<p>This documentation is for users and administrators, not those wanting to install.</p>
</div>
<p>Your Federated Core comes pre-installed with a powerful <a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a> server allowing you to communicate with anyone on your team and anyone in the world using Matrix.</p>
<p>The client for using Matrix is Element. You can use <a href="https://documentation.federated.computer/docs/core_applications/element/">Element in a web broswer</a> with your Federated Core, or you can install and use a desktop application.</p>
<p>Download desktop clients <a href="https://element.io/download">at this link</a>. Note: in our experience, the &ldquo;Debian / Ubuntu x86_64&rdquo; instructions are the best way to get the Element desktop client rather than using your package manager.</p>
<p>When you launch the Element application the first time, you want to click &ldquo;Sign In&rdquo;. You will need to edit your &ldquo;Homeserver&rdquo; value and put in your &ldquo;username&rdquo; and &ldquo;password&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Userful information for configuring your Element desktop application.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Homeserver: <a href="https://matrix.domain.com">https://matrix.domain.com</a> where domain.com is your domain name.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Username: Your email address for your Federated Core.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Password: Your password.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You will need to verify your access using your security key OR from another device already logged in.</p>
<p>Note, when configuring email clients to be used with Federated Core, your client may or may not successful navigate &ldquo;auto-discovery&rdquo;. Here are the specific settings:</p>
<p>Server: mail.domain.com where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is the domain for your installing. Example: &ldquo;mail.federated.com&rdquo;.
<p>Server: mail.domain.com where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is the domain for your installing. Example: &ldquo;mail.federated.com&rdquo;.
Port: 465.
Security: SSL/TLS</p>
<p>If you want to use Microsoft Outlook for Windows, use this information found here.</p>
<p><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/set-up-email-in-the-mail-app-7ff79e8b-439b-4b47-8ff9-3f9a33166c60">Add an email account to Mail for Windows</a>.</p>
<p>This documentation is for users and administrators, not those wanting to install.</p>
</div>
<p>Using <a href="https://nextcloud.com/install/">this link</a> you can find a variety of applications from Nextcloud allowing you to connect your desktop and mobile device to your Federated Core.</p>
<p>There are applications for &ldquo;desktop&rdquo; for MacOS, Windows, Linux. Note, if you&rsquo;ve configure your Ubuntu-based Linux system using the built-in settings, you do not need a desktop client.</p>
<p>There are many applications offering integration with Nextcloud. You can find those listed at <a href="https://apps.nextcloud.com/categories/integration">this link</a>. Not all these applications work with your Federated Core, but many do. If we can be of assistance, please reach out for help.</p>
<p>Remember, your credentials for any application connecting with the Nextcloud installation on your Federated Core are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Server: <a href="https://nextcloud.domain.com">https://nextcloud.domain.com</a> (where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is your domain name)</li>
<li>User name: your Federated Core email address</li>
<li>Password: your Federated Core password</li>
<p>This documentation is for users and administrators, not those wanting to install.</p>
</div>
<p>Your Nextcloud installation includes the &ldquo;Notes&rdquo; application. You can choose to save your notes in either &ldquo;.txt&rdquo; (text) format or &ldquo;.md&rdquo; (markdown) format. You choose which format in &ldquo;Notes&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Whichever format you choose, if you have your Nextcloud desktop client installed and configured correctly, you can directly edit these notes using your desktop computer.</p>
<p>Choosing the &ldquo;markdown&rdquo; or &ldquo;.md&rdquo; format has the benefit of being able to style documents using simple text formatting commands. Here is a <a href="https://www.markdownguide.org/">handy reference</a> for &ldquo;markdown&rdquo;.</p>
<p>In fact, the website your are reading was created using <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">Visual Source Code</a>, <a href="https://gohugo.io/">Hugo</a>, and publishing the files to the Gitea instance on a Federated Core. The is some magic (what is called a &ldquo;webhook&rdquo;) that looks for updates to the Gitea repository and publishes them to the web using <a href="https://caddyserver.com/">Caddy</a>. Amazing.</p>
<p>You can use many different desktop clients to work with and edit your Notes files.</p>
<p>Note, when configuring email clients to be used with Federated Core, your client may or may not successful navigate &ldquo;auto-discovery&rdquo;. Here are the specific settings:</p>
<p>Server: mail.domain.com where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is the domain for your installing. Example: &ldquo;mail.federated.com&rdquo;.
<p>Server: mail.domain.com where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is the domain for your installing. Example: &ldquo;mail.federated.com&rdquo;.
Port: 465.
