The following is a paid product review for ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer, a platform that allows SaaS companies and development teams to embed full-featured online document editors (docs, sheets, slides, PDFs) into their web apps.

In this week's issue, I'm taking a look at the main features of ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer, as described in the intro text. But first, what is ONLYOFFICE? The main platform is a complete team office suite that allows team members to easily collaborate and edit documents, with features like track changes, team chat, comments/mentions, and more.

The Docs Developer solution allows developers to embed full-featured document editors in web apps. This means the same full-featured office suite (with support for docs, sheets, slides, PDFs, and fillable forms), but embedded within your own custom apps.

If you've developed your own app, you can probably put together an embedded document editing solution created by your own team (likely with the help of AI). But how robust and secure would such a solution be? And what is the overhead of such an endeavor? It's going to be costly, timewise and financially.

ONLYOFFICE Docs, however, offers the following key features out-of-the-box, so you don't have to spend any resources building a custom solution:

• Integrates with software written in any programming language
• Users can
  • Collaborate in real time on any document, spreadsheet, form, etc.
  • Leave comments and suggestions with tracked changes
  • Restore previous versions of files
• The editor UI can be custom branded and uses a familiar tabbed layout that's common in popular office suites

Features of the ONLYOFFICE Suite
Before getting into the developer features, let's take a quick look at the ONLYOFFICE platform in general, so you can get an idea what types of apps you can build.

ONLYOFFICE includes all the features users expect from a robust office suite:

• Word Processor for generating and working with Word documents, with support for all popular file formats (DOCX, DOC, ODT, TXT, HTML).
• Spreadsheet Editor for collaborating and editing XLSX, XLS, ODS, NUMBERS, and CSV files.
• Slideshow Maker for creating PowerPoint presentations, with support for PPTX, PPT, ODP, PPSX, and KEY files.
• Form Creator for creating, editing, and filling out PDF forms online.
• PDF Editor that enables users to view, edit, annotate, and create PDF files, with support for converting PDF to DOCX.

In addition, there's also an e-book tool and a diagram viewer that allows users to view and navigate Microsoft Visio diagrams.

Integrating ONLYOFFICE via the API
As mentioned, all the powerful features of ONLYOFFICE can be embedded in your apps and available to your users. These features are integrated via the ONLYOFFICE API, via Open API or WOPI. You can take it for a test spin in the API playground.

ONLYOFFICE can be hosted in the cloud or on your own platform. Once that's set up and configured, the API provides access to dozens of API methods and properties. These include access to features like opening files, saving, co-editing, document history, user mentions, renaming files, and lots more.

The rename file user flow with the ONLYOFFICE API

The API enables powerful apps to be built by means of:

• The Automation API, which enables developers to manipulate document contents from outside the editors.
• The Conversion API, for programmatically converting all kinds of Office documents, including text, sheets, slides, forms, PDFs, eBooks, and more.
• The Document Builder, a comprehensive toolset that enables your app to modify or build documents in DOCX, XLSX, PPTX or PDF without running Microsoft Office.

As you can see, the ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer edition has a powerful set of tools for building modern, user-facing office tools.

Custom Branding with ONLYOFFICE
Another powerful feature of the embedded ONLYOFFICE Docs is the ability to customize your embedded document solutions with your own branding. This ensures your apps and platforms can maintain the professional design your users are familiar with, while taking advantage of the full range of features in ONLYOFFICE.

Custom branding in ONLYOFFICE Docs

The API documentation provides details on customizing your embedded docs in the standard branding and white label sections.

Enterprise-Grade Security and Privacy
The ONLYOFFICE platform provides enterprise-grade security via their comprehensive range of security tools and services that keep your data safe. This means in user-facing apps you build that incorporate any of the document or collaboration features, your data will be safe.

Some of the security features you'll have access to include:

• GDRP compliance with full transparency on how user data is stored and used
• HIPAA compliance to protect data in medical-related apps and services
• End-to-end encryption during file transfers
• Protection against breach of data at rest
• Password protection for documents
• Data protection using JWT
• Document permission management

That's just a sampling of how serious ONLYOFFICE is about keeping your data safe. For more details see the security page on the main site, linked above.

Try ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer Today
You can test ONLYOFFICE Docs in the cloud or download ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer. From there, you can start using the developer features, including the JavaScript SDK, the Plugin SDK, Webhooks, and more.

In closing, if you're building an app or platform that can benefit from a full range of user-facing Office tools, try out ONLYOFFICE Docs Developer.

Now on to this week's tools!