Office Web Apps Real-Time Collaboration

Improved collaborative editing capabilities, called real-time coauthoring, will help groups work together on Office documents and make Office Web Apps more competitive with Google Apps. Office Web Apps are server-based applications that enable viewing and limited editing of Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word documents in a browser. They particularly benefit users who need to edit or comment on Office documents from devices such as iPads that don’t offer any native Microsoft Office applications. Office Web Apps are available both on-premises and in Microsoft-hosted services such as Office 365 and SkyDrive. However, new capabilities currently only work in the Microsoft-hosted services.

Real-Time Coauthoring and Other Web App Improvements

Earlier versions of the Office Web Apps enable coauthoring but with long delays between the time a change is made and when it is visible to other users; in some cases, the editing user must save changes for them to become visible to others. With real-time coauthoring, users see changes immediately, making it less likely that they will make conflicting changes. (See the illustration “Excel Web App Real-Time Coauthoring“.) PowerPoint Web App was the first of the apps to receive an update for real-time coauthoring (in May 2013), but Excel Web App and Word Web App now offer the capability as well.