VIDEO: OnlyOffice – Top Features and More

Thousands of companies around the world use office productivity suites to keep their production flowing efficiently and consistently. The two most popular are Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. But those are both closed-source programs. What about open-source office suites? Do those exist? Of course they do! And there’s one that might be the Only Office suite you’ll ever need again. Hi Project Managers! I’m Meredith, and in today’s video I'll be reviewing OnlyOffice, an open-source office productivity suite that offers online document editors, sharing, and collaboration via the web, desktop, and mobile apps.

Before I jump into talking about its main features, let’s do a quick history recap. OnlyOffice is a product of Ascensio System SIA, an international open-source IT company, headquartered in Riga, Latvia. The company was founded by Lev Bannov back in 2009 and it was initially called TeamLab. OnlyOffice started as a program for internal team collaboration. After a successful reception and positive feedback from a wider online community, the company decided to further expand functionality to provide users across industries with collaborative online document editors and a complete productivity suite.

Now with more than 10 million users worldwide, OnlyOffice Workspace has become a versatile business suite that includes web apps such as email, CRM, project management, calendar, and Docs for a complete office productivity solution. But is it good? And is it worth switching to if you or your company already uses Microsoft or Google suites? Well like always, I decided to download the free version to answer these important questions. Let’s get started!

One of OnlyOffice’s main selling features is its file editing tools. With OnlyOffice’s desktop editors, one can create and edit all file types such as text, slides, spreadsheets and forms. And when you download the OnlyOffice editors, you have the option to work offline OR online if you create an account for OnlyOffice’s cloud. More on cloud later. For now, I want to focus on the editing tools themself. First thing I’ll point out is that the download process was extremely quick, and completely free.

You don’t need to subscribe to a tier plan or submit your credit card in order to install it. And rather than download multiple, seperate desktop editor apps, everything is housed in one download application that took less than 5 minutes to install onto my macbook pro. It can also be installed on other Operating Systems such as Windows and Linux. As for each individual editing program, each tool had a strong resemblance to OnlyOffice’s popular closed-sourced competitors.

Yes, the UX is slightly different. But other than that, the similarities are uncanny, which I consider a big positive. Mainly because it allows OnlyOffice to be super adaptable for new users with experience using those other solutions, which reduces the learning curve significantly. I think a seasoned Microsoft Word user could easily learn how to use the basics of OnlyOffice’s Document editor in less than an hour. Plus, it includes multiple formatting tools that allow users to insert and edit complex objects.

Another positive is that you can export your files in multiple different formats, including microsoft word files. This makes collaborating with other teams and companies that use other online workspaces less complicated. The workspace also offers a native PDF reader, as well as supporting PDF-to-DOCX conversion to enable editing. However, there could be file conversion issues depending on your version of OnlyOffice or the OS you’re working on. Speaking of challenges, users have reported slow customer support response, version and bug updates can take months to release, and the editor tools don’t pair well with no-code tools.

These cons aren’t necessarily deal-breakers, but it could cause inefficiency in a company's workflow. To help enhance the user experience, OnlyOffice offers quite a few integrations and customizations. For the editing tools specifically, there are many plugins readily available such as DocuSign, Twilio, and WordPress. There’s also support for syncing/sharing files on the platform with DropBox, OneDrive and others. DMS services are available, too, like WordPress, Jira, Nextcloud, and more.

Along with integrations, OnlyOffice allows users to customize how team members access and collaborate on documents with flexible permission options. Users can choose from edit, comment-only, form fill-out, or review modes. They can also restrict copying, downloading, and print options. Public sharing is another option. It includes 2 co-editing modes, the ability to track changes and accept or reject them, and version history with the option to recover previous versions.

Plus, OnlyOffice’s editing and markup tools include document comparison, accept or reject changes one-by-one or all at once, merge changes, and save changed documents as new versions. Users can also tag co-authors, leave comments, or communicate in real time using a built-in chat tool. OnlyOffice’s offline and online versions don’t have many differences, but utilizing the cloud can be a game changer. OnlyOffice Workspace v12.0 provides a bundle of web apps for team management and online collaboration.

Users can opt to run it in the cloud or on-premise using their own servers. It includes OnlyOffice Docs for business documentation. It also has an email system with support for common email protocols, and a CRM tool with workflows that range from lead generation to order fulfillment. Workspace has a built-in project management tool complete with Gantt charts, task management, and time tracking. It also includes personal and team calendars that users can share and sync with other calendar programs.

And through the cloud, users can also get access to other advanced features such as online storage integrations, data security protection, and iOS- and Android-native apps utilization. Overall, OnlyOffice can be ideal for businesses of all sizes in need of a collaborative online document editing platform or a collaborative productivity suite. It’s a great solution for SMBs and enterprises, as well as organizations and institutions in the education, government, nonprofits, research, healthcare, software development, and cloud hosting sectors.

However, to know if it’s the best fit for you or your business, then you should give it a try by downloading the free tier version. Link is in the description below. Or if you want to explore alternatives, then go visit Project-DASH-Management-DOT-Com to read up on our insightful reviews of Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. And if you found this video helpful, be sure to leave a comment and like the video. Also subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with all things project management. Thanks for watching!