Blog Posts

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Everyone is using CAMUNDA…

At deskonline, we’ve built a Business Form and Automation System using Camunda as our shared workflow engine. We love it!



Our In-house built ‘CamundaTask’ application is the central hub, like “The Bridge of the USS Enterprise”.

This progressive single page Vue application interfaces the user with the Camunda workflow engine.

Here you start new process ‘instances’ and monitor personal or group assignment ‘task’ queues. Visual/colour feedback is given when user tasks become due or requires a follow-up. The FormIO forms are stored within the Nextcloud filesystem and are 100% dynamic and use plugins like Google street validation and reCAPTCHA. It’s powerful stuff!


JBoss KeyCloak is utilised for Identity and Access Management across Nextcloud, Camunda and NodeRED. Keycloak has a huge number of plugins including User Federation, Identity Brokering and Social Login. To name only a few!

NodeRED is loaded with over 100 enterprise ready ‘nodes’ (modules) within the palette. including OpenAPI, Oauth2, IBM Watson, InfluxDB, Dashboards, Azure AD-Auth, Social Media. I could go on!


We have included working demos, (some include Xero Accounting Oauth2/OpenAPI , MySQL/MariaDB CRUD via REST, FormIO form population, eMail Campaign, Nextcloud Calendar/Contacts, Python within NodeRED and a LinkedIn Post.)

…and it’s hosted and supported in Australia.

Find out how Golman Sachs is extending Camunda Cloud with custom extensions: https://bit.ly/3uQjKuf


#automation
#business
#australian

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We love forms!

We love Forms! Forms is great for surveys, checklists, assessment templates, attendance registers…the list goes on!.

  • Forms are very easy to create with a sensible set of predefined answer options.
  • A link to the form can be shared easily with internal and external users.
  • Response data is collected and stored in your
  • deskonline.cloud workspace which makes .csv download and analysis of data super efficient (and secure).

No need to log into another platform then draw the data back to your shared workspace!

Check out this vid from the folks at Nextcloud to see how Forms works.

#deskonlinecloud #nextcloud #asafeplacetosyncandstore #digitalworkspace #collaboration #surveys

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How did deskonline.cloud help me get my business done today?

Third week of the month, which means I have a monthly Board Meeting to attend for an NFP that I work with. Here’s a rundown of how I used deskonline.cloud before, during and after my meeting today:

Files + Desktop Sync
To prep for the meeting, I save monthly reports out of emails and to my desktop folders then mark up my comments in the files. Attachments in emails are then deleted (my exchange server thanks me!). My desktop folders are synced with deskonline.cloud, so these files will be available locally (if I want to view on my laptop) or online through Files in deskonline.cloud (if I want to log in and view from another device e.g. mobile, tablet OR if I want to share these with someone else at the meeting)

Notes
I record notes/actions throughout the meeting using Notes in deskonline. While taking my notes today, I needed to check minutes from a couple of months ago so a single click to the panel on the left opens up the meeting notes I’m looking for. Another single click takes me back to the notes for this meeting. Quick as – no need to navigate through folders in explorer or Files to find meeting minutes.

Camunda Integration
After today’s meeting, I decide to add some elements to the E2E business workflow I’m building for this group. I launch Camunda Integration in deskonline.cloud by opening the BPMN diagram from Files in deskonline.cloud I make the changes I need then a quick click let’s me export the page to a single page .pdf or .svg, without having to muck around with page settings.

Side note: To map out business workflow, I will create a new ‘diagram’ if I am looking for a VISIO style flowchart. But I’ve found that Camunda is much more efficient (less clicks!) to rapidly map a large workflow and organise components on the page. The added benefit is that when we’re ready to take a chunk of process and automate it, the groundwork component definition has already been done in Camunda BPMN.

Files App + File Sharing
Sending the file to the other Board members is easy – I navigate to the file using Files in deskonline.cloud, choose the appropriate File Sharing option (password, expiration, allow download etc), copy the share link, paste it into an email and send. Recipients can then access the PDF through my Files in deskonline.cloud files, per the permissions I’ve set. When recipients are users in Deskonline.cloud, I can share directly from within dekonline.cloud, no need to send a link.

Had my laptop run out of power during the meeting today (the ongoing battle with PS controllers for the free power spot) I would have been able to carry on by accessing everything above (yes, even the .bpmn file!) through my phone or any other internet connected device.

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So many PicoCMS themes!

A huge selection of Pico CMS themes are now available to launch from your deskonline space. Webpages are stored as ‘Markup’ files in Nextcloud and using the Twig templating engine, you can produce modern responsive webpages that are SUPER easy to admin.