5 ms·

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps

by pidg 11y ago

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully. Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone. I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied by The Document Foundation into using open standards, and are now locked in to using one vendor - Collabora - and their proprietary fork of LibreOffice.

martin-adams 11y ago
Documents in emails for you to review is devastating. I have a client who keeps doing it. The first thing I do is download it, upload it to Google Docs and turn on Suggestion Editing. Collaborative cloud based document editing is such a life saver.
- douche 11y ago
  Or, god forbid, you get some asshole that does the old edit & rename "versioning" scheme, then checks both documents into Subversion or Git.
- jo909 11y ago
  How do you know if the sending party is okay with you uploading their document to a public cloud service?
  - martin-adams 11y ago
    A valid point. In this instance, I know because we use Google Apps and store most other things in it. The email is in Gmail, so the difference isn't really that great when you think about it. As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of documents via email. SMTP might be used rather than SMTPS and you don't always know what servers handle the email when in transit.
    - e12e 11y ago
      > The email is in Gmail > As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of documents via email. Well, if neither of you forwards to an external account, gmail->gmail email should be pretty "secure" (against other adversaries than Google, those that have hacked one of your Google accounts, and those that Google cooperate with (if any)). It's not clear by what you write if someone@example.com is emailing you@gmail.com (And so should know that Google knows all the things), or if you meant that you both use Gmail - or if you use Google Apps, so you already give all your emails to Google, but not in a way that is transparent to the sender (however, if the sender doesn't use any kind of end-to-end encryption...). Not meant as a nitpick -- just pointing out that for some values of "secure" using a single provider for email can be "more secure". I suppose the "enterprise" alternative would be to have accounts in cross-trusted AD with client-certificates and use S/MIME for client-client end-to-end encryption. In which case (AFAIK) by default, there'd be the possibility of keeping an escrow key. (The open alternative would probably be to just use Gnu Privacy Guard)
Majestic121 11y ago
Are you seriously using the "lock in" argument against open standards? Is this a joke? You could not be more locked in than when using the Office 365 suite. It may happen to have some nice feature for now, but there is nothing keeping them from pulling an IE all over again, and you will be completely locked in because of the proprietary format used.
- pidg 11y ago
  No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is supported by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. So even if MS did something terrible, the documents would still be editable when everyone switches over to LibreOffice - dependent on how well they've implemented OOXML. And I'm not even against what Collabora are doing, I think it's very clever. It's an interesting way of hitting back at Microsoft by lobbying for open standards in order to create an alternative solution and a profitable business. I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product (yes, I've worked with both) for day-to-day use by normal humans.
  - merb 11y ago
    OOXML is a broken standard. It is bigger than the PDF spec, which already is ridicoulus. Also some crazy bugs inside older versions aren't always reflected inside the spec. I've seen documents render differntly between Office 2007, 2010, 2013. Mostly between 2010 and 2013 since 2013 is way more correct than the previous versions, still Microsoft use a compability layer to still have a "correct" view. However that is really really aweful.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    As far as I'm aware there are no complete implementations of OOXML other than Microsoft Office, and given the complexity of the specification and the huge gaping holes, it is unclear if it ever will be, or if it is even possible to implement for parties other than Microsoft without reverse engineering large chunks of Microsoft Office. Until there are other complete implementations, calling it an open format is pretty much a bad joke. > I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product That may be so. But a government has many other requirements than the day to day use. They also, for example, have archiving requirements (with timelines measured in decades) that are hard enough to deal with without the risks incurred of locking documents into poorly documented formats only fully supported by a single vendor.
chmars 11y ago
Which collaboration features? (Seriously: We use desktop versions of Office apps based on Office 365 but I have not discovered any collaboration features so far. Where are they hidden? Are they compliant with European data privacy and labor law?)
- pidg 11y ago
  I don't know enough about the admin side, but perhaps it's something that needs to be enabled separately. From a user perspective it 'just works' in our office: If several people open a document shared on OneDrive, that document is opened in a collaboration mode where you can see others working on it, similar to Google Drive. A menu appears at the bottom of the screen[1] showing who's editing that file. If you have Lync/Skype for Business, clicking on those names opens an IM to that person. Re privacy, a quick search shows their cloud services are compliant with ISO 27018 as of February this year[2] (and no, I don't work for Microsoft!) [1] http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/04/who-is-editing-100032236-large.png http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/04/who-is-e... [2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adopts-international-cloud-privacy-standard/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adopts-international-...
  - chmars 11y ago
    Thank you!
Spooky23 11y ago
You might feel differently when Microsoft comes around and jacks your price up with 60 days notice.
the_why_of_y 11y ago
> Collabora - and their proprietary fork of LibreOffice It looks like this Web based LibreOffice is all available from public git repos[1], so why are you calling it a proprietary fork? [1] https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/
chris_wot 11y ago
You are... uninformed. It's not a proprietary fork, it's all in a public git repo on TDF servers. I feel sorry you are so ignorant.

