ONLYOFFICE is not only a great suite of office applications and web-based project management tools, but also an efficient platform to keep your teams engaged with each other and with the company.
I’ve been kicking ONLYOFFICE for a while. Why? Simply put, it’s a great way to add a document management service to your LAN. However, as you may have seen, it is much more than that.
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When you deploy the ONLYOFFICE server, you’ll find it includes tools like:
- Documents – a full suite of web-based office applications
- Project Management – a feature-rich project management tool
- CRM – an easy-to-use Customer Relationship Manager
- Email – a simple web-based email client
- Everyone – user/group manager
Along with that ride is the Community tool, which for some will be a very pleasant surprise.
What is the ONLYOFFICE Community feature?
The Community feature in ONLYOFFICE is all about sharing information with a community of people. Said community will be the users that connect to your ONLYOFFICE instance. In other words, the people in your company.
With Community you can share bookmarks, news, maintain company wikis, write internal blogs, host company forums, share polls and surveys, exchange instant messages and create group chats (via Talk) and configure notifications.
The ONLYOFFICE Community feature is a great addition to keep your employees engaged and up to date. And best of all, it’s built-in and easy to use. If your company relies on email preferences to keep employees up to date with news, updates, documents, events, and even keep a shared collection of important bookmarks, Community ONLYOFFICE is one of the simplest on-premises options available. And because ONLYOFFICE can be quickly deployed as a Docker containerYour employees (both onsite and remotely) can enjoy the Community feature instantly.
This is a no-brainer for any company looking for an internal platform to keep teams in the know.
How to use the ONLYOFFICE Community feature
Now that you know the ONLYOFFICE Community, how do you use it? Log in to your ONLYOFFICE instance and click the Community icon (Picture A).
Picture A
You will be prompted to go through the Welcome wizard and on the last page you will be asked to create your first Welcome post. Go ahead and create that post, which will take you to what will be a pretty familiar web-based editor (Picture A).
Figure BUT
Your Welcome Post will be the default page that all team members see when they open the Community feature.
After creating your Welcome post, you will be taken back to the main Community page. Click on the Create drop-down menu and you will see how easy it is to create a Blog post, News, Order, Announcement, Poll or Bookmark section.
The only bit of confusion I have when using the Community feature is the Order option (found in the Create drop-down menu). I assume this will be used to create purchase orders for resources (such as computer hardware, equipment supplies, etc.). It cannot. I guess that Orders are used to deliver tasks of higher importance to the company. The only caveat is that you cannot assign orders to users, which means anyone with an account on your ONLYOFFICE instance can view them.
While features like chat and forums are listed as part of the Community feature, in reality chat exits outside of this feature (as a Chat tool) and forums are not allowed. enabled by default. To enable the forum, log in ONLYOFFICE as an administrator and click Settings. In the window that appears, click on Modules & Tools, then click to enable Community Forums (SIZE).
SIZE
Click Save and Forum then you will be able to create your first forum by going to Community | Create | Forum. On the Forum creation page (Visualization), you can create a new category and add a title, name, and description to the forum.
Visualization
Once the Forum has been created, any user with access to ONLYOFFICE can join the discussion.
All in all, the ONLYOFFICE Community is a great addition to the platform, a community that will help your teams stay informed and connected. If you use ONLYOFFICE, I highly recommend this option, so that your employees are informed and engaged with each other and the company better.
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