Garrel municipality: How a modern community digitizes workflows with ONLYOFFICE Docs

Modernizing infrastructure and simplifying work processes are key challenges for public administrations. The municipality of Garrel, a community in the Cloppenburg district of Lower Saxony, Germany, impressively demonstrates how this transformation can succeed. By integrating ONLYOFFICE Docs into their Nextcloud environment, the municipality has taken a decisive step towards a more digital and flexible way of working.

The search for a reliable office solution

The Garrel municipality, with about 15,000 residents and around 120 employees across various departments, is committed to continuously modernizing its work processes. A central part of this effort was finding a reliable way to efficiently open and edit documents within their Nextcloud environment. A particular focus was on enabling flexible, location-independent note-taking.

Through research on Google and YouTube, the administration discovered ONLYOFFICE Docs. The decision to adopt the office suite was based on several factors. Since employees were already familiar with Microsoft Office, the similar user interface of ONLYOFFICE significantly eased the transition. This minimized training requirements and ensured high acceptance among the team.

Flexible collaboration

Currently, the Garrel municipality primarily uses ONLYOFFICE Docs in combination with Nextcloud to create and edit documents from any location. The integration was described as quick and straightforward, and it has been running reliably since its setup.

The real-time collaboration feature has proven to be especially useful. Multiple people can work on a single document simultaneously, with changes from individual editors clearly displayed through color-coded tracking. This has significantly simplified and accelerated project collaboration.

Employees now frequently use iPads as digital notepads in meetings and seminars. The notes are saved directly in Nextcloud and can be processed immediately at their workstations without the need for paper or manual transcription. This has made workflows noticeably more digital and efficient.

Goals achieved and future plans

The municipality’s main goal was to implement an uncomplicated office solution that allows document editing without local installations or expensive single-user licenses. This goal was successfully achieved with the combination of Nextcloud and ONLYOFFICE. In the long term, the administration aims to become even more independent of traditional, locally installed office packages.

The positive experience has encouraged the municipality to expand its use of ONLYOFFICE to other areas. In particular, the future integration with the email server solution is expected to further promote flexible document collaboration and is seen as a major advantage for the entire organization.

Recommendation for other organizations

Based on their positive experience, the Garrel municipality gives a clear recommendation for ONLYOFFICE. Organizations looking for a simple, reliable, and location-independent solution for editing digital documents are well-positioned with ONLYOFFICE. The seamless integration into existing systems like Nextcloud and its high user-friendliness make it an ideal choice for modernizing work processes in the public sector and beyond.