The very first announcement of the Nextcloud Conference 2024 was of course the reveal of Nextcloud Hub 9 to the wider community. The emphasis for the newest edition of the hub was on collaboration and on unobtrusive user experience improvements, but the star of the show for processCentric was of course the announcement of a process automation app in Nextcloud. 

Several improvements were highlighted with regards to federation. For those not involved in self-hosting softwares like this, “federation” is the ability of separate instances of a self-hosted software like Nextcloud or Mastodon to connect and communicate with each other. In Nextcloud’s case, this latest update makes it possible to use communications features like messaging and video calling seamlessly across different instances, and to easily share files between users on different instances using their federated Cloud ID. 

There were also a few sillier updates to Nextcloud that got cheers in the audience. 2-way synchronisation of files on the Android and iOS Nextcloud apps were finally announced, a hotly awaited feature, to delight throughout the room. Collabora’s announcement – the separate company that develops Nextcloud’s office suite – also got some positive reactions when they showed off their new retro 3D slide transitions, convenience and latency improvements. 

Dearest to our heart at processCentric, as a process company, however, was the announcement of the new Nextcloud Flow app for workflow automation. Nextcloud integrated Windmill, an open-source workflow engine, to create the Flow app. Although attendees were unfortunately unable to test the app just yet, the demonstration featured a variety of simple but essential integrations that would let users flow smoothly between Tables, Mail and PDF forms. We’ll be eagerly watching the progress of the Flow app! 

The Nextcloud conference was a wonderful, high-energy event full of overlapping ideas and promising new announcements, as well as some equally important discussions of the philosophies that drive its development and motivate the community. 

You can look forward to another article from us on the ideas surrounding mass government surveillance and social inertia that were equally featured in the keynote discussions. Stay tuned and connect with us on LinkedIn!