Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at 📦 Apps & Plugins.

Nextcloud on its own is already a powerful platform, but where it really shines is in its app ecosystem. You can extend what Nextcloud does by installing apps and plugins that plug straight into the core system. At NZRT, there’s a curated list of recommended apps that are either already installed or considered essential additions, and today we’re going to walk through all of that.

So let’s start with the recommended apps. There are three broad categories to think about: core functionality, security, and compliance or performance.

On the core side, you’ve got Talk, which handles chat, video, and calls. Then Calendar for scheduling and events, and Contacts for your address book. Deck handles task management, and Collectives gives you a built-in wiki and documentation space. Rounding out the core apps is Nextcloud Office, which lets you edit documents directly inside Nextcloud.

Then there are the security-focused apps. User LDAP handles Active Directory integration, so your existing user accounts can connect through. Two-Factor Authentication lets you enforce two-factor login across the platform. And Suspicious Login does exactly what it sounds like — it watches for unusual access patterns and flags anomalies.

Finally, from a compliance and performance angle, Audit Logging captures compliance-grade logs of activity on the system, and Full-Text Search indexes your documents so you can actually find things quickly.

Now, when you need to install a new app, you’ve got two ways to do it. The first is through the graphical interface. You go into Settings, then across to Apps, and you use the search field to find the app you want. Once you find it, you hit Install, approve whatever permissions it asks for, and then enable it. That’s the straightforward GUI route — no command line needed.

The second method is through the command line, and this is what system administrators often prefer for consistency and automation. There are two commands you’d run in sequence. The first tells the system to install the app by name. The second command then enables it so it becomes active. Simple two-step process on the server side.

Speaking of permissions — and this is important — whenever you’re installing an app, you should always stop and review what access it’s asking for. There are three main things to look at. First, file access: can this app read or write to user files? Second, user data: can it see usernames and email addresses? And third, admin functions: can it actually change system settings? These aren’t just checkbox exercises. Understanding what an app can access is how you prevent unintended data exposure.

Which brings us to how NZRT actually handles this process. It’s not a free-for-all. There’s a structured approval workflow before any new app hits production. Step one, your admin — that’s xc — evaluates whether the app actually meets the business requirement. Step two, there’s a permissions and security audit to understand what the app touches and whether that’s acceptable. Step three, the app gets tested in a staging environment first, not straight onto the live system. Step four, once it passes testing, it gets deployed to production and users are notified. And step five, the team monitors it after deployment — if something doesn’t look right, the app gets disabled.

The key people involved in that vetting process are xc on the admin side and dan on the security side. Together they make sure nothing goes into production that could cause data leakage or introduce vulnerabilities.

The bigger picture here is that apps are how you make Nextcloud fit NZRT’s actual workflows rather than working around a generic tool. Talk keeps internal communication inside the platform. Deck and Collectives mean project management and documentation don’t have to live in separate external systems. Office means you’re not exporting files to edit them elsewhere. Each app closes a gap, and the approval process makes sure closing that gap doesn’t open a new one.

If you want to dig deeper into related topics, the wiki also covers Administration Overview, Performance Tuning, and Audit Logs — all connected to this area.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.