Security: SSL/TLS</p>
<p>If you want to use Microsoft Outlook for Windows, use this information found here.</p>
<p><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-an-email-account-to-outlook-6e27792a-9267-4aa4-8bb6-c84ef146101b">Add an email account to Outlook</a>.</p>
<p>Thunderbird isn&rsquo;t clunky anymore. Lots of investment is going into this great email, calendar, contacts, and more desktop client.</p>
<p>You can download Thunderbird from their <a href="https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/">website</a>.</p>
<p>The steps for configuring Thunderbird are practically the same for the major desktop platforms. Use the standard installation options and allow Thunderbird to be your default mail application.</p>
<p>You&rsquo;ll be asked to enter your Federated Core email address. Thunderbird <em>should</em> auto-configure your settings, but if you need to manually set them up, here is the needed information:</p>
<p>In order to connect Thunderbird to the addresses kept in your Nextcloud application, select the small address book icon in the upper right of Thunderbird to select the &ldquo;Address Book&rdquo; mode.</p>
<p>You need to get the link for the &ldquo;Location&rdquo; line. This can be found in Nextcloud. Open a browser, enter the nextcloud.domain.com address for your Federated Core where &ldquo;domain.com&rdquo; is your particular domain name, navigate to the Contacts application, and then Contacts Settings in the lower left of the window. You&rsquo;ll see a window like this:</p>
<p>You click on the three dots in the &ldquo;Address books&rdquo; section to see a drop down menu. Select &ldquo;Copy link&rdquo;. That is the link address we need for the &ldquo;Location&rdquo; in the prior dialog box in Thunderbird. You can switch back to Thunderbird and paste the link into the &ldquo;Location&rdquo; section of the dialog box then click &ldquo;Continue&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Now Thunderbird will ask you to authenticate to your Nextcloud application.</p>
<p>Enter your username (email address for Federated Core) and password. Click &ldquo;OK&rdquo; and you should have your Address Book from Nextcloud now connected to Thunderbird.</p>
<p>These instructions work for any Calendar in your Nextcloud application. You can have Calendars for yourself/personal, decks, task lists, etc.</p>
<p>We will be adding a CalDAV calendar to Thunderbird. First switch to the Calendar mode in Thunderbird by clicking the calendar icon along the right side of the Thunderbird application.</p>
<p>We choose from the next dialog box to subscribe to a &ldquo;On the Network&rdquo; calendar and click &ldquo;Next&rdquo;.</p>
<p>In order to find the &ldquo;Location&rdquo; we need to switch to our Nextcloud application and navigate to the &ldquo;Calendar&rdquo; app.</p>
<p>You select the calendar you want to subscribe to by clicking on the &ldquo;edit&rdquo; function. Another dialogue box is presented:</p>
<p>Click on the &ldquo;Copy private link&rdquo; buttton to copy the desired &ldquo;Location&rdquo; to the clipboard. Now we can go back to Thunderbird and paste the link into the &ldquo;Location&rdquo; box and click &ldquo;Find Calendars&rdquo;.</p>
<p>When Thunderbird finds the calendar, it will ask us for our password for Nextcloud.</p>
<p>Leave the &ldquo;Calendar Type&rdquo; as &ldquo;CalDAV&rdquo; and click &ldquo;Subscribe&rdquo;. Your calendar is now available in Thunderbird.</p>
<p>Note: you will need to ask your administrator for your configuration file to complete these steps. It should come as a file with the format of &ldquo;name.conf&rdquo;.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You will need to download the appropriate version of Wireguard for your system. You can find the installation links at <a href="https://www.wireguard.com/install/">this URL</a>.</p>
<h3 id="configuration-for-windows-and-macos">Configuration for Windows and MacOS</h3>
<p>Once you have downloaded and installed Wireguard, start it up. You should see a window similar to the following.</p>
<p>Click the &ldquo;+&rdquo; (Macintosh) or &ldquo;Add Tunnel&rdquo; in the bottom left or the button &ldquo;Import tunnel(s) from file&rdquo;.</p>
<p>On the Macintosh, you may see the following warning:</p>
<p>Click &ldquo;Allow&rdquo;. Now you can click the &ldquo;Activate&rdquo; button to connect to your Federated Core VPN.</p>
<p>You are connected to your Federated Core and all internet traffic will be tunnelled through the Federated Core.</p>
<h3 id="configuration-for-ubuntu-based-linux">Configuration for Ubuntu-based Linux</h3>
<p>Install Wireguard using the following command:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>sudo apt install wireguard</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Using the configuration file from your administrator, you can use the command line tools from Wireguard to connect to your Federated Core VPN.</p>
<p>This documentation is for users and administrators, not those wanting to install.</p>
</div>
<p>The Nextcloud installation of your Federated Core works just like a product such as Dropbox(tm) or Google Drive(tm) and is compatible with office suites such as Microsoft Office(tm) or Libre Office(tm).</p>
<p>When you save a file from Microsoft Office(tm) or Libre Office(tm) to your &ldquo;Files&rdquo; on your Federated Core using your Nextcloud desktop client or the integration with Ubuntu-based Linux operating systems, that file is available for preview and work within the web interface of Nextcloud. This gives you maximum flexibility to work using desktop office tools or the web interface.</p>
<p>Let&rsquo;s see how this might work. Note: you need to have the Nextcloud desktop client installed and configured, or your Ubuntu-based operating system configure to work with Nextcloud and the &ldquo;Files&rdquo; option turned on.</p>
<p>If you go to the &ldquo;Files&rdquo; application on Nextcloud in your browser at &ldquo;nextcloud.domain.com&rdquo; (where domaim.com is your domain name), you can click the big &ldquo;+&rdquo; (&ldquo;plus&rdquo;) symbol to get the following drop down.</p>
<p>In this example we will select and create a &ldquo;New spreadsheet&rdquo;. After giving our spreadsheet a name, Nextcloud opens a full-featured web editor for your spreadsheet. We&rsquo;ve entered in some data. Changes are automatically saved.</p>
<p>Now, assuming the Nextcloud client is installed and configured, you can look in your file browser for your operating system and find the spreadsheet we created. Here&rsquo;s what that looks like on Pop OS.</p>
<p>Neat, huh? A couple of caveats. You can&rsquo;t edit in Excel and expect to see the changes expressed in Libre Office on another machine. Excel and Libre Office don&rsquo;t play nice together that way.</p>
<p>However, you can edit spreadsheets, documents, presentations and more on the web and then, using the share tools in Nextcloud &ldquo;Files&rdquo;, allow someone else to work on that file in the desktop editor of their choice.</p>