Using Nextcloud as unified interfase for mail, chat, calendar and contacts

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1

This is my first topic, please let me know if this is not the right forum.

My goal is to have a unified user interface for email, calendar, contacts and chat, Nextcloud offers all of these, so I activated them with the following steps:

  1. Install MIAB V68 on Ubuntu 22, instructions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxNb_fcqnA&list=LL&index=3
  2. From ssh, activate the admin user as nextcloud admin:
    sudo -u www-data php8.0 /usr/local/lib/owncloud/occ group:adduser admin <YourAdminUser>@<YourDomain>
  3. Enter to nextcloud page https://box.<YourDomain>/cloud/ with YourAdminUser@YourDomain and the same ssh credentials.
  4. From the dropdown menu in the upper right corner select applications
  5. In the vertical menu on the left, enter featured applications.
  6. In the available apps, make sure the Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Talk apps are active.
  7. After this, users should have these applications available in the nextcloud unified environment.

Please, let me know your experience with this environment.

Next steps:

  1. Evaluate SnappyMail instead of the Mail app
  2. Update NextCloud to the latest version. I guess this is a very whole topic.
2

Hi. Just be aware that @JoshData intended MIAB to be a standalone mail appliance, not the basis for a geewhiz mail setup. The MIAB install/update process will:

  • Install specific versions of many components. Updating some components cause subsequent MIAB updates to fail, or the components might be downgraded to the MIAB version.

  • Overwrite some config changes. Some components have provision for local config, which will persist between updates. Other components (eg fail2ban) are not setup that way, and your changes will be clobbered.

So keep a note of what you change, because you might need to redo the mods after each update :wink:

3

I understand @joshData’s intention;

however, I found it interesting to unify the user interface and extend its functionality a bit with chat since it can be done easily with this wonderful setup.

If someone finds it useful, I could write a post-installation script to automate this part.

Thanks @joshData for this awesome MIAB.

4

There is already an unlock script which will let you install apps in Nextcloud. However this is an unsupported modification. Read the most recent post with regard to this.