Microsoft Office Online Cloud For Web Edit

FileCloud can integrate with your Microsoft-hosted Office online server to edit office documents.

Tips

  • Please note that for using this type of web editing, users should have an Office365 account.
  • When configuring Office365, please use the default 'admin' user to login into FileCloud admin UI. For security reasons, this configuration is not allowed as a normal user promoted as admin.
  • Support for large file sizes may vary depending on the speed between FileCloud and the relay servers.

Office 365 Office product page

Dataflow

Following diagram depicts the interaction between Microsoft Office Online cloud and an on-premises FileCloud server.

Steps:

  1. User selects a document file in office online from FileCloud user UI. It loads a HTML page with embedded IFRAME pointing to the Microsoft Office Online cloud.
  2. IFRAME loaded in the previous step loads the document specific application from the Microsoft cloud. This in turn instructs the Office Online cloud to load the document from FileCloud server.
  3. Since Office Online cloud supports only pre-approved URLs it cannot load the document directly from FileCloud server. So the download request is forwarded to a relay server (hosted by FileCloud).
  4. Relay server in turn forwards the request to FileCloud server and returns the response back. In summary, relay server serves as a bridge between Office Online cloud and FileCloud server making the communication back and forth work seamlessly.

Configuring FileCloud With Office Online Cloud

  1. Login into FileCloud server admin UI(as the default 'admin' user), which needs to integrate with Office Online to offer web editing.
  2. Navigate to Settings -> Web edit tab. Select "Microsoft Office Online Cloud" as Wopi Client Type. It automatically selects "External HTTPS" and pre-fills the "Wopi Client Host" to URL "onenote.officeapps.live.com".
    Click "Configure".
  3. Upon successful configuration, the following screen should appear. This dialog notifies the user to enable the relay configuration for the configuration to complete.


  4. To enable relay, click on the "Enable" button on the "Office Online Relay Setup" section.



  5. When WOPI edit over cloud is selected, it also switches to use WOPI for all document previews, since WOPI webeditor provides a more faithful reproduction of the document. Admins can disable this behaviour by unselecting "Wopi Preview" checkbox from the "Wopi Client Settings" screen.
  6. Now that FileCloud server is configured with office online server, administrator might need to enable the web edit option for users.
    To enable web edit in user UI, navigate to Customizations -> General -> UI Features tab and check the option "Show Online Edit Option". Click "Save" button to save the changes.



  7. Now login into user UI and hover over an editable Office document. Hover over the Web Edit icon, and ensure that you see the Office icon and the tooltip Open in Office Online.
  8. Click the icon.
    The file is opened in the Office Online editor.



  9. When the office online web editor application loads, it will prompt for "Office 365" account. Upon logging in the selected document will be loaded in the editor.



    Depending the browser's cookie policies, after a  user logs into their Microsoft account for WOPI edit, their FileCloud session could be closed. To avoid this problem, set TONIDOCLOUD_COOKIE_SAME_SITE_TYPE to Lax.