Nowadays, a collaborative office suite is a must-have tool for businesses of any size, operating in different sectors. Real-time document co-authoring is what gives the members of a team the edge since they can work on the same document simultaneously and finish the editing process much faster, which leads to an increase in their productivity and allows them to pay more attention to other important tasks.
The problem with collaborative office software is that there are a lot of available options in the market that businesses and teams can pick from. When you choose an online office suite, you should always consider some key factors. For example, the size of your business, the features that you need, the availability of regular updates and professional tech support, and, of course, your business budget.
Google Docs and Microsoft 365 have been the most popular tools for real-time document collaboration for years. However, there is another solution that changes the game — ONLYOFFICE Docs. This software comes with all important features to make the process of online co-authoring as easy and efficient as possible. Below are some of the reasons to use ONLYOFFICE Docs for editing documents online.
Support for all kinds of office documents and formats
As an office suite, ONLYOFFICE Docs is not only compatible with traditional file types, such as text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It also allows you to create and edit digital forms — interactive documents that others can fill out by entering information within certain fields. In ONLYOFFICE Docs, there is also a built-in reader for electronic books and PDF files. Using this tool, you can convert with ease PDF and DjVu files to other formats. For example, editable Word documents.
When it comes to format compatibility, ONLYOFFICE Docs lets you open and work with Word documents (DOCX), Excel spreadsheets (XLSX) and PowerPoint slides (PPTX) without glitches. It also supports the old Microsoft formats, like DOC, XLS and PPT, and opens the OpenDocument Format (ODF) allowing you to work with different files created in other office software.
Vast collaborative features
Real-time document collaboration is where ONLYOFFICE Docs shines. Depending on the tariff plan, it allows hundreds of users to open a document and co-author it at the same time. During the editing process, you can work in the Fast Mode, and your edits can be seen by others in real time. Alternatively, you can switch to the Strict Mode and edit a text paragraph privately — no one will see what you are doing until you hit the Save button. With the Version History feature, you can browse all the previous versions of your document, and recover any of them if necessary.
The Track Changes feature allows you to review documents by accepting or rejecting the edits made by others, one by one or all at a time. Comments, user mentions, and online communication via the built-in chat and video/audio calls are also possible.
Another useful feature in ONLYOFFICE Docs is the ability to set various access permissions when sharing a document with other users. You can allow them to access the file without restrictions, open it for viewing only, work with it in the Review Mode or leave comments without being able to edit the content. When you share a fillable form, there is an additional permission — other users can only enter information in the interactive fields. For more privacy, you can also make it impossible to print, share, copy or download your documents in the Sharing Settings.
Enhanced security
ONLYOFFICE Docs is an open-source office suite, so its source code is available to everyone, which makes it secure by design. The on-premises deployment model allows you to keep your data within your IT environment, and you don’t need to share it with cloud providers. ONLYOFFICE Docs also uses the Jason Web Token (JWT) technology by default to prevent unauthorized access to all of your files and allows you to enable the HTTPS protocol for data encryption in transit.
When working with documents, you are allowed to encrypt your files with passwords, apply watermarks and even add digital signatures. However, digital signatures are supported by the ONLYOFFICE desktop app.
Availability on all popular platforms
What makes the ONLYOFFICE suite unique is its availability on all popular platforms — web, desktop and mobile. You can deploy ONLYOFFICE Docs on a local server and edit documents in your web browser. There is also a cloud-based version of ONLYOFFICE Docs that requires no installation but offers the same functionality.
For local document editing, ONLYOFFICE offers free native desktop clients for Windows, Linux and macOS. The desktop version has the same interface and features and runs even on old computers and laptops. Mobile document editing is possible with the ONLYOFFICE apps for Android and iOS. They are 100% free and allow you to access your documents on the go.
Endless integration options
ONLYOFFICE Docs doesn’t run on its own. It’s designed for seamless integration into the existing IT infrastructure of any business. Currently, ONLYOFFICE Docs provides more than 30 integrations apps, making it possible to bring its document editing and collaborative features to the following platforms and systems:
- SharePoint
- Nextcloud
- ownCloud
- Seafile
- Alfrresco
- Confluence
- Jira
- Plone
- WordPress
- Drupal and more
When integrated, ONLYOFFICE Docs allows users to open, edit and collaborate on documents within the interface of their platform. If you don’t use any of the solutions above, there is an alternative option. You can use ONLYOFFICE Docs in combination with its own groupware platform. The combined solution, ONLYOFFICE Workspace, provides you with a virtual collaborative environment with document and file management, projects, emails, calendars, CRM and communications tools. ONLYOFFICE Workspace can be deployed either in the cloud or on-premises.
Conclusion
As you can see, these were some of the reasons to use ONLYOFFICE Docs for real-time document collaboration within your team. You can try it out and decide whether it suits your needs. Small teams can opt for the free Community Edition, and there is a scalable commercial version for bigger teams and businesses. The Enterprise Edition comes with a 30-day trial period, which is quite enough to try the software thoroughly.
