ONLYOFFICE App Server: microservice architecture for scalability and clustering

Big news everyone!

We are working on a new solution that is going to bring infinite scaling capabilities to our productivity platform. It is called ONLYOFFICE App Server.

Where the idea comes from

Having experienced a pike of popularity among multi-thousand-user organizations, we felt the urge to enhance our clustering capabilities.

That’s why we:

• Reconsidered the technology stack: gave up Mono and adopted the new stable version of .NET 5.0.
• Created a new modern-looking and mobile-friendly client using React.
• Took up component approach (being independent, all the software parts will communicate using API/databases).
• Created a new js library with common components on React for all Apps.

At some point, we understood that we were working on a completely new solution, not another version of our collaboration platform.

What is ONLYOFFICE App Server

App Server is a platform to which you can connect modules packed as separate apps. You will install only those that you really need:

• People to create your team’s profiles and set their roles and rights.
• Documents for managing and sharing your documents.
• Projects to organize your team’s tasks and track progress.
• CRM for sales management and productivity improvement.
• Mail to manage correspondence sufficiently.
• Calendar for creating timetables and shared calendars.

The source code of all the apps will be available on GitHub. Developers will be able to customize and upgrade them and create new apps their team/clients need.

We are still discussing the licensing, but it has been decided that customization and integration with other services will be possible.

Is it ready yet?

It’s a work in progress but we are releasing a version with two modules/apps — People and Documents soon.

By installing it and connecting ONLYOFFICE Docs you will get a scalable document management system where your team can store, edit, and collaborate on documents from any device.

Want to contribute to App Server?

Find the instructions in this post.

If you have questions or ideas you want to share with us, use the comment section below or tweet us at @only_office.