Installing Office Web Apps Server for SharePoint 2013

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I wanted to evaluate Office Web Apps Server in SharePoint 2013 so I could see what the document previews would look like and understand the overall editing functionality. Therefore, I hijacked one of my staging servers and decided to install Office Web Apps Server. The server you choose can't have SharePoint running on it or any web application running on port 80. Also, Microsoft Office (or any Office component) cannot be installed.

The OS on my server was Windows Server 2008 R2 so I had to follow those directions. For Windows Server 2008 R2 you need to have the following:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 and all required updates

.NET Framework 4.5 RC

Windows PowerShell 3.0

KB2592525

 

Apparently this server did not have PowerShell 3.0 or the KB2592525 patch. So I needed to download and install those items first.

 

Then I needed to run add the proper roles using the following in PowerShell:

 

Import-Module ServerManager

Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server,Web-WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-Static-Content,Web-App-Dev,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Includes,Web-Security,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Ink-Handwriting,IH-Ink-Support

 

 

I noticed in the output as shown in the image, that a restart was needed. So I did not even take a chance and rebooted the server.

 

Next it was time to install the Office Web Apps Server. I just searched for the product and found the download:

 

 

 



I downloaded the package and ran the installation - pretty straightforward.

 

 

Next it was time to create the new Office Web Apps Farm on the server via PowerShell. Since this was for evaluation purposes, I used the test environment configuration:

 

Import-Module OfficeWebApps
New-OfficeWebAppsFarm –InternalURL http://servername –AllowHttp -EditingEnabled



 

 

 

 Since I enabled editing, I needed to confirm the operation:

 

The operation resulting with all of the properties being displayed:

The next step was to test the Office Web Apps server using a browser to confirm that http://servername/hosting/discovery produced a wopi-discovery response. It did:

 

 

 

So that was it on the Office Web Apps server side. Now I needed to switch the the SharePoint 2013 server and do some magic there.

 





Create the new binding:

New-SPWOPIBinding -ServerName <WacServerName> -AllowHTTP

Set the zone:

Set-SPWopiZone –zone “internal-http”

If you are using HTTP, you need to allow OAuth over HTTP by using the following commands:

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

I didn't need to do this previously but while I was setting up my production server, I ran into an OWA issue. The answer was to run the above commands which I found in a forum who received the information from here.


That's it! Bring up a document library with Office documents:

Search for Office documents: (may need to perform a full crawl before the preview kicks in)

This was very easy to install and implement! I was very suprised it worked the first time. It took a bit for everything to warm up and work but I really did not have to do much fiddling!

Reporting Services 2012 Integrated Mode with SharePoint 2013 "Scale Out" in Staging Environment

We wanted to test out SQL Server Reporting Services within SharePoint 2013 but did not want to have everything running all on one server. We found some steps here but that essentially described a single server installation. Therefore we needed to figure out what we needed to do which wasn't too hard.

Our staging servers included the following:

Web Front End
Database Server
Reporting Server

The Reporting Server is essentially an Application Server that is joined to the SharePoint farm. It will run the SSRS Service Application. Running SSRS integrated mode now means that it is fully under SharePoint (thus reducing any double-hop issues).

Here is the high-level installation effort we implemented to make it work:

Web Front End

1. Install SP2013 Prereqs (aka SharePoint Preparation Tool)

2. Install SharePoint Server

3. SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard  - (Create new farm)

4. Create Root Web Application (Port 80)

5. Create Root Site Collection

6. Create all Service Applications manually (this was for other purposes - Reporting services was not one them yet)

 

Report Server

1. Install SP2013 Prereqs (aka SharePoint Preparation Tool)

2. Install SharePoint Server

3. SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (to join to Farm)

4. Install SQL Server 2012 selecting both Reporting Services and the Reporting Services Add-In for SharePoint

5. Install SQL Server 2012 SP1  for SharePoint 2013 Support

You now need to register and start the SQL Server Reporting Services on the server using PowerShell commands within the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell (on the Report Server):

Install-SPRSService
Install-SPRSServiceProxy

get-spserviceinstance -all |where {$_.TypeName -like "SQL Server Reporting*"} | Start-SPServiceInstance

I originally did not have this documented and didn't realize I missed this part until I tried to add another Reporting Services server to the staging farm and the service did not appear in the Services for Server. Ahhh.

 

Back on the Web Front End:

1. Install SQL Server 2012 selecting ONLY the Reporting Services Add-In for SharePoint

2. Install SQL Server 2012 SP1 for SharePoint 2013 Support

 

Now in Central Admin, SQL Server Reporting Services appears as a new Service Application to create:

Create the new SSRS Service Application.

 

The Service Appears under Services on Server (only when looking at the Reporting Server):

 

To add another Report Server to the farm, follow only the steps under the Report Server section.

 

SharePoint 2013: Document Library and Search Results Document Preview with Office Web Apps Server

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I kept reading that if you have Office Web Apps Server up and running, you can connect it to your SharePoint farm and then, automagically, document previews will start appearing both in Search and in Document Libraries. I have not found any examples of what this document preview looks like so I had to take matters into my own hands.

