Our 2021 in review

07 Jan 2022 5 min read

Written by

The XWiki Team

If 2020 was a whirlwind for everyone, 2021 felt like the transition towards the calm after the storm. Our teams in both Romania and France continued to work remotely, having settled into it as the - by now - new normal. With its own ups and downs, the year was all around fruitful and full of achievements for our team. Here is a look back on 2021 at XWiki and everything we have done throughout the year.

Company Achievements

Maintained great clients and founded new partnerships

  • Lenovo - The Lenovo team was searching for a tool to migrate and accommodate the contents of its Premier support partner network knowledge base. XWiki helped them meet theirs needs and facilitate collaboration for over 7000 users by migrating to a custom knowledge base in under 30 days.
  • Belledonne - Experiencing rapid growth and a drastic increase in documentation, the team at Belledonne Communications decided it was time that their On-Premise XWiki instance is moved to Cloud. For their team, it meant reduced costs and complexity, flexible scalability, and less work to maintain the infrastructure. For us, it was opportunity to showcase the versatility of XWiki - no matter how the needs change, we have a solution for you.
  • XWiki joins Euclidia - Last year marked XWiki joining The European Cloud Industrial Alliance (EUCLIDIA)! We have since become members of a joint effort across industry players to develop a new generation of services and deployments for underserved markets while defending European Sovereignty.

Launched new tools

Back in February of 2021, we published an extensive overview of our plans for the Confluence importing tools, as a result of the influx of users looking for Confluence alternatives. After a long year of work and effort, we have launched a full set of tools to ease the migration from Confluence to XWiki: 

  • A dedicated migrator - an easy-to-use migrator that takes you through a step-by-step journey of preparing, importing, and setting up your files into XWiki.
  • The Pro Macros Package - A set of Confluence compatible macros to help supercharge XWiki and ensure you maintain the look, feel and functionalities of your instance.
  • Expert consulting - One of our experts will analyze your use case and walk you through the migration checklist to ensure a smooth transition into XWiki.

We are very happy to have been able to release these tools and hope they will help make the transition a smooth journey and encourage, as well as enable collaboration for as many teams as possible.

Attended great events

  • FOSDEM 2021 - the event was held 100% online and powered by an exquisite infrastructure of websites, chats, and widgets. As per tradition, our team organized the "Collaborative Information and Content Management Applications" devroom, participated with presentations in different tracks, tackling different hot subjects from new features, compatibility, and alternatives other tools and services, remote working tips, and designing an Open Source tool. 
  • OW2 Con' 2021 - another online event in which we participated with insightful talks on XWiki novelties, the instability of proprietary software, and the challenges of migrating knowledge across software platforms. Moreover, as part of the event, XWiki received the 2021 OW2 Best Project Market Award, of which we are very proud. 
  • Open Source Experience 2021 - our team attended the event in Paris, France, and had the opportunity to meet new people, establish new connections, and cover an array of topics involving Open Source and its community. We had three insightful talks from our CEO, Ludovic Dubost, tackling data privacy, the Open Cloud Era, and the Market Readiness Level Method as part of the OW2 Round Table.

...and held our very own

  • How to migrate from other tools to XWiki - in this webinar, we walked the attendees through the checklists, services, and tools that can be used to migrate to XWiki in just a few steps. We also shared some tips and tricks and showcased a few use cases based on Confluence, Sharepoint, wikis.
  • Demo and Q&A: Migrate from Confluence to XWiki - in this dedicated session, we showcased a step-by-step process of how to migrate from Confluence to XWiki, demoed it, then held a live Q&A to address questions and concerns.

Continued to advocate for Open Source

At XWiki, Open Source has always been and continues to be a vital part of our company culture - It's the tools we use, the practices we adopt, and the way we conduct business. We've continued showcasing its importance by sharing how Open Source values guide our work and inspire us to keep doing what we do. We've also continued to use our A to Z guide of Open Source tools we wholeheartedly recommend - and we encourage anyone to continue participating by sending us any suggestions here!

