Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at the Document Management Overview.

If you work with documents at NZRT — and chances are you do — this episode covers how everything fits together. We’re talking about how Nextcloud’s document management tools and Dolibarr ERP work in tandem to keep contracts, invoices, and business records organized, versioned, and compliant.

Let’s start with the tools you have available inside Nextcloud. There are five key features in the document management suite. First up is Nextcloud Office, which runs OnlyOffice as an editor built right into the platform. That means you can create and edit documents — word processing files, spreadsheets, presentations — without ever leaving Nextcloud or touching an external cloud service. Everything stays in-house.

Next is the PDF Viewer. This one is more powerful than it sounds. You can annotate PDFs, highlight sections, add comments, and even sign documents. You can also preview a file before you download it, which saves you time when you’re hunting through a busy folder.

Then there’s Tagging. You can organize your documents with searchable tags — things like invoice, contract, or draft. This makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for without needing to remember exactly where you saved something.

Alongside tagging, you’ve got full-text Search. That means Nextcloud can look inside your documents — not just at filenames — and return results based on the actual content. Very useful when you know what a document says but not what it’s called.

And finally there’s Retention. This is an automated feature that removes old documents according to your defined policy. If something has a set lifespan, Nextcloud handles the cleanup for you without any manual work on your end.

Now let’s talk about how documents actually flow through NZRT. There’s a three-stage workflow. It begins in Dolibarr, where documents are created — things like invoices, contracts, and purchase orders originate in the ERP system. From there, they move into Nextcloud for storage and version control. Inside Nextcloud, the Files app handles the actual file storage, Nextcloud Talk supports approval conversations, and Nextcloud Deck helps with tracking where a document is in its lifecycle. The third stage is archiving. Documents that are ninety days old or older get moved out to external storage, and that includes a NAS backup for long-term retention.

Now let’s look at who owns what. There are five document types at NZRT, and each one has a designated owner, an approver, and a defined archive period. Invoices are owned by the finance agent and approved by xc, the executive controller, and they’re kept for seven years to satisfy legal requirements. Contracts are handled by the client and accounts services agent, also approved by xc, and retained indefinitely. Purchase orders belong to the supply and resources agent, are approved by the finance agent, and kept for three years. HR records are managed by the HR and admin agent, approved by xc, stored for seven years, and importantly they’re encrypted. And finally, reports are produced by the data and intelligence agent, approved by xc, and held for five years.

So why does all of this matter in the NZRT context? Document management sits right at the heart of the Dolibarr ERP workflow. Every invoice, contract, and purchase order that moves through the business ends up in Nextcloud for storage, versioning, and approval tracking. That’s not just about staying organized — it’s about staying compliant with both business requirements and legal obligations. Having a clear chain of ownership and defined retention periods means you always know where a document is, who approved it, and how long it needs to be kept.

If you want to go deeper on any of these topics, there are related notes in the wiki covering Nextcloud Office, the PDF Viewer, Tagging and Search, and the Dolibarr integration specifically. Each of those gives you more detail on the individual components covered today.

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 the Nextcloud PDF Viewer.

If you’ve ever found yourself downloading a PDF just to highlight a line or scribble a note, then uploading it again and emailing it to someone who needs to sign it — you know how tedious that loop can get. The Nextcloud PDF Viewer is built to cut that cycle out entirely. Everything happens right inside your browser, inside Nextcloud, without touching external software.

So let’s walk through what it can actually do for you.

First, the basics. When you open a PDF in Nextcloud, you get a fast, responsive viewer right in the browser. No waiting for Adobe to load, no plugin errors. From there, you’ve got a full set of navigation controls — you can zoom in and out, rotate pages, jump to bookmarks in longer documents, and select and copy text directly from the file. That last one is handy when you need to pull a quote from a contract without retyping it by hand.

Now, where it gets really useful is annotations. You can highlight text, underline it, strike through it, and attach notes — all without altering the original file in a destructive way. And you can digitally sign PDFs directly inside Nextcloud, embedding your signature right there in the document.

Let’s talk about how that annotation workflow actually looks in practice. You open your PDF in Nextcloud, then click the Annotate button. From there, you add your highlights, your notes, your signature — whatever the document needs. When you save, Nextcloud automatically creates a new version of the file, so the original is preserved and you’ve got a clean audit trail. Then you can share a link directly with whoever is next in your approval chain. No downloading, no re-uploading, no email attachments bouncing back and forth.

Now let’s talk about how NZRT teams actually use this day to day. There are four main areas where PDF Viewer makes a real difference.

