Applications

Dashboard

The Dashboard is always installed into a Stackspin cluster. It is an application developed specifically for Stackspin. It allows you to manage Stackspin’s central user database. Soon, the dashboard will also allow you to configure, install and remove applications and set access rights for users.

Administrators can read how to use the Dashboard in Manage Stackspin.

Grafana

Grafana is a dashboard application that shows you information about the status of your cluster collected by Prometheus.

Users that have the “Admin” label turned on in the user panel, will have admin rights in Grafana. Other users are able to see graphs, but can not change anything.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is a file sharing and communication platform.

Generally, most of the Nextcloud documentation applies, but there are some things to keep in mind because of how we’ve configured Nextcloud.

Differences from default Nextcloud

Note

Users should be created, deleted and assigned Nextcloud admin/regular permissions through the Stackspin dashboard.

Typically you’ll want to create users through the Stackspin dashboard (“Users” tab), not through the Nextcloud UI. This way, the users can also access other Stackspin applications like Zulip or Hedgedoc, while needing to sign in only once (single sign-on). It is technically possible to create users within Nextcloud. These will be invisible to the Stackspin dashboard, and will not be able to log in using Stackspin single sign-on. Because we’ve configured Nextcloud to start the single sign-on process immediately if you’re not logged in, these users will not be able to access the regular Nextcloud login page, barring workarounds or changes to the configuration.

Most of the “user management” as described in the Nextcloud manual should be done through the Stackspin dashboard. Exceptions are assigning groups and quotas. All parts of the manual relating to password resets, user authentication including two-factor auth, and LDAP do not apply. Password resets can be done through the Stackspin dashboard, and individual users can manage their (optional) two-factor auth through the “Authentication settings” in the top-right menu in the Stackspin dashboard.

Note

We’ve disabled installing Nextcloud apps through the web interface because we can’t reasonably support arbitrary apps. We can sometimes install apps on request.

We don’t have a list of “available” apps. Feel free to request any app from the Nextcloud app store. We’ll typically do a quick scan to see if it’s somewhat up to date and expected to be maintained. We’ve had some bad experiences with apps that were not made compatible with newer Nextcloud version in time, and (other) apps that completely broke Nextcloud, so we’re slightly more careful – though it’s hard to predict these things.

These Nextcloud apps can be accessed from the top navigation bar:

Files & synchronization

You can access your files with the Nextcloud Web interface and create, preview, edit, delete, share, and re-share files. See the Files & synchronization user manual for general usage and Desktop and mobile synchronization for setting up file sync on your mobile or desktop device.

Calendar

The Nextcloud Calendar app works similar to other calendar applications. Follow the Calendar user manual for general usage and the Nextcloud groupware docs <docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/user_manual/en/groupware/index.html> for syncing your calendars with your mobile or desktop devices.

Team folders / Group folders

Team folders – previously named “Group folders” – are a way of sharing files among teams that’s a bit more structured than the owner of a file or folder sharing it with individual other users. A team folder is a special folder that’s available to all members of the specified user group or groups, also in the face of changes to group memberships. You can create a team folder by going to the admin settings (in the top-right menu), then “Team folders” almost at the bottom in the left menu, then use the text input field for a new name and click “Create”. When it’s created you can configure which groups/teams should have access.

Passwords

A simple, yet feature rich password manager for Nextcloud. See Passwors user handbook for more details, including using the Browser extenstions.

These are the mobile apps that you can use to access your passwords from your smartphone:

You’ll find how to configure file or calendar sync with your smartphone or desktop in the Nextcloud Groupware documentation.

Onlyoffice

Onlyoffice is an online document editing suite. Your can open documents in Onlyoffice by clicking them in Nextcloud. You can open new documents by clicking the “Plus” button in Nextcloud and selecting Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation.

Zulip

Zulip is a team chat application.

Reactivating users

It’s possible to deactivate users. Among other reasons, you can use this for an admin account which is only used occasionally for admin tasks and should not be visible during daily usage. You can deactivate yourself or another user through the Zulip UI.

If you want to reactivate a user but you don’t have another active (admin) account, it’s possible to do this through Zulip management commands. First run the following command on your cluster:

kubectl exec -it -n stackspin-apps zulip-0 -c zulip -- sudo -u zulip /home/zulip/deployments/current/manage.py shell

In the resulting shell, run this, substituting <your email>:

import zerver.models.users
p = zerver.models.users.get_user_profile_by_email("<your email>")
import zerver.actions.create_user
zerver.actions.create_user.do_reactivate_user(p, acting_user=p)

Single sign-off

It is currently impossible to log out of the single sign-on system by logging out of Zulip. This is due to a limitation in Zulip. This means that if you want to log into Zulip under a different account, you need to logout through the Dashboard or another application first. You can also visit https://sso.stackspin.example.com/oauth2/sessions/logout in your browser to end the SSO session.

Wekan

Wekan is a Kanban board application.

Single sign-off

It is currently impossible to log out of the single sign-on system by logging out of Wekan. This is due to a limitation in Wekan. This means that if you want to log into Wekan under a different account, you need to logout through the Dashboard or another application first. You can also visit https://sso.stackspin.example.com/oauth2/sessions/logout in your browser to end the SSO session.

WordPress

WordPress is a website content management system.

Roles management

If you want admin privileges inside WordPress, you need to set this in the Dashboard. Then, you need to log in to WordPress again.

If this is your first time logging in to WordPress, you have to log out and in again for your admin privileges to be applied.

For more information and technical details, refer to the issue in our issue tracker.

HedgeDoc

HedgeDoc is a collaborative markdown editor.

You can create notes, graphs and presentations, share them and collaborate on them with other co-workers. The user to create a note is the owner and they can manage viewing and editing access through note permissions.