Some basic ideas on how to set up your Nextcloud installation for a small business. In the following, the term resources can mean directories of files, calendars, contacts, and anything else you can share.

Groups are a way to rapidly share resources between users. Users can be in multiple groups, and sharing resources between groups is trivial. In a small shop, you may have the following groups

• Administration - Business sensitive information that should be limited to only a few people
• Accounting - Accounting information
• General - Information that is available for everyone in the organization

Now, when you add or modify a user, they can be made a member of one or more groups, and automatically be assigned resources.

In any size business above a “one person shop”, there will be resources you want to share with others. While it is easy to share resources owned by you, it is easier to manage as you get larger by creating one or more users whose only reason for existence is to hold and share those resources.

In small businesses, this can be a single user who has one or more calendars, contact lists, file structures, etc…, then shares them out to different groups. However, that means one or more individuals must do all of the organization.

In larger companies, consider creating a user for each major department. Thus, a web development company may have an Adm_Developer user, an Adm_Accounting user, and an Adm_Marketing user, each of which is managed by department heads.

A corporate calendar could be assigned to group General, as could a company wide contact list and directory tree. When you add a new user and put them in the General group, they automatically have access to the corporate calendar.