Finance uses it to review invoices and contracts, and to add approval signatures without anyone needing to print a single page. Sales uses it to annotate proposals with client feedback — so when a client marks up a quote, those notes live right alongside the document in Nextcloud rather than in a separate email thread. HR uses it to sign offer letters and NDAs, again without printing. And on the document management side, annotated files can be archived with Dolibarr integration, so your signed and reviewed documents feed directly into your ERP records.

On the technical side, getting the PDF Viewer running on your Nextcloud instance is straightforward. There are two commands you’d run on your server. The first enables the PDF viewer app itself. The second enables a companion app for e-books, so your Nextcloud instance can handle that format as well. Both are single-line commands run through the Nextcloud command-line tool, and once they’re done, the functionality is live for your users.

To put it simply, for NZRT the big win here is eliminating the download-edit-reupload cycle entirely. The three roles that benefit most are Finance, Sales, and HR — referred to internally as fin, cas, and han. These are the people who are regularly handling contracts, proposals, and HR documents that need review and sign-off. By keeping all of that inside Nextcloud, you speed up approval workflows, reduce version confusion, and keep your document history tidy in one place.

If you want to dig deeper into related topics, the wiki also covers Document Management Overview, Nextcloud Office for live document editing, and Permissions and Sharing for controlling who can see and annotate your files.

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 Tagging & Search.

If you’ve ever dug through a shared drive looking for one specific contract or invoice and come up empty, this episode is for you. Nextcloud’s tagging and search features exist to solve exactly that problem — helping everyone at NZRT find documents quickly, stay organized, and meet record retention requirements without a lot of manual hunting.

Let’s start with the tag system. At NZRT, tags aren’t just freeform labels — admins create and maintain a standardized set so that everyone is tagging consistently. There are eight standard tags you’ll encounter across the vault, and each one has a defined purpose and a specific set of people responsible for applying it.

The first is “invoice,” which you’d apply to financial documents. That one is handled by our Finance agent and xc. Next is “contract,” used for legal agreements, applied by our Client & Strategy agent and xc. Then there’s “draft,” which marks anything still in progress — and that one is for everyone to use, not just a specific role.

Once something has been signed off or finalized, it gets the “approved” tag, and that’s applied by xc, Finance, or Client & Strategy depending on the document. The “confidential” tag marks restricted access files and is controlled by xc and our Handling agent. If a document has been synced across to the Dolibarr ERP system, it gets tagged “dolibarr,” and that’s managed by our Email & Integration agent and xc. Similarly, blog and website content gets a “wordpress” tag, applied by the Email and Publishing agents. And finally, anything heading into long-term storage picks up the “archive” tag, courtesy of our Data agent or xc.

So those eight tags give you a clean, shared vocabulary across the whole team. Instead of everyone inventing their own labels, you’ve got a consistent layer of metadata that makes searching reliable.

Speaking of searching — let’s talk about how the full-text search capability works under the hood. There’s a configuration step that enables the full-text search feature in Nextcloud. In plain terms, two extensions get switched on: one that provides the search interface inside Nextcloud itself, and one that connects it to Elasticsearch, which is the underlying search engine doing the heavy lifting. Once those are active, you run an indexing command that goes through all your existing documents and makes their contents searchable. So it’s not just searching file names — it’s looking inside PDFs, Word documents, and other files to find the actual words you’re looking for.

Once that’s set up, you can run some pretty powerful queries. Think of these like structured search requests. For example, you could search for all invoices from 2026 that were tagged by the Finance role — the system would return every document matching all three of those criteria at once. Or you could ask for all approved contract PDFs — filtering by file type, tag, and approval status simultaneously. You’re essentially layering filters together rather than doing one broad search and then manually sifting through results.

Now, why does all of this matter in the NZRT context? Tagging is tied directly to compliance. When documents are consistently tagged, it becomes much easier to apply and verify record retention policies — you know what’s been approved, what’s still a draft, what’s confidential, and what’s been archived. Without that consistency, things slip through the cracks.

There are also two agents with specific roles in keeping this system healthy. EDM — that’s our Email and Integration agent, ema — manages the tag hierarchy itself. So if you think a new tag should be added or an existing one needs changing, that goes through ema. And our Data agent, dai, uses tags as part of reporting and analytics work — so good tagging discipline directly feeds into the quality of the data that drives decisions.

If you want to go deeper, there are a few related topics worth exploring in the wiki. Document Management Overview gives you the broader picture of how files are structured and governed. The Files App article covers the day-to-day interface you’re working in. And NZRT Folder Structure explains how the directory layout is set up, which pairs naturally with tagging to give you both location-based and label-based ways to find what you need.

The short version: tag consistently using the standard set, use the search system to filter across multiple criteria at once, and you’ll spend a lot less time hunting for documents and a lot more time actually working with them.

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