I finally installed Office Web Apps Server on one of our staging servers and connected it to a SharePoint 2013 farm in stage. After some warming up, the document previews for Office documents started working like a charm. For the Search Results, I needed to run a full crawl again. This is because the javascript in the Display Templates uses alternate URLs (defined by crawled properties) which take the Office Web Apps server and the document preview into consideration.

I essentially followed the steps here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219455(v=office.15).aspx and used the standalone test environment section using Internal HTTP. I have some screenshots of the steps so I will probably post my installation journey as well. (UPDATE: The installation post is here.)

However, I was so excited that the Office document preview worked that I wanted to share the results. Below are some screenshots.

Search Results - Hovering over a Word document (click image to enlarge)

Document Library - Selecting the elipsis (...) on a Word document library item (click image to enlarge)

 

The previews under Office Web Apps server is only for Microsoft Office documents. Therefore PDF previews do not render. However, at least for the search results, I have a PDF Preview solution.



 



The document preview is the "cool" part about Office Web Apps server but not the business value part. The business value is the ability to edit and work with Office documents in the browser without the need for local Office applications.

What does this mean? This means that business users may interact with Office documents through SharePoint directly in the browser on any device. So whether it is a laptop, desktop, smart phone, or iPad - there are no constraints in making those last minute edits.

 

SharePoint 2013: PDF Preview in Search Results

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Introduction
One of the enhancements in SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search results is the ability to preview documents using Office Web Apps Server. I am in the process of seeing what that looks like and will post an Office Web Apps server entry soon. UPDATE: Here is the post.

Anyway, the issue is that if you have Office Web Apps configured, the only documents that show previews are Microsoft Office documents (e.g. Word, Excel, etc.). The preview of PDF documents is not implemented or supported using Office Web Apps.

Therefore, I created my own PDF preview for Enterprise Search results by customizing the new search Display Templates. This works for local site search results too which I explain at the bottom of this post.

To understand overall PDF functionality and behaviors, read the whole story here.

Prerequisites
Here are some things you need in place before implementing this solution:

• Enterprise Search Application configured and running
• Crawled content that includes PDF documents
• Enterprise Search Center site collection
• SharePoint Designer 2013

Modifying the PDF Search Result Template
This is the main effort and is fairly easy. I found it better to modify the templates using SharePoint Designer 2013 although they are accessible through the SharePoint master page UI.

Step 1: Fire up SharePoint Designer 2013 and Open the Search Center Site

 

 

Step 2: Click on All Files from the left-hand navigation
If you attempt to get the files from the Master Pages, you will not see any items once you get to the Display Templates folders.

You will see the list of all files in the main window.

Step 3: Double-click on the _catalogs folder in the main window
This action displays the _catalogs structure under the left-hand navigation.

Expand the _catalogs folder, then the masterpage folder, and then the Display Templates folder.

Step 4: Click on the Search folder under Display Templates

 

The list of Search display templates is shown in the main window area.

Step 5: Right-click on Item_PDF_HoverPanel.html and select Edit File in Advanced Mode

 

 

Step 6: Paste the following code within the most inner <div>


    <object data="_#= ctx.CurrentItem.Path =#_" type="application/pdf" width="500px" height="630px" >
       <p>It appears you don't have a PDF plugin for this browser/device.
      You can <a href="_#= ctx.CurrentItem.Path =#_">click here to
       download the PDF file.</a></p>
    </object>

Note: You may find it better to use the following for width and height: width="100%" height="500px"

I actually replaced the Render Header and Render Body divs with the object code.

Step 7: Save the file
When saving the file, you may get a warning about breaking from the site definition. Click OK.
What happens behind the scenes is that the HTML changes are incorporated into the javascript version of the template (Item_PDF_HoverPanel.js).

Step 8: Test results
Perform a search from your search center that produces PDF document results. Hover over the PDF document to see the preview:

Currently the object tag uses hard-coded widths and heights. It is not using any responsive design styles. Me and my designer will be working on producing a more consistent respresentation for the PDF preview.

Local Search Implementation
There is still local site search results using the OSSSearchResults.aspx. You may implement the PDF Preview for these results as well but the modification is slightly different.

You open the site in SharePoint Designer 2013 and navigate to the Display Templates in the same fashion. However, for local (non Enterprise Search sites) there are no HTML templates - only the javascript files. You may simply copy the javascript that was created in your Enterprise Search Center site collection (when you modified the HTML) or paste the following code:

,'    <object data="', ctx.CurrentItem.Path ,'" type="application/pdf" width="280px" height="430px">'
,'       <p>It appears you don\'t have a PDF plugin for this browser/device.'
,'       No biggie... you can <a href="', ctx.CurrentItem.Path ,'">click here to'
,'       download the PDF file.</a></p>'
,'    </object>'

Save the file and preview the results by performing a local search in the SharePoint site.

It appears that the hover container in this case is being constrained in regards to its size. Therefore  I needed to use 280px for width and 430px for height. I will be working on making this more flexible.

To see what Office Web Apps server does for previewing of documents, see this post.
For Installation steps, see this post.