Requirements

• ONLYOFFICE Document Server v3.0 or later

  You need an instance of ONLYOFFICE Docs that is resolvable and connectable both from Alfresco and any end clients. It must be able to POST to Alfresco directly.

  Please refer to the official documentation page to learn more about installing ONLYOFFICE Docs.
• Alfresco v.5.2 - 6.1
• ONLYOFFICE Connector 5.0.0 for Alfresco

Installing ONLYOFFICE and Alfresco module package

The latest compiled package files are available on GitHub. You need the onlyoffice-integration-repo.jar and the onlyoffice-integration-share.jar files. If you plan to compile the ONLYOFFICE and Alfresco module package yourself for some reason (e.g. edit the source code and compile it afterwards), address the developer instruction.

1. Download compiled packages in the repo and share directories:

   cd onlyoffice-alfresco/
   mvn clean install

2. Upload the compiled *.jar packages to directories accordingly for your Alfresco installation:
   • from onlyoffice-alfresco/repo/target/ to the /webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib/ for Alfresco repository.
   • from onlyoffice-alfresco/share/target/ to /webapps/share/WEB-INF/lib/ for Share.

3. (Optional) Edit the alfresco-global.properties file to specify correct hostnames, open ports and protocols as alfresco and share are deployed as two separate services.

   alfresco.host=<hostname>
   alfresco.port=443
   alfresco.protocol=https
   
   share.host=<hostname>
   share.port=443
   share.protocol=https

4. Restart Alfresco

   sudo ./alfresco.sh stop
   sudo ./alfresco.sh start

5. Check if the module is present in the list at /share/page/console/admin-console/module-package.

Configuring ONLYOFFICE and Alfresco module package

Go to Alfresco Administration Console. Open http://<alfrescohost>/alfresco/s/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-config and specify the following parameters.

Document Server settings:

• Document Editing Service address - specify the URL address where the Document Editing Service is installed.
• Secret Key - specify the secret used to sign the data. For more details, see the Enabling JWT for the ONLYOFFICE and Alfresco integration section of this article.

Advanced server settings:

• Document Editing Service address for internal requests from the Alfresco server - specify the address that is used to access Document Editing Service from Alfresco server.
• Alfresco server address for internal requests from the Document Editing Service - specify the address that is used to access Alfresco server from Document Editing Service.

Common settings:

• Ignore SSL Certificate - turns SSL off.
• Enable Force Save - enables saving document changes directly to the Alfresco storage after clicking the Save button (if disabled, the document is saved in the document editor's cache until the document is closed).
• Save docx, xlsx, pptx as a new version of the original file after conversion - if disabled, a separate file will be created and placed in the same folder.
• Open the file for editing - allows administrators to choose the document formats to edit via conversion to OOXML formats.

Enabling JWT for the ONLYOFFICE and Alfresco integration

To protects documents from unauthorized access, ONLYOFFICE editors use the JSON Web Token (JWT). The token is added in the configuration when the Document Editor is initialized and during the exchange of commands between inner ONLYOFFICE Docs services. The secret key is used to sign the JSON web token and validate the token upon the request to ONLYOFFICE Docs.

To protect your documents, you need to enable the token validation and specify your own secret key in the ONLYOFFICE Docs configuration file, then specify the same secret key in the connector settings.

Step 1: Configure ONLYOFFICE Docs

1. Open the local.json file with any available text editor.
   • For Linux - /etc/onlyoffice/documentserver/local.json
   • For Windows - %ProgramFiles%\ONLYOFFICE\DocumentServer\config\local.json
   • For Docker – enter the ONLYOFFICE Docs container using the docker exec -it <containerID> bash command and open /etc/onlyoffice/documentserver/local.json
2. Enable token validation by changing the false value to true in three sections:
   • services.CoAuthoring.token.enable.browser
   • services.CoAuthoring.token.enable.request.inbox
   • services.CoAuthoring.token.enable.request.outbox
3. Specify your own secret key by replacing the secret value with your own text string in three sections. The secret key must be the same.
   • services.CoAuthoring.secret.inbox.string
   • services.CoAuthoring.secret.outbox.string
   • services.CoAuthoring.secret.session.string

   {
     "services": {
       "CoAuthoring": {
         "token": {
           "enable": {
             "request": {
               "inbox": true,
               "outbox": true
             },
             "browser": true
           }
         },
         "secret": {
           "inbox": {
             "string": "yoursecret"
           },
           "outbox": {
             "string": "yoursecret"
           },
           "session": {
             "string": "yoursecret"
           }
         }
       }
     }
   }
   

4. Save your changes.
5. Restart the services for the config changes to take effect.

   supervisorctl restart all

Step2: Specify the same secret key in the connector settings

In the connector settings, specify the same secret in the Secret key field and save the settings.

Connecting to the demo ONLYOFFICE Docs

Starting from ONLYOFFICE connector version 5.0.0, you can try ONLYOFFICE online editors within Alfresco without installing ONLYOFFICE Docs.

To turn the connection on, click the Connect to demo ONLYOFFICE Document Server checkbox and click the Save button.