In 2025, it’s hard to find enterprise software or productivity applications that don’t come with integrated AI assistants. If applied the right way, artificial intelligence can automate a lot of workflows, helping businesses save time, effort and money.
Office software is a great example of how artificial intelligence can take care of routine tasks, allowing you to concentrate on what really matters. In this article, you will learn how AI integration in ONLYOFFICE Docs transforms electronic document workflows, allowing you to rely on your favourite AI tools when editing and collaborating on office files in real time.
ONLYOFFICE Docs: the ideal collaborative office suite for businesses and enterprises
ONLYOFFICE Docs is a self-hosted collaborative office suite that enables real-time co-authoring and document editing within various business platforms designed for document and content management, internal communication, customer relationship management, file storage and sharing, project management and task tracking, etc. With more than 40 ready-to-use connectors, the suite provides direct integration with such popular solutions as Odoo, Netxcloud, Redmine, Pipedrive, Drupal, Jira, Confluence, Alfresco, Strapi, SuiteCRM, WordPress, Plone, Nuxeo and more. Due to its open API and WOPI support, ONLYOFFICE Docs can be easily integrated with any other web-based application your business might use, allowing your employees to create, edit and collaborate on office files.
With ONLYOFFICE Docs, you can open, create and edit text documents, fillable forms, spreadsheets, presentations and PDF files. There is also a diagram viewer in the suite, using which you can open and view Visio files. It supports more than 50 popular file formats, and its native compatibility with Word, Excel and PowerPoint files ensures that you can open, edit and share any office file you have, even though it was created with another office program.
ONLYOFFICE Docs is an ideal choice for teams and businesses that need seamless collaboration. The built-in collaborative features allow ONLYOFFICE Docs users to co-edit documents, slides, sheets and PDFs in real time. Flexible access permissions, two co-editing modes (Fast and Strict), comments, version history and control, online communication and tracking changes — all these tools make collaborative work a breeze.
Apart from its web-based editors, ONLYOFFICE Docs also offers free desktop clients for Windows, Linux and macOS, as well as free mobile apps for iOS and Android to guarantee a flawless editing experience on all popular devices and platforms.
Another advantage of ONLYOFFICE Docs is its unique AI integration, which makes it possible to automate many text-related tasks and improve electronic document workflows. Let’s discover how it works and highlight its special aspects.
How AI integration in ONLYOFFICE Docs works
The first version of a ChatGPT-based AI plugin in ONLYOFFICE Docs was launched in 2023, introducing some basic features, such as text generation and finding answers to the user’s questions. Since then, the developers have significantly redefined the philosophy of using AI in office software by improving the functionality and usability of the AI plugin.
Currently, the AI assistant in ONLYOFFICE Docs functions through a separate plugin that provides support for all popular AI providers and models. This plugin is available at no cost in the built-in ONLYOFFICE plugin marketplace. It is not installed by default and requires manual installation to get started.
The latest version of the AI plugin in ONLYOFFICE Docs doesn’t make you depend on the default AI provider. It gives you a lot of choices, allowing you to set up your favourite AI assistant by a trusted AI provider and even combine several AI tools to increase your productivity while you edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDF files.
Now that you know how AI works in ONLYOFFICE Docs, let’s find out how it transforms the way you edit documents and discover 6 reasons why you might want to give it a try.
1. Compatibility with all popular AI assistants
In ONLYOFFICE Docs, only you decide what you need and what AI assistants you use. The AI plugin guarantees compatibility with all popular AI tools, including custom ones. More precisely, you have an opportunity to connect AI models and chatbots developed by the following providers:
- OpenAI
- Together AI
- Anthropic
- Mistral
- Groq
- Google Gemini
- DeepSeek
- Ollama
- Stability AI
- xAI and more
Each provider lets you choose from a large number of large language models (LLM) tailored for specific use cases, like text generation, coding or problem-solving. You can always find what suits your needs better and build it into your workflow to enhance your productivity.
2. Ease of use
When you activate the AI assistant in ONLYOFFICE Docs, a new tab appears in the editor’s interface. Using this AI tab, you get access to all features and tools in one place. You don’t need to switch between different applications as you interact with artificial intelligence right within the document you are working on. By sending prompts to the chatbot and clicking the command buttons, you tell the AI assistant what it must do.
In a nutshell, you just open your document, spreadsheet, presentation or PDF file, select some text and choose the desired operation. Alternatively, you can communicate with the AI chatbot via custom prompts in a separate window. The process is pretty simple and intuitive.
