Configure Office Web Apps For SharePoint 2013: Part II

Before reading this article, please go through the following article:

  1. Configure Office Web Apps For SharePoint 2013: Part 1

This article is a continuation of the deployment procedures that are described in my previous article Configure Office Web Apps for SharePoint 2013 Part I. In that article, you performed steps on the server that runs Office Web Apps Server. In this article, you'll perform steps on a server that runs SharePoint 2013

Configure SharePoint 2013 to use Office Web Apps Server

Certain conditions must be met before you can successfully configure SharePoint 2013 to use Office Web Apps Server. Review the following requirements before you continue.

  • Verify that all SharePoint 2013 web applications use claims-based authentication. Office Web Apps rendering and editing will not work on SharePoint 2013 web applications that use classic mode authentication. Learn more in SharePoint authentication requirements for Office Web Apps.
  • To enable users to edit (not just read) Office documents in a web browser, verify that you have the necessary editing licenses and that you have enabled editing on the Office Web Apps Server farm. You can learn more about licensing requirements in Licensing Office Web Apps for editing Office files.
  • If you log into SharePoint 2013 by using the System Account, you will be unable to test the connection between SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Server. You will have to log on by using a different account to test the connection.
  • Low memory conditions can cause Office document previews to fail in Office Web Apps. Verify that the server or servers that run Office Web Apps Server have sufficient memory by reviewing the Hardware requirements.

Before you start the following procedures, ensure that you have set up Office Web Apps Server by using the steps in Deploy a single-server Office Web Apps Server farm in a test environment. Specifically, you must have configured the Office Web Apps Server farm to use an internal URL and HTTP.

  1. Open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell
  2. Choose the procedure that corresponds to your server operating system.

To open an elevated SharePoint 2013 Management Shell in Windows Server 2008 R2:

  1. On the Start menu, select All Programs.
  2. Select Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Products.
  3. Choose (right-click) SharePoint 2013 Management Shell to display the short-cut menu.
  4. From the short-cut menu, choose Run as administrator.

To open an elevated SharePoint 2013 Management Shell in Windows Server 2012:

  1. Swipe in from the edge of the screen to show the charms and then choose Search to see all the applications that are installed on the computer.
  2. Choose (right-click) SharePoint 2013 Management Shell to display the app bar.
  3. In the app bar, select Run as administrator.

Create the binding between SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Server

Run the following command, where <WacServerName> is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the URL that you set for the internal URL. This is the point of entry for Office Web Apps Server traffic. For this test environment, you must specify the "-AllowHTTP" parameter to allow SharePoint 2013 to receive discovery information from the Office Web Apps Server farm by using HTTP. If you forget to specify "-AllowHTTP", SharePoint 2013 will try to use HTTPS to communicate with the Office Web Apps Server farm and this command will fail.

New-SPWOPIBinding -ServerName <WacServerName> -AllowHTTP

binding-between-SharePoint 2013-and-Office-Web-Apps-Server.jpg

View the WOPI zones for the SharePoint bindings

Office Web Apps Server uses the concept of zones to determine which URL (internal or external) and which protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) to use when it communicates with the host, which in this case is SharePoint 2013. By default, SharePoint Server 2013 uses the internal-https zone. Verify that this is the current zone by running the following command:

Get-SPWOPIZone

View-the-WOPI-zones-for-the-SharePoint-bindings.jpg

Change the WOPI zone to internal-http

If the result from the command shown above is "internal-https" then run the following command to change the zone to "internal-http". You must make this change because the zone of SharePoint 2013 must match the zone of the Office Web Apps Server farm.

Set-SPWOPIZone -zone "internal-http"

Verify that the new zone is internal-http by running the following command:
Get-SPWOPIZone

Change the AllowOAuthOverHttp setting in SharePoint 2013 to True

To use Office Web Apps with SharePoint 2013 over HTTP in a test environment, you must set AllowOAuthOverHttp to True. Otherwise Office Web Apps will not work. You can check the current status by running the following:

(Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig).AllowOAuthOverHttp

If this command returns False then run the following commands to set this to True:

$config = (Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig)
$config.AllowOAuthOverHttp = $true
$config.Update()

Run the following command again to verify that the AllowOAuthOverHttp setting is now set to True:

(Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig).AllowOAuthOverHttp

AllowOAuthOverHttp-setting-in-SharePoint 2013.jpg

Verify that Office Web Apps is working

In SharePoint 2013, ensure that you are not logged in as System Account. (Whenever the currently logged on user name appears as System Account, that user can't edit or view the documents using Office Web Apps.) Go to a SharePoint 2013 document library that contains Office documents and view a Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or OneNote file. The document should open in a browser that displays the file by using Office Web Apps.

You can see the preview by just clicking on the .icon as seen below:

Verify-that-Office-Web-Apps.jpg

If you click on the document it will open the document in the browser as shown below:

Verify-that-Office-Web-Apps1.jpg

You should have more options to save the document or translate the document. For the translation, you should install the language pack for Office Web Apps.

install-the-language-pack-for-office-web-apps.jpg

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