Last week the Owncloud community released version 7 of their fabulous cloud at home software and I could of course not wait to update. There are lots of changes that made it into 7 and I'd say the major ones are focused on making management of larger installations easier. But there are also a number of new things that are interesting for my much more limited usage scenario.
The first improvement, even if it only seems to be minor is an improved user interface when a new calendar entry is created via the web interface. While I usually create new entries either on a mobile device or in Thunderbird/Lightning, every now and then I also use Owncloud's own web interface which has been a bit clumsy so far. It's much better now.
Another thing I noticed is that files can now be sorted by date, name and size. Also it's now possible to get a list of all files that I have shared with others and all files that have been shared with me. Very helpful, too!
Also on the list of 'must-have's' from now is the Activity Stream view that shows which files and directories I have created, deleted, copied, shared, etc. and when. So far, I've never bothered to configure email notifications for various purposes such as automatically sending a notification to someone with whom I shared files with or to get automatic email notifications when a family member also using my Owncloud has shared something with me. Configuring the email notification settings is much improved in OC7 and can be done right from the web interface in the admin section. Reason enough to configure it and it only took me two minutes. Great, never without it from now on!
And one feature that I find particularly interesting also from a conceptual point of view is the new Inter-cloud sharing. I've noticed that when I share a file or directory via a link, there's a "Add to your Owncloud" button now. In other words if someone shares files on his Owncloud, I can directly put it into my Owncloud. I haven't yet tried out how this works under the hood but from what I've been able to read up it is based on the WebDAV protocol. Sharing between clouds, now that's a novel and interesting concept!
There's tons of other new features I haven't yet tried, have a look here for the details. Upgrading from Owncloud 6 to 7 worked quickly and flawlessly and all my calendar and address book clients still synchronize as they should.
Congratulations to the Owncloud community, it's an awesome new version!