Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at ⚙️ Admin Dashboard.

If you’re working with Nextcloud at NZRT, the Admin Dashboard is your central hub for keeping everything running smoothly. You can get to it by navigating to the admin section of your Nextcloud settings. From there, you have control over pretty much everything — users, apps, security, and the overall health of the system.

Let’s walk through what you’ll find when you get there.

The dashboard is organized into several core sections. First up is the Overview, which gives you a quick snapshot of system health, storage usage, how many users you have, and which sessions are currently active. Think of it as your at-a-glance health check.

Next is Basic Settings. This is where you configure things like trusted domains, how background jobs are handled, and your email setup. If Nextcloud needs to send notifications or password resets, this is where that gets configured.

Then there’s Security. This section lets you enforce two-factor authentication across your users, set password policies, and configure rate limiting — which helps protect the system against brute-force login attempts.

Sharing settings let you control how files and folders are shared. You can set the defaults for sharing behavior, manage federated sharing with other Nextcloud instances, and control whether public links are allowed and under what conditions.

Users and Groups is where you manage your actual user accounts — adding people, assigning them to groups, and setting storage quotas so nobody accidentally fills up the server.

The Apps section lets you install, enable, or disable apps within Nextcloud and manage what permissions those apps have. This is important for keeping the feature set aligned with what NZRT actually needs.

And finally, Monitoring gives you access to the activity log, the audit trail, and the status of background jobs. If something seems off, this is usually your first stop for investigating what’s happening.

Now let’s talk about some of the common tasks you’ll actually perform in the dashboard. There are six key tasks worth knowing about. Viewing users is done by going to Settings then Users. Enabling two-factor authentication is also under Settings, in the Security area. Configuring LDAP for directory integration lives under Settings in the LDAP section. Managing apps is under Settings then Apps. Viewing logs is under Settings then Logging. And checking storage is available right from the Overview section. So across all six of these tasks, you’re mostly navigating through the Settings menu, which keeps things fairly intuitive once you know the layout.

One of the more technical but important aspects of running Nextcloud is background jobs. Nextcloud needs a process running in the background to handle things like syncing calendars, updating file type databases, sending notifications, and general housekeeping. There are a few ways to set this up — you can use Ajax, which runs jobs when users interact with the system, or you can use a proper system-level scheduled task, which is more reliable.

For NZRT, the recommended approach is system cron, running every five minutes. What that looks like in practice is two scheduled commands that run automatically on that five-minute cycle. The first one updates the file type database so Nextcloud correctly recognizes and handles different kinds of files. The second one syncs birthday calendars from your contacts into the calendar app. Both of these run as the web server user and call Nextcloud’s built-in command-line tool to do their work. Once set up in your system’s cron scheduler, they just happen in the background without you needing to think about them.

In the context of NZRT specifically, the admin role — that’s the xc account — uses the dashboard on a daily basis. The main things you’re checking for are Nextcloud’s overall health, whether user quotas are being respected, what’s showing up in the activity logs, and whether the integrations with Dolibarr and WordPress are still functioning correctly. Those integrations are important to NZRT’s day-to-day workflow, so keeping an eye on them through the dashboard is a routine part of the admin’s responsibilities.

If you want to go deeper on any of the areas covered today, the related wiki notes to look at are the Administration Overview, Apps and Plugins, and Users and Groups pages. Those will give you more detail on each of those specific areas.

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

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Architecture & Tech Stack.

So let’s start with what we’re actually talking about here. NZRT runs its own instance of Nextcloud, which is a self-hosted file sync and collaboration platform. You can reach it online at cloud dot nzrtnetwork dot com slash nextcloud. If you’re working locally on Nathan’s laptop, everything syncs down automatically through the Nextcloud desktop client into a folder called Nextcloud2 under the main user directory. So when you’re offline, your files are still right there on disk.

Now let’s walk through the tech stack — in other words, what’s actually powering this thing under the hood. There are seven components worth knowing about. First, hosting. Nextcloud lives on Hoopla, which is a shared Linux hosting environment managed through cPanel. Second, the web server is Apache, and cPanel handles its configuration. Third, PHP — again cPanel-managed, running version 8 or higher. Fourth, the database is MySQL version 8, and the specific database name is nzrtnetw underscore nc. Fifth, storage lives on the cPanel filesystem under the home directory for the nzrtnetw account. Sixth, caching — and this is worth noting — there’s no caching layer available here because shared hosting doesn’t support it. And seventh, search uses Nextcloud’s own built-in search engine. There’s no Elasticsearch, again because shared hosting doesn’t give you that option.

Now let’s talk about the system architecture — how all the pieces connect. Picture it as three layers stacked on top of each other. At the top you have the client layer, which is the Nextcloud desktop client running on the laptop. It connects over a secure HTTPS connection down to the middle layer, which is the Nextcloud web application itself — Apache and PHP running on Hoopla’s shared hosting at that cloud dot nzrtnetwork dot com address. From there, Nextcloud splits into two directions. On one side it talks to the MySQL database to store metadata and application data. On the other side it reads and writes actual files to the cPanel filesystem. And here’s the interesting part — sitting beneath that same database layer, sharing the same cPanel hosting account, you also have Dolibarr and WordPress. So all three applications — Nextcloud, Dolibarr, and WordPress — are running as neighbours on the same Hoopla account.

