Deploy ONLYOFFICE Documentserver¶

OnlyOffice offers real-time collaboration with office documents in your browser. As soon as you open a file from SeaTable, OnlyOffice opens in a new browser tab and allows real time collaboration. As soon as the last user exits the document by closing his browser window, the document is saved back to the SeaTable base. Access takes place via the public URL via HTTPS. So that OnlyOffice cannot be used by other systems, a shared secret in the form of a JWT key is used.

Requirements¶

This tutorial assumes that SeaTable Enterprise Edition is installed and is running.

Setup¶

This manual describes the deployment of OnlyOffice with Docker. Thanks to Docker Compose, the deployment is straightforward and done with little effort.

Stop SeaTable Server¶

When running, stop SeaTable and all associated Docker containers:

cd /opt/seatable
docker compose down

Enhance docker-compose.yml¶

Add the following part to your docker-compose.yml as a new service. Make sure that the indentations are correct. With the next start of SeaTable, OnlyOffice will be downloaded automatically. Alter the value for JWT_SECRET and memorize it for later.

  onlyoffice:
    image: onlyoffice/documentserver:latest
    container_name: onlyoffice
    volumes:
      - /opt/onlyoffice/logs:/var/log/onlyoffice
      - /opt/onlyoffice/data:/var/www/onlyoffice/Data
      - /opt/onlyoffice/lib:/var/lib/onlyoffice
    environment:
      - JWT_ENABLED=true
      - JWT_SECRET=topsecret
    networks:
      - seatable-net

Modifying dtable_web_setings.py¶

Open /opt/seatable/seatable-data/seatable/conf/dtable_web_settings.py with your favorite editor and add the following code block at the end of the file.

# onlyoffice
ENABLE_ONLYOFFICE = True
ONLYOFFICE_APIJS_URL = "https://SEATABLE_SERVER_HOSTNAME/onlyofficeds/web-apps/apps/api/documents/api.js"
ONLYOFFICE_FILE_EXTENSION = ('doc', 'docx', 'ppt', 'pptx', 'xls', 'xlsx', 'odt', 'fodt', 'odp', 'fodp', 'ods', 'fods', 'csv', 'ppsx', 'pps')
ONLYOFFICE_JWT_SECRET = 'topsecret'

Change SEATABLE_SERVER_HOSTNAME to reflect the hostname of your SeaTable server. Additionally, adjust the value for ONLYOFFICE_JWT_SECRET to correspond to the JWT_SECRET in the docker-compose.yml file.

Modify your nginc configuration¶

Open the nginx configuration file /opt/seatable/seatable-data/seatable/conf/nginx.conf and paste the following lines at the top of the configuration file:

# Required for only office document server
map $http_x_forwarded_proto $the_scheme {
  default $http_x_forwarded_proto;
  "" $scheme;
}
map $http_x_forwarded_host $the_host {
  default $http_x_forwarded_host;
  "" $host;
}
map $http_upgrade $proxy_connection {
  default upgrade;
  "" close;
}

Add the following new location for OnlyOffice to the server block.

location /onlyofficeds/ {
  proxy_pass http://onlyoffice/;   # this must be the name of your onlyoffice container from docker-compose.yml
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  client_max_body_size 100M;
  proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
  proxy_connect_timeout 3600s;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection $proxy_connection;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $the_host/onlyofficeds;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $the_scheme;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

Download onlyoffice and restart¶

OnlyOffice is now configured and office documents can be directly edited from within SeaTable after a restart of the SeaTable service.

docker compose up -d
docker exec -d seatable /shared/seatable/scripts/seatable.sh start

OnlyOffice takes some time to start up. If you get an error message when clicking an office file in SeaTable, be patient. With docker compose logs -f onlyoffice, you can monitor the startup progress.

Try to open https://SEATABLE_SERVER_HOSTNAME/onlyofficeds/welcome. You should see a welcome page like this.

Try to open an docx-file from a SeaTable base.

Onlyoffice is ready, if a new browser window opens with your office document. Any user with access to this base can now open this document with OnlyOffice.

Troubleshooting¶

1. SeaTable doesn't start anymore/SeaTable is no longer accessible, what can I do?

It is likely that there is a misconfiguration in either nginx.conf or dtable_web_settings.py.

After docker-composing up, run docker exec -it seatable nginx -t to check the nginx configuration. If the nginx configuration is invalid, the output will tell you.

If nginx shows no error, enter the seatable container and try to start SeaTable manually:

docker exec -it seatable bash
/shared/seatable/scripts/seatable.sh start

2. There is not welcome page from OnlyOffice

If https://SEATABLE_SERVER_HOSTNAME/onlyofficeds/welcome shows a SeaTable error page, you should check the nginx configuration file. Make sure that the two components are added and that there are no nginx errors and restart nginx.

cd /opt/seatable/seatable-data/seatable/conf
nano nginx.conf

This part should be right on top of the configuration file:

# Required for only office document server
map $http_x_forwarded_proto $the_scheme {
  default $http_x_forwarded_proto;
  "" $scheme;
}
map $http_x_forwarded_host $the_host {
  default $http_x_forwarded_host;
  "" $host;
}
map $http_upgrade $proxy_connection {
  default upgrade;
  "" close;
}

There should be a location /onlyofficeds anywhere in your server block.

location /onlyofficeds/ {
  proxy_pass http://onlyoffice/;
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  client_max_body_size 100M;
  proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
  proxy_connect_timeout 3600s;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection $proxy_connection;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $the_host/onlyofficeds;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $the_scheme;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

Restart nginx and seatable from container and try again.

3. OnlyOffice Welcome page is shown but document does not open

Check your configuration of dtable_web_settings.py. Make sure that you added your public SeaTable Server address. Make sure that jwt-token is the same in dtable_web_settings.py and docker-compose.yml.

Advanced: Custom settings¶

This is only for onlyoffice experts. You can create and mount a custom configuration file called local-production-linux.json to force some settings.

Create a configuration file in the newly created directory:

cd /opt/onlyoffice
nano local-production-linux.json

Copy the following code block in this file:

{
  "services": {
    "CoAuthoring": {
      "autoAssembly": {
        "enable": true,
        "interval": "5m"
      }
    }
  },
  "FileConverter": {
    "converter": {
      "downloadAttemptMaxCount": 3
    }
  }
}

Mount this config file into your onlyoffice block in your docker-compose.yml.

  volumes:
      - /opt/onlyoffice/logs:/var/log/onlyoffice
      - /opt/onlyoffice/data:/var/www/onlyoffice/Data
      - /opt/onlyoffice/lib:/var/lib/onlyoffice
      - /opt/oods/DocumentServer/local-production-linux.json:/etc/onlyoffice/documentserver/local-production-linux.json

Restart OnlyOffice to load the new configuration.

docker compose up -d