Suggestions for service for real time collaboration in spreadsheets
Apologies if this has been posted here before (rule 4), but my search turned out empty, hence I felt it was okay to ask.
TL;DR: As the title suggests, I am looking for recommendations for software for real time collaboration in a spreadsheet-like manner. I myself would prefer Proton Sheets (I already have a paid plan), but I wanted to hear people’s experiences with it, and what alternatives there are.
Some people/strangers and I, in my neighbourhood, have come together to start a volunteering group for building a workshop that the community can make use of. In relation to this, we need a simple way to track different things, tasks, and who’s doing what and when. Think of inventory, shifts, etc. The group mentioned they would be happy with Google Sheets, but as someone who left the Google ecosystem years ago, I am not keen on going back, and would really like a great alternative that is as easy to use.
The group is a healthy mix of young technically competent people, professional carpenters, and older people not so great at using computers, thus it is important that its easy to sign up and use.
I realise the solution does not need to be a spreadsheet-like service, but that was something the group seemed to agree to be easy enough to use. I would be grateful if anyone here had a better solution though.
Perhaps I just need to suck it up, and create a new Google email for only this, but since we will not be using any enterprise plan or similar, my guess is that our data will be fed to an LLM for training. It also involves my private life, so I would really like to avoid this.
19 replies
I agree that Nextcloud with Collabora might be your way to go here, but this line made me think: maybe kanban board would be more what you need? I use Nextcloud's Deck for that, but even the devs say it's not production ready and it is true. It gets slow with more cards
Other software like this. From my notes, not vetted, not checked, just gathered in case I want to migrate out of Deck. Should be mostly open-sourcish
Of course, NC provides a lot more, you could even have your own Meet (Nextcloud Talk), so maybe it's a good idea to have it anyway
Also, there is OpenCloud. IIRC correctly there is some history between NC and OC but I don't remember the details
EDIT: since you initially started with searching for a service, there are offers where you maintain the NC but the most technical part is done by a company. I remember Elest and Hetzner but probably there are more
Pen and paper is probably the right choice here.
Aside from self hosting something like NextCloud, you could also check out Cryptpad.fr
You can also self-host cryptpad!
Not trying to be a downer, but I've worked the trenches of an internal IT help desk for a company, and you should prepare yourself for doing free volunteer tech support if you set something up like this. You'd be shocked at what things can be road blocks to otherwise intelligent, seemingly technical people. The risk of it drops if you use something more standard like Google Sheets, but it doesn't disappear entirely.
You will probably need to go with something that works for the lowest common denominator of your group. That might be "horrible messy email thread manually turned into a shared Apple or Google calendar once a week by a volunteer". If you don't, there will be constant friction with them. I've seen similar collaboration efforts fail on a team of professional systems engineers simply due to a difference in how each person wanted to take and maintain their notes. No one could settle on a standard and eventually the person pushing for it gave up.
In short there are multiple angles to this, more than simply privacy vs ease of use.
Cryptpad
Yeah you can use a self hosted nextcloud or similar, or maybe you want a wiki rather than a spreadsheet.
Thanks:) I’ll try to read up on self hosting nextcloud, but it seems like a good alternative.
Also, a wiki? I’m probably just thick, but how do you suggest we do shift management and such?
I figured on doing shift management the same way as without a computer, like you would on a white board or signup sheet. But ok, if you need a spreadsheet, you need it. You could also look on drupal.org for any modules that might help. But, Drupal may be out of style by now, I haven't paid attention.
nextcloud
Thank you!:)
I must live under a rock - I’ve never heard of this before. Do you suggest I just set this up on my PC at home and just have it running all the time?
I don’t have a homelab or similar, and in this economy not really the money to fork out for AI-caused inflated hardware prices for building one
This question tells me you should probably look into a hosted version: https://nextcloud.com/providers/
Don't listen to people telling you to self host, they're nerds who want you to pick up a second unpaid job.
There are nicer ways to say that.
The hosted nextcloud solutions are not cheap. The base plan for librebit is 79EUR per month. After 3 months you've paid off a mini PC.
Yes, its more work, and a huge learning curve, but if the goal is to save money, paying 79EUR per month is insane, unless you need the SLA.
I agree that self hosting may not be the right path for OP, but there are valid tangible reasons to do it beyond "self hosting is fun".
Yes. I'm one of those nerds and I sense when I have someone in front of me who doesn't seem to be. Self hosting is a huge obligation if you're expected to guarantee uptime to a group of users who personally can hit you in the face.
There's way cheaper options than librebit. I had a Nextcloud for 10€ a month with 10 users and 100GB or something at some point. My wife paid 5,39€/m for herself with 1TB.
You only need your PC on when others are using the spreadsheet.
Keep an eye out for mini PCs on second hand market places, they can be found for a couple hundred dollars or less, and are perfect for running something like this 24/7. Youll want a fairly decent internet connection though.
You can get free VMs on oracle cloud. Yes, Oracle are a bunch of cunts, but free is free, and you can get a free ARM VM with plenty of RAM that should be adequate for nextcloud.
Make sure you setup https properly.
It would be far more beneficial to host it at a datacenter, maybe a VPS, so it can operate 24/7, as they have 24/7 uninterruptable power supplies, maintenance, crew, temperature control, etc.. You can also allow nextcloud themselves to host it for you, if you don't want the extra trouble of maintenance.
I am in a similar position, due to praxis. But nobody in my area wants me to colocate racks of servers to mutual aid our needs.
I need a place to install fiber optics to.
Makes sense. I also really like that I don’t become an access point. Say if I move some day, there would need to be someone to take over.
Do you have experience using Nextcloud’s servers for this? Do you think it would be something the average Joe could handle in case of me not being able to do it?
I do have some experience with it, though I prefer other avenues for decentralized collaboration tooling. No, my curse of knowledge of what an “average joe” does and knows is exponentially changing😔. I can't tell what “average” is anymore. So I cannot trust what an “avg. joe” is capable of, any longer.
Baserow or NocoDB?