tutorial

Monitoring Collabora Online with Vigilmon: Web Availability, Capabilities Endpoint, WOPI Connectivity & SSL Certificates

How to monitor Collabora Online with Vigilmon — web server availability, /hosting/capabilities health endpoint, WOPI protocol connectivity, and SSL certificate alerts.

Collabora Online brings collaborative document editing to self-hosted environments — powering real-time co-authoring inside Nextcloud, ownCloud, and other WOPI-compatible platforms. When Collabora goes down, every document open in the browser stalls and users are left staring at a loading spinner. Vigilmon gives you external visibility into Collabora's availability so you know about outages before your users do: web server health, the capabilities endpoint, WOPI protocol connectivity, and SSL certificate expiry.

What You'll Build

  • A monitor on Collabora's web server availability
  • A check on the /hosting/capabilities health endpoint
  • WOPI protocol connectivity monitoring
  • SSL certificate monitoring for your Collabora domain
  • Alerting that distinguishes server-level failures from protocol-level issues

Prerequisites

  • A running Collabora Online (CODE or Collabora Office) instance reachable over HTTPS
  • A domain pointing to the Collabora instance (e.g., https://collabora.example.com)
  • A free account at vigilmon.online

Step 1: Verify the Collabora Web Server

Collabora Online serves its interface over HTTPS on port 443 (or 9980 if unconfigured). Confirm the server is up before adding monitors:

curl -I https://collabora.example.com/

A running Collabora returns a 200 OK or 301 Moved Permanently. If you get a connection refused error, the coolwsd process is likely not running.

Step 2: Create a Vigilmon Monitor for Web Availability

  1. Log in to Vigilmon → Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://collabora.example.com/.
  3. Check interval: 60 seconds.
  4. Response timeout: 15 seconds.
  5. Expected status: 200.
  6. Click Save.

This catches process crashes, OOM kills, and network-level outages. A Collabora process failure means no document editing for any user on connected Nextcloud or ownCloud instances.

Step 3: Monitor the /hosting/capabilities Endpoint

Collabora exposes a /hosting/capabilities endpoint that reports supported features, WOPI extensions, and server configuration. It is served only when coolwsd is fully initialized and ready to handle editing sessions:

curl https://collabora.example.com/hosting/capabilities

A healthy instance returns JSON with productName, productVersion, and capability flags:

{
  "productName": "Collabora Online",
  "productVersion": "24.04.x",
  "productVersionHash": "...",
  "hasTemplateSaveAs": true,
  ...
}

Add this monitor in Vigilmon:

  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://collabora.example.com/hosting/capabilities.
  3. Check interval: 60 seconds.
  4. Expected status: 200.
  5. Keyword: productName (always present in a valid capabilities response).
  6. Label: Collabora capabilities endpoint.
  7. Click Save.

This monitor is more reliable than the root URL check alone — it validates that coolwsd has fully started and can respond to capability queries, not just that the web server process is alive.

Step 4: Monitor WOPI Protocol Connectivity

Collabora uses the WOPI (Web Application Open Platform Interface) protocol to communicate with the file host (Nextcloud, ownCloud, etc.). The WOPI check URL endpoint lets you verify that the WOPI bridge is reachable:

curl https://collabora.example.com/hosting/discovery

This returns an XML discovery document that WOPI clients use to identify document handlers. A valid response starts with <?xml and contains <wopi-discovery>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<wopi-discovery>
  <net-zone name="external-https">
    <app name="application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text" ...>

Add a Vigilmon monitor for WOPI discovery:

  1. Add Monitor → HTTP.
  2. URL: https://collabora.example.com/hosting/discovery.
  3. Check interval: 2 minutes.
  4. Expected status: 200.
  5. Keyword: wopi-discovery (present in every valid WOPI discovery document).
  6. Label: Collabora WOPI discovery.
  7. Click Save.

When this monitor fires while the capabilities endpoint is still green, the WOPI protocol layer has a problem — check coolwsd configuration and ensure the net.post_allow setting includes your file host's IP.

Step 5: Monitor SSL Certificates

Collabora Online requires a valid SSL certificate — browsers refuse to load document editors over untrusted HTTPS connections, and Nextcloud/ownCloud integration breaks immediately on certificate errors.

  1. Add Monitor → SSL Certificate.
  2. Domain: collabora.example.com.
  3. Alert when expiry is within: 30 days.
  4. Alert again: 14 days, 7 days, 3 days, 1 day.
  5. Click Save.

If you run Collabora behind a reverse proxy (nginx, Apache, Caddy), monitor the reverse proxy domain. Collabora itself generates a self-signed certificate by default; the external SSL certificate is what matters for browser and integration trust.

Step 6: Add a Vigilmon Heartbeat for Document Editing Availability

A Vigilmon heartbeat confirms that the document editing service stays operational over time. Set up a lightweight scheduled check by pinging the capabilities endpoint on a cron schedule from your server:

# Add to crontab — sends a heartbeat every 5 minutes
*/5 * * * * curl -s "https://collabora.example.com/hosting/capabilities" | grep -q "productName" && curl -s "https://your-heartbeat-url.vigilmon.online/ping"

In Vigilmon:

  1. Add Monitor → Heartbeat.
  2. Expected interval: 5 minutes.
  3. Grace period: 2 minutes.
  4. Label: Collabora document editing service.
  5. Copy the heartbeat ping URL and add it to your cron script.

If the cron job stops sending pings — because the capabilities endpoint returned unexpected output or your server is down — Vigilmon alerts after the grace period expires.

Step 7: Configure Alerting

In Vigilmon under Settings → Notifications, configure your alert channels:

| Monitor | Trigger | Action | |---|---|---| | Web server availability | Non-200 response | Check systemctl status coolwsd; inspect /var/log/coolwsd.log | | /hosting/capabilities | Non-200 or keyword missing | coolwsd not fully started; check memory and disk space | | WOPI discovery | Non-200 or keyword missing | WOPI layer issue; check coolwsd config and network ACLs | | SSL certificate | < 30 days to expiry | Renew certificate; check ACME automation on reverse proxy | | Heartbeat | Missing ping | Document service degraded; check cron job and server health |

Alert after: 1 consecutive failure for availability monitors — a Collabora outage stops all collaborative editing immediately.

Common Collabora Failure Modes and What Vigilmon Catches

| Scenario | Vigilmon monitor | |---|---| | coolwsd process crash | Web availability monitor fires within 60 s | | coolwsd not fully initialized | Capabilities endpoint check fails; web monitor may be green | | WOPI protocol configuration error | WOPI discovery monitor fails; capabilities may be green | | SSL certificate expired | SSL monitor alerts at 30-day threshold; browser refuses to load editor | | Reverse proxy misconfiguration | All monitors fire simultaneously | | OOM kill (Collabora is memory-intensive) | Web availability fires; check system memory and coolwsd limits | | Network ACL blocking WOPI traffic | WOPI discovery fails while web availability remains green |

Collabora Online is a critical service for teams relying on self-hosted document collaboration. A silent failure leaves users unable to open or edit documents, and it often goes unnoticed until someone reports it. Vigilmon gives you layered external monitoring across the web server, capabilities endpoint, WOPI protocol, and SSL certificates so you know before your users do.

Start monitoring Collabora Online in under 5 minutes — register free at vigilmon.online.

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