While QGIS excels at individual workflows, collaborative editing of shared datasets remains a challenge. Teams often struggle with server-side storage, synchronization between desktop and web environments, resolving editing conflicts, and tracking the history of data changes.

This talk presents an open-source approach for building collaborative QGIS workspaces using NextGIS components.

NextGIS Web (https://github.com/nextgis/nextgisweb) provides a Web GIS framework designed for storing and publishing geospatial data. It includes advanced user permission management and built-in version control for vector datasets, allowing teams to track edits, roll back changes, and manage collaborative workflows. The system uses QGIS as a rendering engine, enabling almost full support for QGIS symbology in web maps.

NextGIS Connect (https://github.com/nextgis/nextgis_connect) is a QGIS plugin that tightly integrates QGIS with NextGIS Web. It allows users to:
- publish QGIS projects as web maps,
- open web maps directly as QGIS projects,
- edit server-side data directly from QGIS,
- resolve editing conflicts interactively.

The latest release of NextGIS Connect introduces full support for feature attachments (photos, documents, and other files), which can now be managed both from QGIS and from web interfaces. Attachments are also included in the dataset version control system.

In this talk we will demonstrate how these tools enable simultaneous multi-user editing of geospatial data from QGIS, show the workflow of publishing and synchronizing projects between desktop and web environments, and explain how the underlying data version control system tracks and manages changes.

The presentation will be useful for QGIS users who want to build collaborative geospatial workflows without leaving the open-source ecosystem.

QGIS is widely used for geospatial analysis, editing, and cartography, but organizing collaborative workflows for teams working on shared datasets can be challenging. Common issues include synchronizing desktop and web environments, managing simultaneous edits, tracking data changes, and coordinating work across multiple users.

This hands-on workshop introduces an open-source workflow for collaborative QGIS environments using NextGIS Web - an open-source Web GIS server designed for publishing and managing geospatial data and web maps. It integrates closely with QGIS and provides features useful for collaborative teams, including:
- Publishing QGIS projects to the web while preserving map styles (QGIS is used as the rendering backend to ensure strong desktop–web style compatibility).
- Connecting multiple QGIS instances to shared server-hosted datasets.
- Simultaneous data editing from QGIS with interactive conflict resolution.
- Working with feature attachments (photos, documents, and other files) from both QGIS and the web interface.
- Built-in version control for vector datasets, allowing teams to track who changed what and when, review history, and roll back changes.
- Flexible user roles and permissions for managing team access.

During the workshop, participants will deploy their own NextGIS Web instance locally using Docker, perform initial configuration, and explore practical workflows for managing shared spatial data.

Attendees will learn how to:
- deploy and configure a NextGIS Web server,
- publish QGIS projects as web maps,
- connect QGIS to shared server datasets,
- perform collaborative editing,
- track and review data changes using version control.

The workshop will conclude with a multi-user exercise, where participants collaborate on a shared QGIS project to experience real-world team workflows including simultaneous editing and change tracking.

Requirements:
To fully participate in the workshop, attendees should have:
- Docker Engine installed and working on their laptop (local deployment is part of the workshop).
If Docker cannot be run locally, cloud instances can be provided.
- QGIS Desktop installed.

Recommended background:
Basic experience working with QGIS.
Basic familiarity with Docker is helpful but not required.

Workshop outline:
1 Introduction to NextGIS Web and collaborative QGIS workflows
2 Deploying NextGIS Web locally using Docker
3 Initial setup: global settings and user management
4 Creating layers and web maps in NextGIS Web
5 Installing and configuring the NextGIS Connect plugin in QGIS
6 Publishing a QGIS project to NextGIS Web
7 Configuring the published web map and datasets
8 Connecting a clean QGIS instance to the published project
9 Editing server-hosted data directly from QGIS
10 Reviewing dataset version history in NextGIS Web
11 Multi-user collaboration exercise: shared editing workflow