This section provides some “food for thought” for
organizations interested in implementing the Office Web Apps
functionality to allow end users another vehicle for collaborating on
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents. Prerequisites, licensing
issues, and limitations by browsers are covered in this section,
although from a fairly high level due to the wealth of information
provided by Microsoft on these topics (for which links are given).
Server Prerequisites
and Licensing Considerations
SharePoint Foundation
2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise is required to
use Office Web Apps. Server prerequisites are listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Server Prerequisites
| System Requirements | Details |
|---|
| Supported operating
systems | Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) |
| Hardware | Processor:
64-bit; dual processor: 3GHz RAM: 4GB for stand-alone; 8GB for farm
Hard disk: 80GB |
| Software | SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 |
| Browser support | Internet
Explorer 7.0 or later on Windows Safari 4.0 or later on Mac Firefox 3.5
or later on Windows, Mac, and Linux |
As defined by Microsoft on
TechNet in the “Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010
Products)” article (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff431687.aspx): “Office Web Apps are available to business
customers with Microsoft Office 2010 volume licensing and document
management solutions that are based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Products.”
Organizations interested in
using Office Web Apps in their environments still need to comply with
Microsoft licensing policies, which can be found on the following site: http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/default.aspx. The legalese used makes a full
understanding of appropriate usage difficult; however, several
statements in the Excel Web App 2010 section shed light on some key
concepts:
“If you comply with
your volume license agreement, including these product use rights and
the Product List, you may use the software and online services only as
expressly permitted in these product use rights.”
“You may not host the
products for commercial hosting services.”
From an
organization standpoint, it is clear that existing product use rights
(such as use of other Office products) still apply to the Office Web App
(in this case, Excel Web App 2010) and some homework may be required to
ensure that the organization is meeting the terms of the volume license
agreement.
Note
In plain English, for
a properly licensed organization to use Office 2010 core applications,
including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and have appropriate licenses for
SharePoint 2010, there should not be an extra cost to use Office Web
Apps. However that organization cannot allow external users to use the
Office Web Apps feature without incurring liability on the licensing
side, which would most likely include having to purchase any SharePoint
CALs and Office 2010 CALs for these external users. For this reason, IT
decision makers should carefully consider whether to enable the Office
Web Apps feature, and if so, for which libraries and site collections.
Browser Support of
Office Web Apps
For organizations that
decide to support Office Web Apps, it is important to test the various
browsers in use because the browser will become a primary tool used for
editing documents. Office Web Apps can also fill the functionality gap
that appears when organizations support browsers other than Internet
Explorer 7 and 8 32-bit version, and operating systems other than the
newest Microsoft operating systems, such as Linux, UNIX, and Mac OSX.
Microsoft offers a more
in-depth review of limitations at the following URL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288142.aspx. This list should be reviewed in detail by
organizations that officially support browsers other than the 32-bit
versions of IE 7 and 8. In this article, Microsoft defines three levels
of compatibility:
Supported (the highest level of compatibility)— IE 8 (32-bit) and IE 7 (32-bit) fall into this
category.
Supported
with known limitations (most features and functionality work)— IE 8 (64-bit), IE 7 (64-bit), Firefox 3.6 (on
Windows operating systems and on non-Windows operating systems), and
Safari 4.04 (on non-Windows operating systems) fall into this category.
Not
tested (there may be issues when using a browser in this category)— Any browser not listed in the previous two
sections fall into
this category (such as Google Chrome).
A partial list of
limitations is as follows:
Internet Explorer
8 (32-bit)— There are no known
limitations for Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit).
Internet Explorer 7
(32-bit)— There are no known limitations for Internet Explorer 7
(32-bit).
Internet
Explorer 8 (64-bit)— There are a
variety of known limitations for Internet Explorer 8 (64-bit). See the
previously mentioned link for more information on Microsoft’s TechNet
website.
Note
An example of IE 8 64-bit
limitations include the following: When accessing a SharePoint 2010
document library from an IE 8 64-bit browser, if the user clicks on Edit
in a Microsoft Office Word entry from the drop-down menu for a Word
document in the lib, an error message will appear that states, “The
document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the
document.”
Internet
Explorer 7 (64-bit)— There are a
variety of known limitations for Internet Explorer 7 (64-bit). See the
previously mentioned link for more information on Microsoft’s TechNet
website. Limitations are similar to IE 8 64-bit.
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 (on
Windows operating systems)— There are a
variety of known limitations for Firefox 3.6 on Windows operating
systems. See the previously mentioned link for more information on
Microsoft’s TechNet website.