That shared hosting arrangement is actually central to how NZRT’s systems fit together, so it’s worth keeping in mind when you’re thinking about integrations or troubleshooting.

Speaking of integrations, there are four key ones to know. First, Dolibarr — that’s the ERP system used for document management and business workflows, and it sits right there on the same cPanel instance. Second, WordPress handles the public-facing website and content management, also on the same instance. Third, the desktop client keeps files synced to the laptop at that Nextcloud2 folder path, giving you offline access to the vault and shared folders. And fourth, WebDAV — this is the protocol that agents and automation scripts use to access files programmatically. The WebDAV endpoint lives at cloud dot nzrtnetwork dot com slash nextcloud slash remote dot php slash dav slash.

To wrap it all up — NZRT’s Nextcloud setup is deliberately lean. It’s shared hosting, so you don’t get extras like caching or Elasticsearch, but what you do get is tight co-location with Dolibarr and WordPress, solid file sync to the laptop, and a clean WebDAV interface for automated access. Everything runs under one cPanel account, which keeps the infrastructure simple and in one place.

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

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at 📚 Nextcloud Overview.

So, what is Nextcloud? At its core, Nextcloud is an open-source platform that handles file hosting, team collaboration, and communication — all in one place. Think of it as NZRT’s self-hosted alternative to something like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. The key word there is self-hosted, which means NZRT owns and controls the infrastructure rather than relying on a third-party cloud provider. That matters for privacy, security, and integration flexibility.

For NZRT specifically, the Nextcloud instance runs on the Hoopla cPanel server — that’s the live, online server, not anything local. You can reach it at cloud dot nzrtnetwork dot com forward slash nextcloud. If you’re on the desktop, you’ll also find it synced locally to a folder called Nextcloud2 under the main user profile. So changes you make on the server show up on your machine and vice versa — that’s the sync client doing its job.

Now let’s walk through what Nextcloud actually does. There are six main capability areas worth knowing.

First, file sync and sharing. This is the bread and butter. You get cross-platform sync clients, so whether you’re on Windows, Mac, or mobile, your files follow you. You can create secure sharing links and set granular permissions, meaning you can control exactly who can view, edit, or download a file.

Second, collaboration tools. Nextcloud includes a built-in chat feature called Talk, which handles both text messaging and video calls. There are also shared calendars and something called Deck, which is a task board tool — similar to Trello if you’ve used that. So team coordination happens inside Nextcloud without jumping to external apps.

Third, the office suite. Nextcloud integrates with OnlyOffice, which lets you create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly in the browser. No sending files to Google Docs or Microsoft 365 — it all stays within the NZRT ecosystem.

Fourth, document management and Dolibarr integration. This is a big one for NZRT. Nextcloud syncs with Dolibarr, which is the ERP system used for invoices, contracts, and project management. That connection means documents like invoices and contracts can be stored in Nextcloud with full version control, and Dolibarr can reference or manage them through its document module. It creates a proper approval and versioning workflow without manual file juggling.

Fifth, the API and WebDAV support. Nextcloud exposes a RESTful API and supports the WebDAV protocol. In plain terms, that means other systems and automation scripts can talk to Nextcloud programmatically — uploading files, reading folder contents, creating share links, all without a human clicking through the interface. This is how NZRT’s agents and scripts interact with Nextcloud behind the scenes.

Sixth, security. Nextcloud offers end-to-end encryption for sensitive files, supports single sign-on and LDAP directory integration, two-factor authentication, and keeps audit logs so you can track who accessed or changed what.

Now, zooming out to the NZRT picture — Nextcloud sits at the centre of NZRT’s self-hosted infrastructure and acts as the collaboration backbone. It’s the central file hub that the whole team works from, which means there’s no dependence on external cloud services for day-to-day document work. It bridges into Dolibarr for things like invoice storage, contract versioning, and document approval workflows. It also ties into WordPress, helping manage media assets and supporting author collaboration on content. And as mentioned, the Talk feature replaces external chat tools like Slack for internal team communication. Calendars and contacts round it out, feeding into scheduling and CRM use cases.

The service code for Nextcloud within NZRT’s systems is 000NCL — you’ll see that referenced in tickets, repos, and documentation whenever something relates to the Nextcloud platform.

If you want to go deeper, there are related wiki notes covering the architecture and tech stack, installation and setup, the admin dashboard, and NZRT-specific Nextcloud configuration. Those are worth exploring if you’re working on anything infrastructure-related or need to understand how the system was put together.

The short version: Nextcloud is NZRT’s self-hosted Google Workspace equivalent, running live on Hoopla, synced to your desktop, wired into Dolibarr and WordPress, and accessible via API for automation. It’s not just file storage — it’s the connective tissue for how the team works, shares, and communicates.

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