6 Things You Should Know About How Office and SharePoint 2010 Work Together

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Although Microsoft dropped the word “Office” from the SharePoint product name, the level of interoperability between SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 has taken a quantum leap. While previous versions of SharePoint and Office offered some integration (mostly unnoticed by the average user), the level of cooperation between the products is now to the point where SharePoint 2010 could even drive Office 2010 upgrades:

1. SharePoint 2010 is required to run the Office 2010 Web Apps on an intranet - unless you are willing to run the ad-supported free version.
2. Office 2010 can find files to open or insert on SharePoint as easily as files stored on the C: drive – A user’s “SharePoint Sites” is a list available under the Office client application “Favorites” dialog, alongside of “Documents”. This list can be managed by either the user or an administrator.
3. Office 2010 can save documents to SharePoint as quickly as C: (even with SharePoint Online) – The Office 2010 client applications have a new feature that caches documents in local storage and communicates to SharePoint 2010 through the MS-FSSHTTP protocol. In short, the Office client application only communicates changes made to the file (not the whole file) to SharePoint. This will make the save operate very fast.
4. For some Office/SharePoint 2010 scenarios, using a web browser will be optional – An Office client application can fetch document templates directly from SharePoint (these are associated with SharePoint Content Types), manage SharePoint-stored metadata (terms and/or tags) assigned to a document, and can even fulfill workflow steps for SharePoint-based processes associated with a document. None of these functions requires the use of a web browser.
5. SharePoint 2010 facilitates multi-authoring of Office 2010 documents – Multiple people can be simultaneously working on (for example) a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. To do this, the file must originate on SharePoint, which becomes the real-time hub for this interaction (using the MS-FSSHTTP protocol).
6. Taking SharePoint content offline requires SharePoint Workspace – This is the role Outlook 2007 played with SharePoint 2007. For 2010, SharePoint Workspace synchronizes lists (e.g., document libraries, calendars, announcements, custom lists) with SharePoint. SharePoint Workspace will be available with Office Professional Plus.

As you can see, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 are working together much more intimately than in previous versions. These integrations will also be more broadly visible to users. For some enterprises, this level of integration will be welcomed with open arms. For others, this may represent a lock-in scenario that is hard to accept.

Comments

[SharePoint Workflow - Russ Blaesing]

Thanks for the list. Microsoft is making a good move forward in terms of end user usability. Getting content from and to SharePoint is easier, however what happens to it once its there. Microsoft still has yet to make TRUE management of the content within sharepoint (ie, process of content creation/approval/dissemination) accessible to business analysts and SMEs.

In our business of helping companies run their business processes on SharePoint, we're disappointed with the overall design of the workflow methodology in 2010. We'll continue to use our SharePoint Workflow Designer instead as it has full integration of the items needed by business analysts and don't require programmers to be involved.