Productivity tool Docs 3.0: Improved interface and restrictive data access
The free collaboration platform Docs is being developed as part of a government project. The update adapts the interface and restricts access to user data.
(Image: DINUM)
Version 3.0.0 of the open source platform Docs, which was jointly developed on behalf of the German and French governments, has been released. It includes functions for collaboration and knowledge management and is intended to be a free alternative to proprietary productivity tools such as Outline or Notion. The update includes a revised user interface and changes to document access and server authentication. The application remains a beta version that is not yet intended for productive use.
Docs is part of La Suite Numérique, a collection of open source applications for collaborative work. Its development is led by the French government's interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs. For the Docs update, the developers have integrated the suite's UI kit, which has a new standard theme. Furthermore, documents can now be duplicated via the programming interface.
Access to user data restricted
In the previous version of Docs, users could view the list of all users with access to the document, regardless of their role –, including email address and user ID. Now, only document owners and administrators can access this list. Other roles have a restricted view that only lists administrators and owners without further information.
In addition, it is no longer nginx that authenticates access to the collaboration server, but the yProvider server. To do this, administrators must adapt the Helm files accordingly in the new version. It is also necessary to adapt an environment variable to allow the yProvider server to access the Django server. All information on this and all changes in Docs 3.0.0 can be found on the release page on GitHub. In total, there have been around 30 changes to the tool. In future, developers who contribute to Docs will have to confirm the rights to their code.
Videos by heise
Docs currently includes different block types, Markdown formatting and file export as DOCX, ODT and PDF. In future, there will be navigation with subpages, a comment function and an integrated PDF reader. Version 2.0, the business version of the open-source file sharing platform OpenCloud, was also recently released, promising simple backup and restoration of large amounts of data in public authorities and companies.
(sfe)