XWiki and CryptPad are not only our software, but they also belong to the community and you. You are welcomed to participate by developing, reporting bugs or features, and also sponsor the development of these projects: XWiki & CryptPad

Product

13.x Cycle overview

The 13.x cycle introduced several highly-requested and much-awaited features, such as a new live data macro, a new translate page button, like feature disabling, a link to the in-place editor, and more. We managed to have over 682 issues closed: 310 bugs, 88 improvements, and 24 overall new features.

12.x Cycle retrospective

The 12.x cycle was full of new features and improvements. At the beginning of the year, we looked back on it and compiled two lists of features you should try out to get the most out of it.

XWiki Cloud updates

XWiki Cloud is the most convenient and cost-effective way to run XWiki. We take care of the setup, hosting, upgrades, maintenance, and backups, so you can focus on getting things done. In 2021, our cloud demo platform was updated to XWiki 13.4.3 which brought new features and bug fixes for a better experience. Moreover, our team has worked on improving the Pro Apps so you can extend your wiki and enhance its functionalities. 

CryptPad

2021 continued to be a busy year for CryptPad. The beginning of the year welcomed them with more than resolutions and wishes - instead, the team brought a redesign to the CryptPad brand and how it's visualized. The rework included everything from the logo and color theme to text on static pages, and the icons throughout the platform to convey calm and safety for its users. The team continued to work hard throughout the year to keep up with the demand while also focusing on bringing new features and improvements to the product, such as Documentation, a Calendar app, a Forms app, and more. Thanks to the grants received, the team has also completed three projects: Secure Mobile Collaboration, CryptPad for Communities, Load time improvements. If you'd like a more in-depth look at CryptPad in 2021, you can read the full overview here

Spread the word

Our team is continuously working to improve and make XWiki better by implementing new features, improvements, or sharing useful tips. Whether it's via chats, emails, our help center, or articles, we want to make sure everyone gets the best out of their instance. Below is a shortlist of the pieces we've put together in 2021:

Knowledge sharing for better experiences

Guides for easier usage

Consolidated the team

100% of what we are today is due to our phenomenal team. In the 16+ years we've been around, we had multiple structures, with numerous people joining and leaving. This year was no different and helped us further consolidate our team:

- we parted ways with some great colleagues: Gabriel, Alina, Stefan, Alex, Paul L.;

- we welcomed stellar additions to our teams: Alexandra, Stéphane, Teodor, Michael.

As is tradition, we also organized the yearly seminar and fortunately, this time, had the opportunity to meet face-to-face. We chose to split the activities locally - in Romania and France - while following the health guidelines by ensuring everyone was vaccinated or tested.  The meet-ups were an opportunity for the teams to interact, catch up and take part in the activities prepared by our ever so thoughtful HR team. 

Additionally, after 9 years of working from the 3rd arrondissement, in Paris, our France team decided to let go of their office and start searching for a new one. After a long, but fruitful search, XWiki SAS has a new address moving into 2022.

Last, but not least, we have continued our "get to know the team" series of articles where we explore our colleagues' journeys to and at XWiki. If you have missed them, you can check them out here and learn a bit more about the people working behind the scenes to make it all happen.

 

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News

Enhancing digital sovereignty: XWiki and Nextcloud forge closer ties

XWiki SAS has long upheld its commitment to independence, with shareholders exclusively comprising current and former employees. However, recognizing the importance of strong collaboration among major open-source projects in the EU, the company is embracing a strategic shift through a symbolic investment in XWiki SAS from Frank Karlitschek, Founder and CEO of Nextcloud. Moreover, Nextcloud GmbH and XWiki SAS have signed a mutual resellers' agreement to provide their customers an easy way to purchase a complete solution from either vendor. Read the full article to learn about the why, how, and what.