Using Office with a Web Server

Taking Advantage of Office Web Features

Users in your organization probably browse sites and view documents on your intranet already, but typically, only a few users have write access to the servers. By using Microsoft Office 2000, the rich functionality of the Web environment can be more than a read-only experience for the majority of your users.

Office 2000 makes publishing and collaborating on intranet documents simple and intuitive. Microsoft Office Server Extensions (OSE) is a powerful new Web feature that you can install on any Web server running Microsoft Windows NT® Server and Internet Information Server (IIS), or Windows NT Workstation and Peer Web Services. OSE allows Office 2000 users to:

• Create threaded discussions in published documents.
• Receive e-mail notification when documents change.
• Search and navigate documents published on Web servers.

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Web features that require Office Server Extensions

A Web site extended with OSE is called an OSE-extended web. When you set up an OSE-extended web, Office 2000 users can work with documents on the server by using Web features installed on their computers.

The following features work only with an OSE-extended web:

• Web Discussions

  The Web Discussions feature creates threaded discussions that allow users to collaborate on Office documents. Users can add and view specific discussion items located within documents, or they can add and view general discussion items located in the discussion pane.

• Web Subscriptions

  The Web Subscriptions feature allows users to subscribe to an e-mail notification service. When documents on a Web server are created or modified, subscribers receive e-mail messages that identify changes.

Additional OSE features give users easy access to documents stored on the Web server:

• OSE Start Page

  This Web page provides users with a logical starting place on an OSE-extended web. The OSE Start Page also makes OSE features available to users of any Web browser that supports frames.

• Browse Web Folders

  The Browse Web Folders option is on the OSE Start Page and gives users a convenient view of files and folders on the Web server. You can modify the Active Server Pages (ASP) page to customize this view with graphics, annotations, or additional hyperlinks.

• Search Web Folders

  The Search Web Folders option is on the OSE Start Page and allows users to search for documents on the Web server by using author, keyword, or document properties. You can control the search criteria available to users on this page.

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Web features that work with other supported Web servers

Even if you do not install OSE on your Web server, users can still take advantage of some of the Web features included in Office 2000. The features that do not require an OSE-extended web work with any Web server that runs Microsoft FrontPage® Server Extensions or any Web server that supports the Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) Internet protocol.

Note   Microsoft FrontPage 2000 includes FrontPage Server Extensions. DAV is an Internet protocol supported by IIS version 5.0.

When Office 2000 users connect to a supported Web server, the Web Folders object, which is available when the Web Publishing feature is installed, allows them to browse, publish, and manage the folders and files on the Web server from their computers. The Web Folders object contains shortcuts to files and folders on the Web server. Web Folders appears in My Computer, Windows Explorer, and the Save As and Open dialog boxes (File menu) in Office 2000 applications.

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See also

You can take advantage of Web-based functionality in Office 2000 without a detailed understanding of the Web server and client architecture. For information about all of the OSE components, see Architecture of Office Server Extensions.

OSE and Microsoft Web server products are not required for you to take advantage of Office 2000 Web-based functionality. For more information about using Office 2000 with other Web servers, see Using Office with Other Web Servers.