Connect Nextcloud & External Storage

EUnifyer can run alongside your existing Nextcloud (or any S3 / CalDAV / CardDAV server). Your files, calendars, and contacts stay where they are today, and EUnifyer surfaces them inside one unified interface with a single login, unified search, and one audit trail.

This is the coexistence model: adopt EUnifyer one module at a time, keep the systems you already trust, and consolidate later only if you choose to. Everything is reversible.

How it works: two planes. EUnifyer is always the control plane: identity, permissions, search, audit, and the user experience. The data plane (where the bytes actually live) becomes pluggable. When you connect Nextcloud, your files never leave Nextcloud; EUnifyer holds only a synced index so they appear and are searchable in Drive.

Before you start

External connections are enabled per plan. If you don’t see External connections in your Back Office, it needs to be switched on for your organisation.

Contact us to enable it. Email sales@eunifyer.com or your account manager and ask to enable External Connections (the byo_storage / byo_calendar / byo_contacts plan features). We’ll confirm the commercial model. When storage stays in your own Nextcloud, it is billed as a fixed connector fee rather than per-gigabyte. Resellers can enable it once and have it inherited by their sub-organisations.

You will also need, from your Nextcloud:

• The WebDAV base URL for the account whose files you want to surface. It looks like: https://cloud.example.org/remote.php/dav/files/USERNAME
• A username and an app password (Nextcloud → Settings → Security → Create new app password). Use an app password, not the account password.

Connect Nextcloud Files (Drive)

1. Open Back Office → External connections.
2. Click Add connection.
3. Fill in:
   • Module: Storage (Drive)
   • Provider: nextcloud
   • Label: a name you’ll recognise, e.g. Centric Nextcloud
   • Base URL: https://cloud.example.org/remote.php/dav/files/USERNAME
   • Username: the Nextcloud user
   • Password / app-password: the app password you created
   • Inherit to sub-organizations: turn on if you are a reseller and want your customers to use this connection by default
4. Click Create.
5. On the new connection card, click Test to verify EUnifyer can reach Nextcloud.
6. Click Sync now to import the folder tree. Files appear in Drive and in unified search within a minute or two; the bytes remain in Nextcloud.

That’s it. Opening a Nextcloud-hosted file streams it securely through EUnifyer under your normal login, so you don’t hand your Nextcloud credentials to end users.

Connect Nextcloud Calendar (CalDAV)

1. Add connection → Module: Calendar, Provider: caldav.
2. Base URL: your Nextcloud calendar collection, e.g. https://cloud.example.org/remote.php/dav/calendars/USERNAME/personal/
3. Enter the username + app password, Create, then Sync now.

Events appear in EUnifyer Calendar alongside native ones.

Connect Nextcloud Contacts (CardDAV)

1. Add connection → Module: Contacts, Provider: carddav.
2. Base URL: your Nextcloud address book, e.g. https://cloud.example.org/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/USERNAME/contacts/
3. Enter the username + app password, Create, then Sync now.

Connect any S3-compatible store

Prefer an object store (MinIO, Wasabi, your own S3)? Choose Module: Storage, Provider: s3, and provide:

• Endpoint URL, Bucket, and Region
• Access key and Secret key

S3 connections support direct (presigned) downloads, so large files don’t proxy through EUnifyer.

Where things live during coexistence

Credentials are encrypted at rest and never returned by the API. Only the presence of a secret is ever shown.

Per-organisation, per-reseller, or platform-wide

A connection can be scoped three ways, resolved in this order:

1. Per organisation: the org’s own connection.
2. Reseller inheritance: a connection on the parent (reseller) org with Inherit to sub-organizations enabled applies to all its customers that don’t set their own.
3. Platform default: a tenant-wide default (set by a platform administrator) for an on-premises deployment.

If none is set, or the plan feature is turned off, the module simply uses native EUnifyer storage. Turning the flag off always falls back to native.

Consolidating later (optional)

Because the experience is already unified, moving files from Nextcloud into native EUnifyer Drive later is a backend migration, not a re-platforming, and it unlocks real-time co-editing on those files. It’s entirely optional; you can stay hybrid indefinitely.

Need help?

Setting up a pilot, mapping per-user permissions, or planning a phased Nextcloud to EUnifyer rollout? Get in touch and we’ll help you scope it.

See also: Connect External Systems · Supported Protocols · Continuous Sync.