Chapter 27. Office Web Apps Integration with SharePoint 2010

Office Web Apps provide a browser-based viewing and editing experience for SharePoint 2010 users who need to collaborate on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote documents. Office Web Apps provide a subset of functionality and should be tested thoroughly so the organization understands the capabilities and limitations of the browser-based editing tools.

This feature will be of special interest to organizations that support non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux, UNIX, and Macintosh, or support other browsers such as Firefox and Safari, which provide a lower level of compatibility than IE 7 and 8.

Office Web Apps also provide some innovative features explored in this chapter, such as enabling multiple users to edit an Excel document simultaneously and enabling the broadcast of PowerPoint slide decks using the browser. Yet, there are complexities to consider when implementing Office Web Apps, which are also discussed in this chapter and should be considered by IT decision makers before making the feature widely available, especially in environments that use heterogeneous browsers, desktop OS, and Office versions.

Microsoft is also making this functionality available from its Windows Live service, but that will not be covered in this chapter, which focuses on integration and features available when Office Web Apps are used with SharePoint 2010 products.