with! And remember, there is an ownCloud Contributor Conference coming in about 5 weeks, where you can get involved in coding ownCloud apps, third-party integration and data syncing. You can find the previous sneak peeks here: ownCloud 7 for system administrators online collaboration with Documents Performance and Ease of use More sharing! Improved sharing Help spread the word on the upcoming release! Share this and other sneak peeks, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and share their messages. [Less]

One of the things I love from the Free and Open Source software world is that doing things in the open simply leads to better solutions. Resources are often constrained, polish might be lacking, but frequently from the seemingly chaotic processes ... [More] emerges brilliance.The upcoming ownCloud 7 has one of those things: server to server sharing. You see, for a long time, I and others have been asking the ownCloud desktop client developers for a feature: support for syncing multiple ownCloud installations. That way, files from our corporate ownCloud installation (of course we dogfood here at ownCloud Inc.!) and my private ownCloud could both be synced to my desktop and laptop. Unfortunately, while it has been on the todo for a while, it just kept pushed down by more urgent feature work.While you could get it to work already by running multiple clients and playing with the config file locations, it seemed a bit brittle to me and I just accepted this feature wasn't there yet.Only today, during my bike ride to c-base, did I realize that ownCloud 7 actually introduces this feature. And I even wrote a sneak preview about it! It is the server to server sharing that solves this issue.What is Server to Server sharing?Let's step back. What is the major thing that 'private' clouds don't have which public clouds do? Other than the NSA snooping, that is...Well, you're all alone, of course. If you want to share a file with another student from uni, you have to create an account or use a shared link. He/she will then have to visit your ownCloud to be able to work with you. It gets quickly messy with a lot of files.This is where Server to Server sharing comes in. You can simply share a link and your collaboration partner can add this, either a folder or a single file, to his or her own ownCloud. They can put the file wherever they want in their folder structure (we've gotten rid of that rigid shared folder concept in ownCloud 7!) and work with you like the file was on their own instance.That means they can also locally sync the file with their sync client by just putting it in a folder that is synced!Boom. You don't have to create and manage multiple server accounts in your sync client, creating a folder on your system for each server you work with. No, you just add the share to your ownCloud and put the files wherever you want - in one folder, or grouped by subject - whatever works best.Now tell me that isn't awesome ;-)There's moreOf course, this is just a first step to bringing ownCloud servers closer to each other. Our goal is full 'federation' of data: transparent sharing between servers so they can act as one cloud, protecting privacy while giving you the convenience of sharing, collaborating and communicating with friends, family, collegues and more. Once you connected to another ownCloud, you should be able to share files with the users on that server seemlessly - and other data, like contacts or music! You should be notified when things are shared (a news feed!) and be able to comment and chat. This however still needs work. If you're interested in helping to make this happen, consider joining us at the ownCloud Contributor Conference from August 26-31 in Berlin, Germany!* Note that you can have kind-of server-to-server sharing with ownCloud 6 by manually mounting folders from other servers via webdav. This of course comes with various limitations (you do have to give out webdav credentials, to name one) so the new server to server sharing is a massive improvement... [Less]

Seven days from now, ownCloud 7 will be released, and we want the whole world to know about it. New ownCloud users not only free their own data, but more ownCloud users also means more support and development for ownCloud. So spread the word about ... [More] ownCloud to family, friends, colleagues and businesses! How can you help? ownCloud 7 launch graphicSocial media ownCloud 7 will be released on the 23rd of July and we want to reach as many people as possible. Re-tweeting and sharing the messages we put out on our Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus is a great help! And if you’re not yet following those pages, this is a good time to start. Share the great sneak peeks of the upcoming release we wrote over the last weeks: ownCloud 7 for developers ownCloud 7 for administrators online collaboration with Documents Performance and Ease of use More sharing! Improved sharing You don’t have to just share what we say. We love to hear how ownCloud helps you! Share what you’re up to with #ownCloud7 on your favorite social media and with our ownClouders accounts. We’ll feature the most creative, impressive, novel or outright crazy use of ownCloud on this blog! To spread the news of the upcoming release in graphics, put the ownCloud 7 banner on the right on your blog, website or forum! Use this code: Last but not least, consider joining us on the release day for our live Google Hangout! The upcoming ownCloud 7 is a big deal: the release brings smashing features and we’re very proud of what is coming. Of course, in preparation of the release, you should plan on joining (or organizing) a release party to meet fellow ownClouders in real life and discuss all this awesomeness! [Less]