Note
A Firefox plug-in is
required to open and edit Microsoft Office applications. However,
testing showed that this plug-in is included with Firefox for Windows
version 3.6.3, as shown in Figure 1,
so use of Firefox 3.6.3 to open and edit Microsoft Office Word 2010 was
seamless.
Mozilla
Firefox 3.6 (on non-Windows operating systems)— There are a variety of known limitations for Firefox 3.6 on
non-Windows operating systems (Mac OSX and UNIX/Linux). See the
previously mentioned link for more information on Microsoft’s TechNet
website.
Safari
4.04 (on non-Windows operating systems)—
There are a variety of known limitations for Safari 4.04 on non-Windows
operating systems (Mac OSX (Version 10.6 and Snow Leopard)). See the
previously mentioned link for more information on Microsoft’s TechNet
website.
Note
Per the Microsoft document,
“Plan browser support (SharePoint Foundation 2010)” for Firefox 3.6
Windows and non-Windows operating systems and Safari 4.04 on non-Windows
operating systems: “If you install and configure the Office Web Apps on
the server, the Edit functionality works and you can modify Office
documents in your browser.”
Planning to Support
Multiple Versions of the Office Rich Client
Even though Office Web Apps
enable users to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents in their
browsers, the features made available are limited and pared down from
what the full Office applications provide. Therefore, users will still often work in the
full clients, assuming the organization uses the Microsoft Office
application suite. Initial testing of Office Web Apps reveal the
importance of thorough testing for an organization interested in
implementing this functionality. These examples are just examples of the
issues that can be encountered and should be taken into account in the
planning process.
If Word 2003, Excel 2003, or
PowerPoint 2003 were used to create documents that were saved to
SharePoint 2010 and users want to edit those documents in the browser,
they will get an error message. The error message will state, “To Edit
This File in Word Web App It First Must Be Converted to the Newest File
Format. This Will Also Create a Backup of The Original File. To Edit
This File Without Converting It, Open It in Microsoft Word.” If the user
proceeds with the editing process, a new version of the document will
be saved in the same document library with “- Converted” attached as a
suffix to the document title. Although not a “show stopper,” this
behavior could lead to confusion, so the SharePoint administration team
may require that files be converted to the newer .docx, .xslx, and .pptx
formats before being uploaded to SharePoint 2010 document libraries
that will be enabled for use with the Office Web Apps feature and
browser-based editing.
Another example
pertains to organizations that may be standardized on the Office 2007
suite, but users may still save files using the older,
backward-compatible file types. In this case, a user created a
spreadsheet in Excel 2010 but then saved the document in Excel 97–2003
format because she needed to send it to an external partner who she
believe had an older version of Excel. She then uploaded the spreadsheet
to a SharePoint 2010 document library enabled for browser editing using
Office Web Apps. One of her coworkers accesses the library from his
netbook that doesn’t have the full Excel client on it and clicks on the
title of the spreadsheet, expecting to edit it in the browser. Instead,
the coworker sees an error, “Do You Want to Save This File, or Find a
Program Online to Open It.” If the coworker had Excel installed locally,
he would be asked to open the document in Excel in Read Only or Edit
mode, which again was not what he was expecting.
Mobile Device Support
Many organizations are
intrigued by the ever-present concept of further enabling productivity
between mobile users and office-bound employees. Office Web Apps offer a
toolset that can be investigated for this purpose and provide a reduced
set of tools that are better suited for devices with small screens. Of
course, the SharePoint environment needs to be accessible from the
outside world for this functionality to be useful, and the organization
needs to thoroughly test the different supported devices.
A primary limitation is the
small size of the screens on the mobile devices, but new features such
as panning and zooming and more powerful processors in the devices make
the experience more tolerable than in the past.
The following devices
provide mobile “support” for Office Web Apps in SharePoint according to
Microsoft, but the organization needs to test thoroughly to establish if
the level of functionality provided is adequate:
The organization should make
an initial decision whether mobile devices will be supported, and if so
which specific makes and models, and then engage in thorough testing.
As an example of this
testing, the iPhone is listed in the preceding list of compatible
devices, but when Office Web App access was tested from an iPhone
(operating system version 3.1.3) the documents were viewable but not
editable using the built-in version of Safari nor could new documents be
created. Over time, Microsoft may change their support, or other
browser could become available that enable more interactive access to
Office Web Apps from mobile devices.
Tip
A
good way to test mobile device access to Office Web Apps is to use the
Microsoft Live service. Simply visit http://home.live.com/ and then either log in with an existing account or sign
up for a new account and provide the information requested. Then click
Office in the top menu, and then click one of the icons under the
heading “Create a New Online Document” to test Office Web Apps and
create a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote document, as shown in Figure 2.
