How to set up Thinkfree Office for Nextcloud

Modified on Wed, 16 Jul at 3:55 PM

This help article explains how to setup Thinkfree Office with Nextcloud. This article assumes that you have already deployed Thinkfree Office server and communication between it and your Nextcloud instance is possible.

If you do not have Thinkfree Office available yet, you can install and deploy an instance of Thinkfree Office on your own server or private cloud instance as long as it is resolvable and connectable both from Nextcloud and from client browsers.

You can install Thinkfree Office server by following the official installation instructions provided by Thinkfree.

Containerized Docker version:

Docker Build: Download

Installation Guide for Rocky Linux 8.x: Download

Installation Guide for Ubuntu: Download

After successfully installing and deploying the Thinkfree server you will also need to register the server side adapter that allows your Thinkfree server to connect with Nextcloud.

Registering Nextcloud Adapter

The Nextcloud adapter must be registered to the Thinkfree Office server in order to allow the server to connect to the Nextcloud storage.

Nextcloud Adapter download link here.

Thinkfree Office Administrator Page Settings

Go to the registered Thinkfree Office server administrator page and log in.

Go to the External Linkage tab and click the Add Adapter button to register the NextCloud adapter.

Enter the necessary adapter configuration details as follows:

Name: nc

Class: com.tf.se.adapter.impl.nextcloud.NextCloudAdapter

Description: Nextcloud adapter

Adapter File: Browse to the adapter jar file and select and upload

After registering the adapter, click on the Settings button.

Finally configure the appropriate WebDAV settings so that you can access the server where your NextCloud files are stored.

Setup Thinkfree Connector

Log in to NextCloud with an administrator account. NextCloud only allows administrator accounts to access the market and install apps.

When you log in, the dashboard will appear. Click the button on the top right and go to Apps (Market).

Go to the "Office & text" category and type "thinkfree" in the search box at the upper left. When you type, you can see the Thinkfree Office connector app registered in the marketplace. Click the Download and enable button to proceed with installation and activation.

Initial setup

Connector Settings Page

Click the button on the top right to enter Personal settings. Click the Thinkfree Office tab in the left navigation to go to the settings page for linking Thinkfree to Nextcloud.

Currently, the following two settings are required.

(1) Thinkfree Office Server Address:

Thinkfree Office Server address to open files in NextCloud Storage. The default value is set to https://nextcloud.thinkfree.com which is a public hosted shared demo server.

(2) App Password:

This setting value that allows Thinkfree Office access rights to the NextCloud Storage.

Click Security in the left navigation to go to that tab.

Create a new app password through the Create new app password button in the Devices & sessions section at the bottom. You can specify the App name as you like.

The generated App password is displayed only once, so store it somewhere else if necessary. Copy the App password, go to the Settings page, and paste it into the App password field. Click the Save button.

If a toast message appears in the upper right corner indicating successful saving, it has been saved successfully.

Storage

Create new

Clicking the Create New button allows you to create a new document in Nextcloud storage using the default template provided by the Connector, as shown in the image below.

Open document

Clicking "Open in Thinkfree Office" will open the document for editing. Upon click, the Thinkfree connector app sends a request to the configured Thinkfree Office server which in turn loads the file from Nextcloud for editing.