Atol CD reinforces online collaboration in Alfresco Digital Workspace by integrating ONLYOFFICE Docs

Atol Conseils et Développements, a partner of Alfresco since its early days, has recently integrated ONLYOFFICE Docs into Alfresco DMS to equip it with online co-authoring features. This integration is available both in Alfresco Digital Workspace (ADW) and in open source apps based on Alfresco Digital Framework. For more details, read this article.

About Atol CD

Operating as an integrator of open source solutions since 2000, Atol CD is a French company that develops software for collaborative work and content management. It provides major players in private and public sectors with a variety of business software: EDM, ECM, dematerialization software, RPA, data management, IoT, etc.

With its expertise, agile and creative approach, and 160 employees, Atol CD enhances the infrastructures of over 200 clients’ projects. In September 2020, Atol CD has signed an official partnership with ONLYOFFICE.

Key integration steps: users’ needs, choice of solution, implementation

Given the growing demand for online document co-editing tools, Atol CD has mobilized its developers to implement an efficient collaboration solution for in-office and remote teams. The very first step was to find an online office suite that can be easily integrated into the existing DMS.

The main goal of this integration was to enable online editing and co-authoring straight within the web interface to make work on documents, validation, and collective decision-making easier and faster. Among the popular office apps considered by Atol CD, ONLYOFFICE Docs, punctually used within some other solutions, has perfectly suited the defined criteria. Its user experience, ergonomics, and a high level of collaboration were the closest to those provided by MS Office. A decisive advantage was the rendering quality of the document ensured by ONLYOFFICE Docs.

Atol CD has developed its own extension that connects online editors for text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to the ADW (Alfresco Digital Workplace) environment.

To make this extension available to a bigger number of users, the developers have opened its source code. The ONLYOFFICE extension for ADW can be compiled by third-party developers who want to extend their apps’ functionality with powerful online document editors. Visit the repository of the integration app on GitHub.

After a series of internal and external tests, the integration has become operational for Alfresco users in September 2020.

How to use ONLYOFFICE Docs within Alfresco Digital Workplace

The extension doesn’t require any installation and can be activated in a couple of clicks for on-premises and cloud solutions. It adds a new “Edit in ONLYOFFICE” button to the document menu.

The online editing is available for DOCX, XLSX, PPTX file formats, other documents are converted to the corresponding OOXML format. By clicking on the “Convert with ONLYOFFICE” button, you will create an editable copy of the original document.

As a part of this integration, ONLYOFFICE Docs keeps its collaboration tools such as advanced document sharing permissions and version history. To discover the features and learn to make use of them, watch this video in French.

François Roussel, Solutions Director at Atol CD, is satisfied with the first achieved results:

Since we launched this partnership, we have received very positive feedback on behalf of the clients having now at their disposal a work-from-home friendly environment. A very important benefit brought by ONLYOFFICE Docs is the users’ mobility: the opportunity to access the tools from a tablet or a smartphone anywhere and any time. They can edit office documents right in their web browser, without having to install any extra app. The document co-authoring in real time within the digital workspace remains the most useful and highly appreciated feature