Introducing SharePoint Mobile in 2010 (part 2) - Microsoft Office Web Applications

3. Microsoft Office Web Applications

Microsoft Office Web Applications provide the user the ability to work with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents online from personal computers, mobile devices, and the Web. Office Web Applications are available to customers using products built on Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. When Office Web Applications are installed, documents stored in SharePoint libraries can be opened in the Web browser directly. In addition, the PowerPoint Web application enables the PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show features, which allows you to broadcast a PowerPoint slideshow to users who can access the broadcast in a Web browser. Users of Window Mobile phone devices can leverage Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 as a preferred method for working with Office documents. Users of other devices, of which there are many, also can leverage mobile document viewers as a quick and easy way to access certain Microsoft Office documents from within the SharePoint 2010 mobile interface or from an SMS alert link. The Microsoft Office document types supported by mobile document viewers are

• Microsoft Office Word

• Microsoft Office Excel

• Microsoft Office PowerPoint

• Microsoft Office OneNote

The Word Mobile Viewer includes many exciting new features, including

• Page content rendering (text and image view)

• User interface (UI) with toolbar and menu areas

• Page navigation

• Page thumbnails

• Document property

• Find

The Excel Mobile Viewer includes many exciting new features, including

• Spreadsheet rendering

• UI with toolbar and menu areas

• Sheet navigation

• Show chart/illustration images

• Named item view

• Document property

• Find

The PowerPoint Mobile Viewer includes many exciting new features, including

• Slide content rendering (outline and slide view)

• UI with toolbar and dialog boxes

• PowerPoint Broadcast

• Slide navigation

• Slide thumbnails

• Document property

• Find

The mobile viewers included with Office Web Applications support the file formats listed in Table 1.

To use Office Web Applications and mobile document viewers within your deployment, you first must perform the following activities.

• Install Office Web Applications

• Activate the Office Web Applications services

• Activate the Office Web Applications features

3.1. Installing Office Web Applications

Follow these steps to set up Microsoft Office Web Applications for use. You must go through these same steps on each Web front-end (WFE) server in the farm. Be sure to complete these steps before continuing to the next section in this article .

3.2. Checking the Status of Office Web Application Services

After you have installed the software and run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, you need to activate the services on each server. If you just ran the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard for the first time, the services might already be deployed and activated. You can also set up these services through the Farm Configuration Wizard. If you ran the Farm Configuration Wizard prior to the installation of Office Web Applications, you should check the status of these services manually, and if needed, activate them manually or via Windows PowerShell. To determine if the services are running, perform the following steps.

3.3. Activating Services and Creating Application Proxies

If any of the Office Web Application services are not running, start them and create a service application proxy for each. You can do this within the SharePoint Central Administration interface or by using Windows PowerShell. To start the services and create proxies manually, perform the following steps.

You can also set up the service instances using Windows PowerShell. To do so, run the following script after customizing it to meet the needs of your environment.

$serversToActivate = @("contosoapp1","contosoapp2")
$svcInstanceNames = @("Word Viewing Service", "PowerPoint Service",
"Excel Calculation Services")
foreach ($server in $serversToActivate) {
foreach ($svcInstance in $svcInstanceNames){
     $svcID = $(Get-SPServiceInstance | where
         {$_.TypeName -match $svcInstance} | where
         {$_.Server -match "SPServer Name="+$server}).ID
     Start-SPServiceInstance -Identity $svceID
}
}

You can also set up the service application proxies using Windows PowerShell. To do so, run the following script.

$appPool = Get-SPIisWebServiceApplicationPool -Identity "SharePoint Web Services Default"
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplication -Name "WdView" -ApplicationPool $appPool |
New-SPWordViewingServiceApplicationProxy -Name "WdProxy"
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplication -Name "PPT" -ApplicationPool $appPool |
New-SPPowerPointServiceApplicationProxy -Name "PPTProxy"
New-SPExcelServiceApplication -Name "Excel" -ApplicationPool $appPool

					  

3.4. Activating Site Collection Features

After the service application proxies are set up, you will need to activate the Office Web Applications features in any existing site collections where you want to enable these capabilities. This is only necessary for existing site collections, because new site collections will already have these features in place. First, review how you would enable the Office Web Application features within an existing site collection.

Note:

There are two additional features, Office Mobile Web View feature and PowerPoint Viewing For Office Mobile, that enable you to view Word and PowerPoint documents from Windows Mobile and Windows Phone devices. These features will not be active on new sites by default, but you can activate them at the site collection level when needed.

You can also activate site collection features using Windows PowerShell. To activate the Office Web Applications feature for all existing site collections, run the following script. Note that you may get an error regarding the PowerPoint Broadcast site collection when you run this script if you used the Farm Configuration Wizard to set up Office Web Applications.

$webAppsFeatureId = $(Get-SPFeature -limit all | where {$_.displayname -eq
"OfficeWebApps"}).Id Get-SPSite -limit ALL |foreach{ Enable-SPFeature
$webAppsFeatureId -url $_.URL }

It’s important to mention that when the feature is activated, libraries will be configured by default to open relevant documents using Office Web Applications instead of the Office client application. You can override this functionality at the site collection and document library levels. To disable the setting for all site collections and revert back to client applications, run the following script.