3. Rich functionality
The set of features you have access to depends on the AI model you use in ONLYOFFICE Docs. Different models provide different features so you need to choose your AI assistant depending on your needs. Generally, here is what you can do using the power of artificial intelligence in text documents:
- Ask the chatbot various questions and get answers to them;
- Send custom requests to the chatbot in a separate window;
- Find information and verify facts;
- Analyse words, sentences and whole paragraphs;
- Generate text content based on your requirements;
- Turn text into images and vice versa;
- Summarize large texts and extract keywords;
- Polish your writing by correcting spelling and grammar mistakes;
- Translate from/to English and other languages;
- Recognize text from images using OCR capabilities;
- Discover the meaning of words and notions you don’t know;
- Write code samples and more.
When it comes to spreadsheets, the ONLYOFFICE AI plugin lets you use the AI function. This smart tool allows you to perform complex calculations based on a text description. You don’t have to type formulas yourself — just explain what result you want to get, and the AI function will suggest a suitable formula for your task.
In ONLYOFFICE spreadsheets, artificial intelligence also helps you create new macros based on your prompts and even convert VBA macros to JavaScript macros used by the suite. No code knowledge is needed, as the AI assistant writes the corresponding code according to your requirements.
As for PDF files, ONYOFFICE’s AI plugin has a special option for them — OCR. Using it, you can easily turn scanned PDFs into editable text and edit them in ONLYOFFICE PDF Editor.
4. Versatility
Another strength of the AI plugin is that it lets you add several AI models and assign them different tasks. For example, you can use Google Gemini for translation, ChatGPT for text generation and Claude Sonnet for information processing. If you know the strengths and weaknesses of each model, you can create unique combinations and boost your productivity.
5. No additional cost
In ONLYOFFICE Docs, the AI integration is available at no cost, and you don’t have to pay to have access to its capabilities. However, you need to have a valid API key that you can get from your AI provider. Some providers might charge you for using their API keys, so you should consult their terms and services agreements before using their AI assistants in ONLYOFFICE Docs.
6. Security
By design, ONLYOFFICE Docs is a highly secure office suite due to its self-hosted implementation model, open-source code and compliance with international security standards (e.g. GDPR and HIPAA). Additionally, it is equipped with a set of security tools to guarantee the privacy of your data and prevent unauthorized access to confidential files — JSON Web Token (JWT), HTTPS encryption, document permission management and watermarks, to name a few.
In addition, the AI plugin in ONLYOFFICE Docs is compatible with local large language models (LLM), i.e. those that you can run locally on your own hardware. In this case, you interact with artificial intelligence within your network without sharing your data with the provider. This works for people whose priority is data privacy and security.
Finally, you can configure the AI plugin on the server side to make sure that all your users will use only trusted AI models, keeping their data private.
7. Flexibility
Flexibility means that you have complete control over your AI integration in ONLYOFFICE Docs. The AI plugin doesn’t come preinstalled by default, and you need to install it from the integrated marketplace if you want to use its capabilities. At any moment, you can disable the AI assistant by pressing the Delete button in the AI plugin.
If you want to stay away from AI technology and don’t need AI assistance while editing your documents, just don’t install the AI plugin. However, if you change your mind one day, you can quickly enable the AI integration with a few clicks. It’s always up to you.
Flexibility also means the ability to choose the right AI tools for your tasks and combine several AI models to get your work done faster. It’s possible with ONLYOFFICE Docs since you are allowed to use as many LLMs as you can. Generate new text content with DeepSeek, create new images with Stability AI’s tools, recognize text with Mistral’s OCR models, and translate with ChatGPT — you can do all these things simultaneously via the different options in the AI plugin without having to switch between the models manually in your document.
8. Continuous evolution
If we take a look at the history of AI integration in ONLYOFFICE, it has never stopped evolving and has gone a long way from being a simple plugin compatible with ChatGPT only and offering a limited set of features. Now it’s a full-featured tool that provides a flawless document editing experience powered by artificial intelligence.
Constantly realising new versions of their AI plugin, the ONLYOFFICE Docs developers have ambitious plans. Their vision is to take the AI integration to the next level by adding more customization options. By this, they mean the ability to adapt the functionality of the AI plugin to the specific needs of a user. Ideally, ONLYOFFICE Docs users should be able to program the plugin’s functional buttons and use only the features they really need. If they don’t plan to use some options, they will have the permission to remove them from the plugin’s interface. This is what the ONLYOFFICE team wants to implement in future AI updates.
Final thoughts
With ONLYOFFICE Docs, you can enable AI-powered document editing within your favourite business platform. The biggest advantage of this integration is that you interact with the AI assistant directly in your document without having to open third-party apps. This way, you can do a lot of text-related tasks with a few clicks, allowing the chatbot to do all routine work. ONLYOFFICE Docs lets you work smarter, not harder, when you edit docs, sheets, slides and PDFs using the magic of artificial intelligence.
Related Categories