Online Document Editor - A SharePoint Case Study

Our clients, a New York based provider of film & television production software, wanted a better way to manage their Microsoft Office document repository online. This case study illustrates how we created an easy-to-use and secure online document editing system using SharePoint 2010 and Office Web Apps to help our clients empower their users to manage documents better.

Client Description: Software Provider for Film & Television Production

Client Location: New York City, USA

Industry: Software

Our clients had a Microsoft Office document repository in place. Users accessed these documents from their systems to view or edit. They relied on online document editing features instead of having Microsoft Office installed on their individual machines. For this purpose, they were earlier using a third-party application (Zoho) to help them edit the documents online. However, due to shortcomings inherent in the third-party software, our clients were looking for an alternative which would allow their users to edit these documents online with ease.

Our proposal for the above requirement was to use SharePoint 2010 with Office Web Apps – a web-based version of Microsoft Office productivity suite. It allows users to access their documents directly from anywhere within a web browser as well as share files and collaborate with other users online. When a user tries to edit a file from their legacy system, it would make use of our solution to upload a copy of it onto a SharePoint site and then use Office Web Apps features to edit the same. The robust and easy-to-use online document management system thus created empowered end-users to manage repository documents without having to install Microsoft Office on their individual machines and thereby resulting in substantial licensing cost savings. The system also helped users overcome the earlier issues faced by them while using the Zoho-based implementation.

SharePoint 2010, Office Web Apps, Amazon EC2, Web Services