Brief: Twake is a modern looking collaboration platform with focus on Kanban project management methodology. You can use it for free, opt for paid plans, or simply host it yourself.
Twake: A Modern Open-Source Nextcloud-like Collaboration Platform
We’ve covered Nextcloud as one of the finest options to facilitate remote working and collaboration. At It’s FOSS, we use it to store our internal documents, manage tasks via Kanban board and more.
I’m sure you will find several other options as collaboration platforms. Here, I’m going to give you a brief introduction on something that I stumbled upon i.e. Twake.
Twake is a modern take on a collaboration platform which aims for a rich user experience along with useful features as well. Unlike Nextcloud or ownCloud, you can opt to use the official hosted instance. You can also self-host Twake on your server just as you do with Nextcloud or Owncloud.
To test how it works and what it offers, I signed up for an account on their official instance with a free account.
Let’s take a look at some key highlights of Twake.
Features of Twake
You get all the features you’ll find in a standard collaboration platform. You have tools to:
- Store documents
- Manage to-do lists
- Create Kanban project boards with tasks deadlines, labels, subtasks and calendar view
- Shared calendar
- Video conferencing
- Slack like discussion boards
- Collaboratively edit documents, even MS Office documents
- Share documents or invite outsiders to discussions
The features that you can make use of will depend on what you’re using. For instance, if you self-host it, you will have no restrictions and can control whatever you need.
But, if you opt for the free plan on the official instance, you will be limited a single workspace, no guest collaborators, and a few other restrictions.
Here, I shall list all the key features and leave the rest for you to explore:
- Collaborative messaging
- Ability to create different channels (like Slack, Rocket.chat etc)
- Create tasks and manage them
- Board view of tasks
- Document management support
- Calendar view with task as well
- Unlimited message history (premium or self-hosted)
- Unlimited members (premium or self-hosted)
- Direct Messaging support
- Invite external members
- Guest collaborators (premium or self-hosted)
- Application integrations like Jitsi, Giphy
- Cross-platform desktop support (Linux, Windows, and macOS)
- Mobile apps for Android and iOS
- Can be self-hosted
Installing Twake client on Linux Desktop & Server
For desktop, you just have to head to the download page and get the AppImage file. You might want to read how to use AppImage files in Linux if you don’t know about it.
If you want to self-host it, you should go through the official documentation to get the necessary information. Our DevOps team deployed it on our test server using Docker containers and it worked pretty well in our limited testing.
Can’t self-host? Let us help you
Deploying open source applications and managing Linux servers takes some expertise and time. If you lack either but still want to have your own instance of open source software like Twake, we can help you out.
With our new project, High on Cloud, you can leave the deployment and server management part to us while you work on growing your business and community.
Closing Thoughts
Twake is developed by LINAGORA, a France based open source company. Their servers are hosted in EU and they are GDPR compliant.
Twake looks to be an incredibly promising collaborative platform while providing a rich user experience. I do find it a bit slow at login page so this is something they could improve. But other than that, it’s a good alternative to platforms like Trello, Sunsama, Asana etc.
What do you think about Twake? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