$webAppsFeatureId = $(Get-SPFeature -limit all | where {$_.displayname
              -eq "OpenInClient"}).Id
Get-SPSite -limit ALL |foreach{
                Enable-SPFeature $webAppsFeatureId -url $_.URL }

To disable the setting for all document libraries within a given site, run the following script after customizing it to meet the needs of your environment.

Get-SPWeb -site http://webappsites/site1 |% {}{$_.Lists}{$_.Update()} |%
{$_.DefaultItemOpen = $false}

You can also disable the new default open behavior within a single document library using the Advanced Settings interface in Library Settings, as shown below in Figure 3.

3.5. Controlling Service-Specific Settings

It is possible to control granular service options for each of the Office Web Applications services. Each service provides a specific set of switches and toggles that can be manipulated to control the behavior of the service. To access these settings, open a browser and go to the Central Administration website and then click Manage Service Applications, highlight the appropriate service application, and click the Properties icon on the Ribbon. The following options are available for each service.

3.5.1. Excel Services

• Global Settings Define load balancing, memory, and throttling thresholds. Set the unattended service account and data connection time-outs.

• Trusted File Locations Define places from which spreadsheets can be loaded.

• Trusted Data Providers Add or remove data providers that can be used when refreshing data connections.

• Trusted Data Connection Libraries Define a SharePoint Document Library from which data connections can be loaded.

• User Defined Function Assemblies Register managed code assemblies that can be used by spreadsheets.

3.5.2. PowerPoint Service

• Supported File Formats Specify which presentation types users will be able to view using this PowerPoint Service Application. If a file format is not selected, users of this service will receive an error message when attempting to view a file of that format in the Web browser.

• Broadcast Site Users can connect to a broadcast site from at least Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and broadcast a slideshow to remote attendees who can watch it in a Web browser. This setting shows a site URL only if a default broadcast site was created during service creation.

• PowerPoint 97–2003 Presentation Scanning To provide added security when loading PowerPoint 97 to PowerPoint 2003 presentations, the PowerPoint Service Application performs extra checks before those documents are opened. These checks have an impact on overall server performance. Only disable this setting if you trust all documents loaded by this instance of the service.

3.5.3. Word Viewing Service

• Supported File Formats: Viewing Specify which document types users will be able to view using this Word Viewing Service Application. If a file format is not selected, users of this service will receive an error when attempting to view that file type in the Web browser.

• Embedded Font Support To preserve visual fidelity across different machines, a user may choose to embed a font within the document. Use this setting to determine whether or not embedded fonts are used when viewing documents.

• Word 97–2003 Document Scanning To provide added security when loading Word 97 to Word 2003 documents, the Word Viewing Service Application performs extra checks before those documents are opened. These checks have an impact on overall server performance. Only disable this setting if you trust all documents loaded by this instance of the service.

• Recycle Threshold Specify the number of Word documents that a process should be allowed to render before the process is recycled. Changes to this setting require an IISReset to take effect.

• Total Active Processes Specify the number of worker processes dedicated to viewing Word documents. This value must be less than the WCF connection limit for this machine. Changes to this setting require an IISReset to take effect.

3.6. PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show Setup

The PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show feature enables presenters to broadcast a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 slideshow to users who access the broadcast using a Web browser. If you installed Office Web Applications prior to running the Farm Configuration Wizard, the wizard will create a broadcast site for you at http://<defaultwebapp>/sites/broadcast/. If this site already exists, you need to visit the site and ensure that any users who want to give broadcasts are members of the Broadcast Presenters group, and that all users who will be viewing broadcasts are members of the Broadcast Attendees group.

If you are running a farm on which you installed Office Web Applications after running the Farm Configuration Wizard, or you find that the broadcast site doesn’t exist, you need to set up, create, and configure the site collection. Before doing so, you must perform all of the service and service application proxy setup described in the section titled Section 3.3 earlier in this article. After you have completed those steps, perform the following steps to create the PowerPoint Broadcast site collection.

After you have created the site collection, make sure that any users who want to give broadcasts are members of the Broadcast Presenters group and that all users who will be viewing broadcasts are members of the Broadcast Attendees group.

3.6.1. Starting a Broadcast

To start a broadcast, open PowerPoint 2010, navigate to the Slide Show tab, and click Broadcast Site Show. Then select the Broadcast site created in the prior step and click Create Broadcast. The default service setting is for Microsoft’s public Broadcast service, which requires that the recipient of the broadcast have a Windows Live ID. To use the site collection created in your farm, click Change Broadcast Service, add a new service, and enter the URL of the site such as http://<servername>/sites/broadcast/. You will then receive a temporary link that you can share with others. If they have access to the site, they can use that link to see a synchronized view of your slideshow while you present it.

3.6.2. Using Group Policy to Adjust Broadcast Service Settings

If you want all of your users to have the broadcast site available from within PowerPoint without needing to know that site URL or having to add the site manually, you can specify and propagate this setting using Group Policy. Before doing so, you need to download the Office 2010 Administrative Template files. When you have downloaded those files, create a Central Store for ADMX files on your primary domain controller and copy the ADMX and ADML files included in the Office 2010 Administrative Template files to that folder. This must be done prior to attempting to edit the policy settings within the Group Policy Editor.