Another start of the year, another big update for Nextcloud by ViOffice! This year’s update round is fully packed with design improvements, better performance and easier data migration. As always, we are grateful for the work done by Nextcloud and the Nextcloud Community. So many people’s work and free time has flown into the improvements we benefit from so much.
While the main theme is “Data Migration”, let’s discuss the most important improvements included in this update cycle feature to feature:
Design- and Performance improvements
If you open up the web interface of the cloud, you will instantly notice design improvements around better visualised buttons and new icon pictograms in our menu bars. Is affects both the main menu at the top of the screen, as well as the sidebar in the file-tree view of the cloud storage.
Performance improvements focused a lot on the server-backend, putting less resource strain on our hosting infrastructure. But users benefit too, for example with better upload coordination through the smartphone-apps, which required improvements on the server infrastructure, as well as faster uploads through the web-interface, also for external users.
We also enabled federated sharing, meaning that you can share files and collaborate with users on other Nextcloud servers seamlessly.
Security-wise, End-to-End encrypted (E2EE) directories got a massive feature improvement, as E2EE can now be enabled directly from the web interface, without the need of mobile or desktop sync clients. End-to-End encrypted file-shares and file drop links are now also possible, improving security and privacy of our users substantially. All non-E2EE files remain encrypted under our default server-side encryption, as has always been the case.
Videoconferencing and Groupware
The Videoconference and Chat solution “Talk” now has a proper Home Screen that gives an overview on upcoming meetings, missed messages and general reminders. Talk now also has a newly designed bottom bar in calls, that looks a little more polished and gives better access to actions within calls (like screen sharing, muting, etc.). Messages can now also be scheduled and drafted beforehand.
The Mail application also has further improvements that let you manage incoming mail with filters and move them to other folders more easily than before. Calendar is now neatly integrated with polls, when planning an event or meeting and requiring other people’s availability times.
Collabora Online
Our office solution, Collabora Online, which is neatly included in all of our cloud offerings received continuous improvements over the past few months, both in design and in performance, which our users benefitted from with each incremental update.
With this newest update, further design-improvements help to distinguish in which application one is currently working, by using accent colours as hints (blue for Writer, green for Calc, red for Impress and yellow for Draw). File-Changes can now be compared side-by-side and document comments are now much easier to handle than before.
Furthermore, we added Nextcloud’s new default templates for text-, spreadsheet-, presentation-, and draw-documents to everyone with existing accounts!
Data Migration
As we have explained multiple times in the past, ViOffice is strictly against so-called “Vendor Lock-In”, as we see it as an anti-user measure that leads to people using a service because it is “still bearable” rather than the best fit for their needs. As such, users should be free to choose their tools and cloud storage at any time. This requires data migration to be as easy as possible.
This was already possible before to a very large degree. We are certain, that Nextcloud is the best solution for a user-friendly, private, ethical and free (as in speech) cloud-service.
The new update to Nextcloud takes these measures even further. A full migration to a different Nextcloud server (including a different service provider) is as easy and smooth as ever. And also another cloud service that is not Nextcloud is reasonably easy, depending on their import-capabilities. Of course, migration to Nextcloud by ViOffice from other Nextcloud providers is now also easier.
Wrapping up
As always, we are grateful to all contributors to the great software we are able to offer. We try to provide reasonable feature sets that make people’s day-to-day life easier. If you have any feature requests, comments or feedbacks, please feel free to reach out to us!
Sources
- Korotaev, M (2025): Nextcloud Hub 25 Autumn: Your digital workspace, ready in no time. URL: https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-hub25-autumn/
- Korotaev, M (2022): Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter: Reclaim your digital autonomy. URL: https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-hub26-winter/