Collectives market analysis

What other software are we looking at?

• Focus on enterprise knowledgebase parts:
  • Atlassian Confluence
  • Notion
  • Book-stack - The software we use for handbook.nextcloud.com
  • XWiki
  • Coda
• Collaborative editing
  • Etherpad
  • Cryptpad

✅ Added after feature gap analysis

Feature	Confluence	Notion	Coda	Etherpad	Cryptpad	Collectives
Predefined templates for starting off	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌ (default content is same for all Collectives)
Page versioning
Timeslider	❌	❌	❌	✔️	✔️	❌
Diff comparison	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	❌
Page content
Page emoji	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	✅
Page header image	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌
Table of contents	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✅
Text headings	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Text color	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	✔️	❌ (not supported by Markdown)
Tables	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	✔️	✔️
Emoji	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	✔️
Text alignment	✔️	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	❌ (not supported by Markdown)
@mention people	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	✅
Layout (columns)	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌
Callout boxes	✔️	✔️	❓	❌	❌	✔️
Custom callout style (color/emoji)	✔️	✔️	❓	❌	❌	❌
Expandable section	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌ (not supported by Markdown)
Status label	✔️	✔️ (bg/fg color)		❌	❌m	❌
Dynamic fields (e.g. date)	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌
Embed widgets with dynamic content (other pages)	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	✅
Embed widgets from external services	✔️		✔️	❌	❌	✅
Q: Can Images/files be added inline as just a link	❌	❌	✔️	❌	❓	✔️
Other
Export pages to PDF	✔️ but no subpages	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✅ (by printing to PDF) #469
Comments	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌ Issue
Fuzzy search	✔️	❌	❓	❌	❌	✅
Collaboration
Author colors	❌		❌	✔️	✔️	✔️
Author cursors	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️	✅ (starting with Nextcloud 26)
Reactive collaborative editing			✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️ (significant imrpovements with Nextcloud 26)
Notifications on mentions / subscribed changes			✔️	❌	❌	✅ (notification on mentions)
Document navigation
Shortcuts/ Favorites	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌ (but we could use Files favorites)
Custom document order	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	✅
Reorder pages drag&drop	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	✅
Organisation
Archiving pages		❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Permissions per "Collection"	💲		✔️	❌	✔️	✔️
Permissions per "Directory"	💲		✔️	❌	✔️	❌
Permissions per "File"	💲		✔️	❌	✔️	❌
Encryption			❌	❌	✔️	✅ (server-side encryption starting with NC 25)
Draft pages	✔️			❌	❌	❌
Copy pages	✔️	✔️		❌	❌	❌ (can be done via filesystem)
Move pages	✔️	✔️		❌	❌	✅
Labels per page	✔️			❌	❌	❌ (can be done via Files tags)
Custom metadata		✔️		❌	❌	❌
Mobile app	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌

Collection of embeddable content that is interactive

Needs communication with other apps like Talk which would also embed content like this.

Either the server or user has to be exposed, currently leaning towards exposing the user but with opt-out, because the server might be sensitive. To be discussed.

Also ref https://github.com/nextcloud/spreed/issues/3156

• PDF Files
• Google Maps
• Google Doc
• Tweet
• Github ticket/PR
• Youtube videos
• Trello Board
• Office files
• Various reports from Jira

Call notes

• Page navigation
• Page organization (sorting, dragging)
• Different use cases
  • Enterprise knowledge base
• Survey
  • What other software solutions are you using (have used before)?

Gap analysis outcome

Picked

Formatting

• TOC https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues/107

Collaboration

• Mentions https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues/92
• HPB for collaborative editing https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues/2669
• Embeddable objects, widgets https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/31667

Organizing

• Search https://github.com/nextcloud/office/issues/13
• Reorganize pages https://github.com/nextcloud/office/issues/23
  • Custom document order
  • Drag and drop reorganize
  • Copy/Move
  • Page emoji https://gitlab.com/collectivecloud/collectives/-/issues/194

Further evaluation

Versioning

• Diff comparison
• Time slider
• Notifications on changes

Organization

• Favorites
• Archiving pages
• Advanced permissions (per folder or page)
• Page metadata (could be md frontmatter)
  • Page header image
  • Custom labels
  • Custom metadata fields

Other

• Author cursors
• Expandable section
• Dynamic fields (e.g. date) -> could be implemented with embeddable objects)
• Predefined templates for starting off
• Export as PDF
• Comments/versions sidebar https://gitlab.com/collectivecloud/collectives/-/issues/218

Potential hard ones (due to markdown)

• Text color, status labels
• Column layouts
• Text alignment
• Comments in text

As discussed in the feature planning we'll move on with the individual items filed as other tickets for the Versioning, HPB primarily and put the rest to the backlog until further demand shows up.

FYI @juliushaertl @max-nextcloud @mejo- @nimishavijay: moved this to the new Collectives repo and pinned it. :)

What I like a lot with notion.so is: (and I don't found it in the list above)

1. create pretty easy a nice looking public website
2. embed content: Similar to https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/31667 but in notion the user can show not only a calendar entry but a whole calendar, not only a deck card but a deck board, ...

Inline comments issue for Nextcloud text: https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues/185