Tag Archives: nextcloud

00 - Nextcloud Overview, 000NCL

Admin Dashboard

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.

00 - Nextcloud Overview, 000NCL

Architecture Tech Stack

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.

000NCL, 08 - Reference

Nextcloud Apps Directory

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at 📱 Nextcloud Apps Directory.

So if you’ve been wondering what apps NZRT recommends layering on top of Nextcloud, this episode walks you through the full catalog — what each app does, who at NZRT uses it, and whether it’s considered essential or just optional.

Let’s start with the core communication apps. These are the ones that keep the team connected day to day. First up is Talk, which handles chat, video calls, and screen sharing — version 17 or higher, and it’s used by everyone across the org. Then you’ve got Calendar for shared scheduling, mainly used by xc, sun, and fin. Contacts gives you an address book and light CRM functionality, and that’s in the hands of xc, pam, and cas. Mail is also available for email integration, though it’s flagged as optional and mainly relevant to fin and han.

Moving into productivity and project management apps. Deck is a Kanban-style board for task management — think cards and columns — and pam, cas, sun, and dan all rely on it. Collectives is a wiki-style documentation tool, used by xc and ema for team knowledge bases. Nextcloud Office integrates OnlyOffice so you can edit documents right inside Nextcloud — that’s a core app for ema, fin, and pam. Tasks and Notes round out this category as optional tools available to everyone if they want lightweight to-do lists or quick note capture.

For file management, most of the heavy lifting comes from built-in apps. You’ve got the core Files app, Groupfolders for setting up team folders with proper permissions, External Storage for mounting things like NAS drives or S3 buckets, and then the usual suspects — Trash for the recycle bin, Versions for file history, and Sharing for passing files and folders around. All of these are available to everyone, with a few like Groupfolders and External Storage being managed by xc or dan.

Now security and admin — this section matters a lot. User LDAP connects Nextcloud to directory services for authentication. Two-Factor Auth enforces 2FA at the platform level. Suspicious Login watches for anomalous login patterns. Audit Logging keeps compliance records. And Brute-Force Protection throttles repeated failed login attempts. All of these are core and sit firmly in xc’s domain, with dan also involved in LDAP and audit logging. On top of those, you’ve got optional extras: OTP for one-time passwords, and FIDO2 WebAuthn if you want hardware key support.

Integration and automation apps are next. Webhooks let you trigger automation based on events inside Nextcloud — that’s useful for dan and ema. The REST API and WebDAV support are built in and used by everyone for file sync and system integrations. OAuth2 is available optionally for third-party authentication flows, managed by dan.

For search and performance, Full-Text Search with Elasticsearch integration lets you search inside documents, not just filenames — that’s recommended and looked after by dai and ema, with dan handling the Elasticsearch side. Redis is the caching backend and is core infrastructure managed by dan.

In the Office and Document category, Nextcloud Office appears again because it’s that central — ema and fin use it for document collaboration. PDF Viewer supports annotation and viewing, used by fin, cas, and han. Text is a plain text editor available to all as optional. Markdown Editor is also optional and mainly used by ema and dai.

For CRM and ERP integration, the REST API built into Nextcloud is what connects to Dolibarr and WordPress. Webhooks can be layered on top for event-driven sync. Both are managed by ema and dan.

Backup and disaster recovery wraps things up. There’s a Backup app for built-in backups managed by dan, and External Storage doubles as a backup mounting point for NAS.

There’s also a short list of apps NZRT does not recommend. Nextcloud Hub is noted as already built in, so no separate install needed. Pricing Plans is a SaaS-only concept that doesn’t apply here. Custom Apps require vetting before use. And Third-Party Cloud Storage is skipped in favour of the External Storage app instead.

Now, the wiki includes an installation script — and rather than reading you lines of code, here’s what it does in plain terms. It defines a list of recommended app names — things like talk, calendar, contacts, deck, collectives, the Nextcloud Office package, user LDAP, two-factor auth, suspicious login, full-text search, audit logging, and groupfolders. It then loops through that list one by one, installs each app, enables it, and prints a confirmation message so you can see what’s been set up. It’s a clean, repeatable way to get a fresh Nextcloud instance up to NZRT standard in one go.

To zoom out: the whole point of this app catalog is to make Nextcloud actually work for NZRT’s specific setup. That means tight Dolibarr integration via the REST API, team communication through Talk and Calendar, and solid document workflows through Office and PDF Viewer. Every app on the core list has a clear owner and a clear job.

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

000NCL, 08 - Reference

Nextcloud Cli Cheatsheet

Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at 🎯 Nextcloud CLI Cheatsheet.

If you manage a Nextcloud installation, you’ll quickly discover that the command line is your best friend. Nextcloud ships with a built-in tool called occ — short for ownCloud Console — and it handles just about everything you’d ever need to do from the server side. Let’s walk through the key things you can do with it.

Starting with user management. You can create a new user, delete one, or just pull up a list of everyone on the system. If someone forgets their password, there’s a command to reset it. You can also temporarily block a user from logging in by disabling their account, then re-enable them when needed. Setting storage quotas is straightforward too — you specify the user and a size value, and Nextcloud enforces that limit. You can also check when a user last logged in, which is handy for auditing inactive accounts.

Group management works in a similar way. You create a group by name, add users to it, remove users from it, and delete the group when it’s no longer needed. There are commands to list every user inside a specific group, and also to look up which groups a particular user belongs to — both directions covered.