ownCloud 7 is coming on the 23rd of July, that is – in 8 days! As we have put in some serious work to make this release happen, it is a good cause for celebration. In other words: release party time! ownCloud 7 Release Parties A release party brings ... [More] together ownCloud users and/or developers in a place where they can meet and talk, perhaps with some beverages around. You can share how you use ownCloud, the good and bad experiences you had with the new release and what ideas you have for it in the future. Want to be there? We will gather release party locations and dates on the ownCloud events page. No party around? Organize one! Organizing Organizing a Release Party is done in the following three simple steps: 1. Find a space. Simple is good: perhaps a room in your university, office or a cafe or restaurant2. Register your release party by pinging Jos3. Invite people: create a Facebook and/or G+ event page, tweet about it, ping local tech groups and talk to your friends.At the event, find out who are there, what they do with ownCloud and how it is working for them! A round of introductions will do great. Talk to people you don’t know first, perhaps organize a quick presentation of the new features but always remember: it is people that make ownCloud awesome, so bringing them together is all that really counts. Stay awesome and have fun! [Less]

ownCloud Webinar: Learn how ownCloud can scale for your organization LEXINGTON, Mass., July 15, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Why lose the control, privacy and security of your files and data to a public cloud when ownCloud, Inc., the company behind the ... [More] world’s most popular open source file sync and share software, can show you how to give end users the speed, flexibility and scalability of a public cloud provider. ownCloud has recently partnered with Red Hat and with IBM to create two separate reports on scaling. IBM published a report citing the performance for 100,000 ownCloud users on their infrastructure. Red Hat Storage also reports benchmark results on 42,000 users. Validation of ownCloud’s scaling capabilities can further be seen in NRW’s purchase of ownCloud to provide 500,000 users with enterprise-class file sync and share. [Less]

sharing admin settings The ownCloud 7 release is near and we have been doing a series of articles on the features introduced in it. Today, our focus is on changes that benefit ownCloud administrators. More control A major theme for ownCloud is ... [More] control over your data and the people using it. ownCloud 7 makes it easier for admins to control the storage and sharing by users on an ownCloud server. Storage Admins can now specify which external storage types can be added by end users in their personal tab. And user quota can now be configured to include or exclude external storage. For example, an admin can decide to count the FTP external storage and the ownCloud primary storage as part of the 5GB user quota, or the admin can choose to only count the primary storage as part of the quota. Making it easier to use Samba with ownCloud, this release makes it possible to connect to shares with the ownCloud credentials. Sharing and email templates Sharing can be turned on and off by group. For example, if you have a group of friends on your local ownCloud, you can disable sharing for them, while still allowing your family members to share. And the emails ownCloud sends when sharing files or links, as well as those for lost password recovery, can now be edited from the admin panel. Security To improve security, admins can now control settings including expiration and sharing. Users can be required to set a password on shared links and a default and max expiration time can be set for the shares. Also important for security is the ability of the Anti-virus app to use external virus scanners (rather than the default CLAM AV) in scanning files as they arrive on the server. Performance ownCloud 7 includes many enhancements, and several of those benefit large installations. Two of these are the AD/LDAP improvements and the new user management.Mail templates Several changes have been made to the LDAP and Active Directory plug-in application, improving both the performance of the application as well as the compatibility with openLDAP, AD and other vendors. For example, the plug-in can now manage paginated responses to handle tens of thousands of users that are part of a single flat OU. The user management interface has been improved as well. Administrators can now view all ownCloud users in a single scrolling window, filter user lists by group, and search by user display name using the new text filter. User attributes have also been added, included the storage location for each user (where their files are stored) and the last time they logged in. New groups can be added with a click of a button. Adding users and editing user attributes, like group memberships, quota, and group admin rights is now faster and easier than ever. ownCloud 7 is coming soon, with many new features and improvements. If you’d like to read the previous sneak previews, you can find them here: online collaboration with Documents Performance and Ease of use More sharing! Improved sharing [Less]