by pidg 11y ago

martin-adams 11y ago

Documents in emails for you to review is devastating. I have a client who keeps doing it. The first thing I do is download it, upload it to Google Docs and turn on Suggestion Editing. Collaborative cloud based document editing is such a life saver.

douche 11y ago
Or, god forbid, you get some asshole that does the old edit & rename "versioning" scheme, then checks both documents into Subversion or Git.
jo909 11y ago
How do you know if the sending party is okay with you uploading their document to a public cloud service?
- martin-adams 11y ago
  A valid point. In this instance, I know because we use Google Apps and store most other things in it. The email is in Gmail, so the difference isn't really that great when you think about it. As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of documents via email. SMTP might be used rather than SMTPS and you don't always know what servers handle the email when in transit.
  - e12e 11y ago
    > The email is in Gmail > As far as I can tell, there is no way to guarantee a 'secure' delivery of documents via email. Well, if neither of you forwards to an external account, gmail->gmail email should be pretty "secure" (against other adversaries than Google, those that have hacked one of your Google accounts, and those that Google cooperate with (if any)). It's not clear by what you write if someone@example.com is emailing you@gmail.com (And so should know that Google knows all the things), or if you meant that you both use Gmail - or if you use Google Apps, so you already give all your emails to Google, but not in a way that is transparent to the sender (however, if the sender doesn't use any kind of end-to-end encryption...). Not meant as a nitpick -- just pointing out that for some values of "secure" using a single provider for email can be "more secure". I suppose the "enterprise" alternative would be to have accounts in cross-trusted AD with client-certificates and use S/MIME for client-client end-to-end encryption. In which case (AFAIK) by default, there'd be the possibility of keeping an escrow key. (The open alternative would probably be to just use Gnu Privacy Guard)

Majestic121 11y ago

Are you seriously using the "lock in" argument against open standards? Is this a joke? You could not be more locked in than when using the Office 365 suite. It may happen to have some nice feature for now, but there is nothing keeping them from pulling an IE all over again, and you will be completely locked in because of the proprietary format used.

pidg 11y ago
No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is supported by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. So even if MS did something terrible, the documents would still be editable when everyone switches over to LibreOffice - dependent on how well they've implemented OOXML. And I'm not even against what Collabora are doing, I think it's very clever. It's an interesting way of hitting back at Microsoft by lobbying for open standards in order to create an alternative solution and a profitable business. I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product (yes, I've worked with both) for day-to-day use by normal humans.
- merb 11y ago
  OOXML is a broken standard. It is bigger than the PDF spec, which already is ridicoulus. Also some crazy bugs inside older versions aren't always reflected inside the spec. I've seen documents render differntly between Office 2007, 2010, 2013. Mostly between 2010 and 2013 since 2013 is way more correct than the previous versions, still Microsoft use a compability layer to still have a "correct" view. However that is really really aweful.
- vidarh 11y ago
  As far as I'm aware there are no complete implementations of OOXML other than Microsoft Office, and given the complexity of the specification and the huge gaping holes, it is unclear if it ever will be, or if it is even possible to implement for parties other than Microsoft without reverse engineering large chunks of Microsoft Office. Until there are other complete implementations, calling it an open format is pretty much a bad joke. > I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product That may be so. But a government has many other requirements than the day to day use. They also, for example, have archiving requirements (with timelines measured in decades) that are hard enough to deal with without the risks incurred of locking documents into poorly documented formats only fully supported by a single vendor.

chmars 11y ago

Which collaboration features? (Seriously: We use desktop versions of Office apps based on Office 365 but I have not discovered any collaboration features so far. Where are they hidden? Are they compliant with European data privacy and labor law?)

pidg 11y ago
I don't know enough about the admin side, but perhaps it's something that needs to be enabled separately. From a user perspective it 'just works' in our office: If several people open a document shared on OneDrive, that document is opened in a collaboration mode where you can see others working on it, similar to Google Drive. A menu appears at the bottom of the screen[1] showing who's editing that file. If you have Lync/Skype for Business, clicking on those names opens an IM to that person. Re privacy, a quick search shows their cloud services are compliant with ISO 27018 as of February this year[2] (and no, I don't work for Microsoft!) [1] http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/04/who-is-editing-100032236-large.png http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/04/who-is-e... [2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adopts-international-cloud-privacy-standard/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adopts-international-...
- chmars 11y ago
  Thank you!

Spooky23 11y ago

You might feel differently when Microsoft comes around and jacks your price up with 60 days notice.

the_why_of_y 11y ago

> Collabora - and their proprietary fork of LibreOffice It looks like this Web based LibreOffice is all available from public git repos[1], so why are you calling it a proprietary fork? [1] https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

chris_wot 11y ago

You are... uninformed. It's not a proprietary fork, it's all in a public git repo on TDF servers. I feel sorry you are so ignorant.