For app management, occ lets you install, enable, disable, update, and remove apps without touching the web interface. You can list everything currently installed, check info on a specific app, or update all apps in one go. This is especially useful when you’re doing maintenance windows and want to script the whole thing.

File management is where things get really practical. If you’ve added files directly to the server — bypassing the web upload — Nextcloud won’t know they exist until you run a file scan. You can scan all users at once or target a specific user. There’s also a cleanup command that permanently removes trash items older than thirty days, a cache check for flagging file database inconsistencies, and commands to transfer all of one user’s files to another user, or to clear the file cache entirely.

On the database side, there are a few important housekeeping commands. One converts the file cache table to support larger integer values, which is something you’ll need on big installations. Another checks for and adds missing primary keys. You can also run raw database queries directly through occ if you need to inspect table sizes or check on the database state.

Configuration management is powerful. You can get or set configuration values for any app, delete config keys you no longer need, or list all configuration currently active on the system. System-wide settings work the same way — for example, you can read or update the list of trusted domains that Nextcloud will respond to.

Maintenance mode is something you’ll use before any major update or restore. One command turns it on, blocking all user access, and another turns it off again. You can also check the current system status, find out where the data directory lives, and get help on any specific command if you’re unsure of its options.

For sharing, you can list all active shares on the system, create a new share pointing to a file or folder, delete a share by its ID, or transfer share ownership from one user to another. This is useful when staff members leave and you need to reassign their shared content cleanly.

Logging and monitoring are covered too. Rather than using occ directly for logs, you’ll tail the main Nextcloud log file — you can view the last fifty lines, watch it in real time as events come in, or search it for error-level entries specifically. Background jobs have their own set of commands: you can check the queue status, list pending jobs, or manually trigger one job to run immediately.

Backup and restore rely on standard Linux tools alongside occ. For the database, you use mysqldump to export everything to a SQL file, and then restore by piping that file back into MySQL. For the Nextcloud application directory itself, you compress it into a tar archive for backup and extract it to restore. Always combine both steps — database and files — for a complete backup.

Finally, if you’re running LDAP for centralised user authentication, occ has you covered there too. You can test whether your LDAP connection is working, view the current LDAP configuration, sync users and groups from your directory, and inspect the mapping between LDAP entries and Nextcloud accounts.

At NZRT, both xc as the admin and dan as the DBA work with these commands regularly — for provisioning new users, managing groups, running maintenance, and troubleshooting issues as they come up. If you want to go deeper, the related notes in the wiki cover the full occ command reference and the administration overview.

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

000NCL, 03 - Document Management

Nextcloud Office

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

If you’ve ever wished you could edit a Word document, a spreadsheet, or a presentation without leaving Nextcloud — that’s exactly what Nextcloud Office gives you. It integrates OnlyOffice directly into the Nextcloud interface, so everything stays on NZRT’s own infrastructure. No Microsoft Office subscription, no Google Docs, no third-party SaaS tools — just your files, in your cloud, with a full-featured office editor built right in.

Let’s start with what file types you can work with. On the document side, you’ve got the standard Word formats — docx, odt, and doc — so whether you’re coming from Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, you’re covered. For spreadsheets, you can open and edit xlsx, xls, and ods files. And if you need to work on a presentation, pptx, odp, and ppt are all supported. That covers the formats most teams will ever need.

Now let’s talk about what you can actually do inside those files. Nextcloud Office supports real-time collaboration, which means multiple people can be editing the same document at exactly the same time. You can see where everyone else’s cursor is sitting, live, as they type. That’s the co-editing feature, and it’s particularly useful when your team is spread across locations.

There’s also a comments and change tracking system built in. You can leave comments, make suggestions, and have other people review and accept or reject those changes — the same workflow you’d expect from a mature office suite. And if something goes wrong, or you just want to see what a document looked like before the last round of edits, version history has you covered. Nextcloud takes automatic snapshots before each edit session, so you’ve always got a trail to roll back to.

One more thing worth mentioning — mobile support. If you’re on a tablet and need to review or edit a document on the go, the Nextcloud mobile app gives you access to Nextcloud Office as well. So you’re not tied to a desk.

Now, NZRT has a set of standard document templates stored in the Shared Templates folder. There are four of them. First, a budget spreadsheet used by the finance team for budgeting work. Second, a Word document for legal contracts. Third, a presentation file used by the sales team for putting together proposals. And fourth, another Word document for standard operating procedures. If you’re creating any of those kinds of documents, start from the template rather than from scratch.

Let me touch briefly on how Nextcloud Office gets configured under the hood. There’s a command-line tool that Nextcloud uses for administration. To get Nextcloud Office running, you first enable an application called richdocuments — that’s the connector between Nextcloud and the OnlyOffice engine. Then you tell Nextcloud where the OnlyOffice document server is running. In NZRT’s setup, that server runs locally, and the configuration just points Nextcloud at its address. Once those two steps are done, the editor becomes available to everyone in Nextcloud automatically.

From an NZRT operations perspective, this matters because it removes the need for Microsoft Office licenses entirely. The finance agent, the sales agent, and the EDM agent all work directly in Nextcloud on budgets, proposals, and contracts. Version history means every change is tracked, giving you a clear audit trail of who edited what and when — and that matters a lot for any document with legal or financial weight.

If you want to dig deeper, there are related wiki pages on Document Management Overview, Tagging and Search, and Versioning and Trash — all of which connect to how Nextcloud Office fits into the broader document workflow at NZRT.

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

00 - Nextcloud Overview, 000NCL

Nextcloud Overview

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.