10 XWiki apps to level up collaboration

31 Jan 2022 5 min read

 

Written by

Andreea Chirica

, Communications and Support Specialist

On a wiki, applications can make or break the collaboration within the groups of users that are navigating in search for the right information or when trying to keep up with a project's development.

Here are a selection of 10 business apps that can help you add collaborative options on your wiki or enrich the processes you already have in place. 

Connect people to your wiki

Active Directory Application

The Active Directory application brings to the table a visual editor that helps wiki administrators integrate users in XWiki from an Active Directory server. You'll meet features like:

  • Import users from an LDAP server to XWiki
  • Authenticate with Active Directory users (XWiki user profiles being created at first login)
  • Update user info from Active Directory after login, or leave it as it gets registered when the user is created
  • Associate XWiki groups with Active Directory groups from the Groups administration page or from the Active Directory app configuration page
  • Allow Active Directory authentication only to certain group or forbid it for a specific group
  • Synchronize the Active Directory groups. For example, if an AD user is moved to a different AD group, at the next login it will be moved in XWiki in the right group. 

Microsoft Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On (SSO) (Pro)

We heard your need to provide integrations with more identity managment services: we're presenting to you the AzureAD Integration. It works with individual Azure accounts, as well as company wide AD accounts. Here are a few of the expected features:

  • Log in with Azure AD accounts in XWiki (XWiki user profiles being created at first login)
  • Sync account information
  • Block unwanted Azure AD users

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Google Apps Integration Pro

This is a perfect solution when you and your colleagues would like to login in XWiki using your Google account and also benefit from Google's editing applications (Google Docs, Spreadsheet, Presentations and Drawing). You can set the integration to work with internal users within an organization or external chosen users with a Google account. When picking the Internal users type you will be able to use the integration of both http and https installations. While if you pick the External users type, the integration will work on a http installation only in testing mode, but when passing on production it will work only with https installations.

Here are the popular features brought by the app: 

  • Log in to XWiki using your Google account
  • Easily import a Google Apps document as an attachment in XWiki (in multiple formats)
  • Launch editing of an XWiki attachment in Google Apps. Once the editing session is finished you can reimport it in XWiki.

Nurture better communication

Blog Application

Your wiki can be a haven for your colleagues, clients or brand ambassadors with the use of the Blog Application. By communicating your brand story, you can promote organization culture, share business updates, and celebrate partnerships. Keep your community up to date about new product features and guides. Help your employees feel connected with a place on your wiki where they can check out what has happened throughout the month in the company and what events are planned next for them.

What you can expect from the Blog Application:

  • Build one or more blogs on your wiki on various topics and with different reader targets
  • Pick your prefered blog presentation layout from the build-in options
  • Change the blog style as desired with CSS or LESS
  • Schedule blog articles publication

Meeting Application Pro

Facilitate the process of meeting preparation and knowledge sharing with the Meeting Application Pro. Don't forget what was discussed in a client meeting or on a call with your colleagues about that special project. What can be done with the app for a successful meeting experience:

  • Create a dedicated page of your meeting where you can keep notes, related documents
  • Add meeting participants and send email invites to them
  • Vote on next steps, meeting places, ideas with the included poll
  • See all your meetings in a calendar
  • Display on a chosen space the next 5 meetings

Help people visualize your data

Diagram Application Pro

Improve your presentations and reports with the help of graphics done in the Diagram Application Pro. It's undeniable that visual data representation is retained better and appreciated when accompanying other forms of content, especially if it is used to avoid adding too much text on slides. Get creative and use the app to create Gantt graphs, wireframes, mockups, UML, charts, BPMN, mind maps, tree, and network diagrams to convey your ideas in a visual manner. Some of the features avaible in the app:

  • Create and edit diagrams
  • Import existing diagrams or from Gliffy
  • Include diagrams in other XWiki pages
  • Zoom in and out while viewing the diagram
  • Print the diagram
  • Export the diagram in various formats

Gather documents into one place

File Manager Pro

Organize the documents in your organization using the File Manager Pro for an efficient and quick method to locate files. You can play audio and video files or you can display PDF and office documents directly from the file manager in the wiki, descreasing the time spent on accessing multiple tools and file sources.  

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OnlyOffice Connector

The OnlyOffice Connector has been created in order to maximize the collaboration during document editing within XWiki. You can create OnlyOffice documents, view, edit and collaborate real-time on text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can also upload doc, xls and ppt attachments, but in order to edit them you will need to convert them to docx, xlsx, pptx after clicking the Edit icon. Furthermore, you can add the following buttons in the attachment view of each wiki page which facilitates the creation of new documents editable using OnlyOffice.

For a quick start, the extension is already configured to use the XWiki OnlyOffice testing server, so you can test it out easily before passing to your own OnlyOffice server.

Office365 Integration

For the fans of Microsoft Office365, we have built an integration that helps users display documents from OneDrive in XWiki pages using embed links. While this feature does not require full configuration of the integration, you would need to make sure that the document that you are embedding can be visualized by the audience outside your OneDrive.

A second feature that requires full configuration of the integration is the embedding of a file after performing within OneDrive, all of these without leaving your wiki. The excelent next option is to extend the XWiki search with OneDrive, meaning that a box with OneDrive results will be included on the SOLR search screen of XWiki.

Protect your wiki

Antivirus Application

At XWiki, we value security and data protection and so, while making sure the XWiki product is secure, we have built an application that helps you manage the documents that you attach on wiki pages. The Antivirus Application scans the attached files for viruses and malware infections in 2 phases:

  • directly at upload time, canceling the upload operation in case an infected file is detected, thus not allowing the infected file to reach your wiki (and potentially infect any of your users that might download it)
  • periodically, once per week (configurable), by scanning all attachments on your wiki (including subwikis), in order to cover the case where a periodically updated virus database would now be able to detect a threat that was previously unknown

The Antivirus Application integrates ClamAV, an antivirus engine that is using different alorithms and has an extensive database. Other antivirus engines (i.e. from other well known providers) can easily be implemented and configured to be used by the Antivirus Application.

Bonus Apps

Life is full of changes and while we accomodate to the surprises in our daily schedules, when needing to switch products, migration tools are the cherry on top of a cake.

Confluence Migrator

The Confluence Migrator is an all-in-one toolkit that allows you to quickly migrate and reorganize your content in only a few minutes, without any cost! The toolkit is available for any deployment method, whether it is on your premise or in the XWiki Cloud. 

To migrate from Confluence to XWiki you will need: 

  • an XWiki instance with administrator access
  • access to your XWiki instance's configuration files, if you are running XWiki on your premise
  • a Confluence instance with administrator access

Follow the 6 steps described here to complete the migration of a Confluence space in XWiki.

Pro Macros

This package of 16 macros has been created to ease the migration from Confluence to XWiki even more, as these macros are compatible with Atlassian Confluence macros imported during migrations (generic macros), with some of them specifically developed only to cover this need (macros used only in the context of Confluence migrations). Supercharge XWiki’s functionality with Pro Macros.

If you are curious about any of these apps or you have noticed other extensions on the XWiki Store or on the Extensions site that could be useful in your organization or project, don't hesitate to contact us.

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