Cloud Services Overview

The CKEditor Cloud Services is a cloud platform that provides editing and real-time collaboration services. These services for managing comments, storing document revisions, handling the users, synchronizing the data, utilizing, configuring and managing features, importing and exporting documents and managing assets.

The platform primarily focuses on providing a backend for the CKEditor 5 features (via dedicated plugins), although some features can also be used directly through RESTful APIs and hooks.

# Real-time collaboration

CKEditor Cloud Services offers a fast and highly scalable service for real-time collaboration, compatible with rich text editors built on top of the CKEditor 5 Framework. It is capable of handling real-time collaboration on text documents and tracking users connected to the document. It also serves as a storage for comments, suggestions, and revisions added to the document.

Apart from having a supporting backend to transmit operations, resolve conflicts, and apply changes between users connected to the same document, some features are needed on the client side to offer a full real-time collaboration experience:

• Showing multiple cursors and selections coming from other users.
• Showing users connecting to and disconnecting from the document.
• Offering the UI for managing comments and markers in the document.

The CKEditor Ecosystem offers a collection of plugins that can be integrated with any CKEditor 5 build to provide a fully flexible and customizable experience.

# CKEditor 5 Real-time collaboration features

CKEditor 5 Real-time collaboration features let you customize any CKEditor 5 integration to include real-time collaborative editing, commenting, and track changes features and tailor them to your needs.

Real-time collaboration consists of four features delivered as separate plugins that can be used with any CKEditor 5 build:

• Real-time collaborative editing – Allows for editing the same document by multiple users simultaneously. It also automatically solves all conflicts if users make changes at the same time.
• Real-time collaborative comments – Makes it possible to add comments to any part of the content in the editor.
• Real-time collaborative track changes – Changes to the content are saved as suggestions that can be accepted or discarded later.
• Real-time collaborative revision history – Multiple versions of the document are available, an older version can be restored.
• Users selection and presence list – Shows the selection of other users and lets you view the list of users currently editing the content in the editor.

All of the above features are customizable. This makes implementing real-time collaborative editing within your application a highly customizable out-of-the-box experience.

For an introduction to CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features refer to the Collaboration overview.

# Export features

CKEditor Cloud Services offers a fast and highly scalable service enabling the user to export documents either to a Microsoft Word document or to a PDF document. Both of these are available as a service, making it possible to feed the data straight into the Cloud Services server for more advanced use or as convenient WYSIWYG editor plugins for ease of use in less demanding cases.

# Export to PDF

The Export to PDF converter provides an API for converting HTML documents to PDF files. The service generates a file and returns it to the user so they can save it in the .pdf format on their disk. This allows you to easily turn your content into the portable final PDF format file collection. Available both as a service endpoint (a premium feature) and as a plugin (needs to be added to the editor separately).

# Export to Word

The Export to Word converter provides an API for converting HTML documents to Microsoft Word .docx files. The service generates a Word file and returns it to the user so they can save it in the .docx format on their disk. This allows you to easily export your content to the Microsoft Word format. Available both as a service endpoint (a premium feature) and as a plugin (needs to be added to the editor separately).

# Import from Word

The Import from Word converter is a fast and highly scalable service enabling the user to import documents from a Microsoft Word .docx file. The feature is available as a service, making it possible to send a .docx file straight into the Cloud Services server for more advanced use or as a convenient CKEditor 5 WYSIWYG editor plugin for the ease of use in less demanding cases.

The DOCX to HTML converter provides an API for converting Microsoft Word .docx files to HTML documents. The service generates HTML data and returns it to the user so they can save it in the HTML format on their disk.

# CKBox

CKBox is a service that manages document assets and images. It allows for seamless uploading and management of assets within a document. The service stores them in persistent storage and provides tools to optimize image size and manage attributes, such as alternative text. Once an asset is stored, it can be reused in multiple documents.

If you plan to use it withing CKEditor 5, refer to the CKBox plugin documentation for details.

# Next steps

• If you already use collaboration features without Real-time Collaboration you can refer to our dedicated guide about migration of data between asynchronous and RTC editors.
• If you need to save your documents in portable file formats, check out the Export to PDF or Export to Word feature guides.
• If you need to import your documents from the .docx format, learn more about the Import from Word feature.
• If you are interested in the CKBox asset manager, check the CKBox quick start guide for a short instruction on how to start using CKBox.