3. Coauthoring with SharePoint 2013
You can use the coauthoring feature in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint
2013, or Office 365 to enable multiple users to work on a document, at
any time, without interfering with each other’s changes. It can only be
used in libraries where versioning is enabled and checkout is not used.
Office 2010 users have the same set of coauthoring features when they
open documents from SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 as they do when they
open documents from a SharePoint 2010 document library.
Note
The coauthoring functionality is also available to Office 2013 users
who have SkyDrive accounts, whether or not SharePoint 2013, SharePoint
2010, or Office 365 are used.
Coauthoring removes barriers to server-based document collaboration
and helps organizations to reduce the overhead associated with
traditional methods of sharing documents, such as attaching files to
emails, thus reducing the likelihood of someone editing an out-of-date
version of the document. The coauthoring functionality requires no
additional server setup. The functionality is available by default for
documents stored in SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 when using the same
tools and technologies that are already used by users to manage files
in SharePoint. For example, you can coauthor Word 2010 and Word 2013,
Excel 2010 and Excel 2013, PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2013, OneNote
2010 and OneNote 2013, and Visio 2013 files using one of the Office
client applications or one of the Office Web Apps.
Note
Coauthoring is easy and seamless from a user’s perspective. To edit
a document, she only has to click the document in the document library
and begin making her edits. If another user already has the document
open at the same time, then access to the document is not blocked for
either of them, nor will they have any errors appear.
If the users are using
the Word or PowerPoint client applications or Word Web App and they
save the documents, the other users in the files will receive a
notification that there are new edits. By refreshing their view
(pressing the F5 key), they can see the new edits immediately.
Alternatively, they can continue making their changes and refresh at a
later time in order to see the other edits. PowerPoint Web App and
Excel Web App autosave so that users can view any changes
automatically. Because of the powerful versioning and tracking tools
included within the SharePoint platform, the document is protected so
that it is possible to roll back to previous versions easily should
there be any issues with the quality or integrity of the edits entered.
As an added bonus, if Microsoft Lync Server is installed in the
network, the online status of each of the users is viewable and instant
messaging can be initiated so they can chat with each other concerning
their changes.
When using OneNote, that is OneNote 2010, OneNote 2013, or OneNote
Web App, users are able to share notes easily. If a user edits one page
of a notebook, those edits are synchronized automatically with other
users of that notebook. By doing so, each user is assured that they are
working with a complete set of notes. Edits made by multiple people on
the same page appear automatically, thus enabling near real-time
collaboration. Versioning makes it possible for users to see what edits
are new, who made a specific edit, and roll back to previous versions.
Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 do not support coauthoring of workbooks on
SharePoint or Office 365. However, the Excel client application does
support non-real-time coauthoring of workbooks stored locally or on
network (UNC) paths through the use of the Shared Workbook feature.
SharePoint does support coauthoring of notebooks through the use of the
Excel Web App, which is included with OWA.
Coauthoring was designed to be easy to set up and require minimal
management support. However, there are several issues that must be
considered when you set up and manage coauthoring:
-
Permissions
. In order to have multiple people edit the same document, the users will require edit permissions for the document.
-
Versioning
. SharePoint will keep track of the changes to the
document through versioning. By default, this feature is turned off.
SharePoint supports two kinds of versioning: major and minor. If major
versioning is enabled, set a reasonable maximum number of versions to
store.
-
Number of versions
. The number of versions that are saved will have an
impact of server storage requirements. As such, you should monitor this
number carefully. The number of versions saved can be controlled in the
Document Library Settings. OneNote notebooks that are frequently
updated may result in many versions being stored on the server. In
order to avoid using space unnecessarily, it is recommended that an
administrator set the maximum number of retained versions to a
reasonable number on document libraries used to store OneNote notebooks.
-
Versioning period
. The versioning period refers to how often SharePoint
will create a new version of a Word or PowerPoint file that is being
coauthored. By setting this to a low value, you will cause SharePoint
to capture versions more often. This is useful for tracking more
detailed information, but you will also incur a higher usage of space
on the server. The versioning period does not affect OneNote notebooks.
This value can be altered on the server by adjusting the
coAuthoringVersionPeriod property.
-
Checking out
. When you check out a file, you lock the file for
editing so that only the person who has the document checked out can
edit the file. As such, when a file is checked out, coauthoring is
checked out. Therefore, Require Check Out should not be enabled on
libraries where coauthoring will be used. Also, users should not check
out a document manually when coauthoring is being used.
Note
Table 1
summarizes the Office application versions that are needed to take
advantage of the coauthoring functionality that is available with
SharePoint.
Table 1. Coauthoring in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, and Office 365
|
Office version
|
SharePoint 2013 configured to use Office Web Apps Server
|
Office 365
|
SharePoint 2010 with Office Web Apps enabled
|
|
Excel 2013 |
No |
No |
No |
|
Excel Web App |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Excel 2010 |
No |
No |
No |
|
OneNote 2013 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
OneNote Web App |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
OneNote 2010 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
PowerPoint 2013 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
PowerPoint Web App |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
PowerPoint 2010 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Word 2013 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Word Web App |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Word 2010 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Visio 2013 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Visio Web App |
No |
No |
No |
|
Visio 2010 |
No |
No |
No |
|
Office 2007 client applications |
No |
No |
No |
Coauthoring in a mixed Office environment
You
may have a scenario where you want to use coauthoring in an environment
where users have different versions of Office available for use.
Mixed environment that has PowerPoint 2007 and Word 2007
Users of earlier versions of Word and PowerPoint can share and edit
files stored in SharePoint 2013 or Office 365, exactly as with previous
versions of SharePoint. They cannot, however, use coauthoring to work
on the files simultaneously. It is highly recommended that Office 2013
be deployed in order to facilitate the best collaboration environment.
Users of Office 2007 will not notice a significant difference between
their current experience and Office 2013. For example, if a user opens
a document stored in SharePoint 2013 that is currently being edited by
another user, that person will receive a message informing them that
the document is in use and he or she will not be able to edit the
document. If no other user is editing the document, Office 2007 users
will be able to open it as usual. When an Office 2007 user opens a
document, a lock is created on the document, thus preventing Office
2013 users the ability to coauthor the document. This behavior matches
earlier versions of SharePoint.
OneNote mixed environments
OneNote 2013 and OneNote 2010 is backward compatible with the OneNote
2007 file format and supports coauthoring. In a mixed environment,
however, the OneNote file must be saved in the OneNote 2007 format in
order to give OneNote 2010 or OneNote 2013 users coauthor capabilities
with users who are using OneNote 2007. By upgrading to at least OneNote
2010 file format, however, users gain several key features, including
compatibility with the OneNote Web App that allows users without any
version of OneNote installed to edit and coauthor notebooks.
Performance and scalability
SharePoint Server and Office applications have been designed to
minimize performance and scalability issues associated with coauthoring
documents. Office clients do not send or download coauthor information
from the server until more than one author is editing the document.
When the server is under heavy load or when a user is not actively
editing a document, Office clients are configured to reduce the
frequency of synchronization actions related to coauthoring.
