Enabling Co-Authoring

Note: This content is no longer updated. For the latest content, please go to the user guide for M-Files Online. For information on the supported product versions, refer to our lifecycle policy.

To use co-authoring in your vault as instructed in Checking Out a Document for Co-Authoring, you first need to enable Microsoft Office for the web tools and co-authoring via Microsoft Office for the web in your vaults.

If you use M-Files Cloud, request our customer support ([email protected]) to enable these features.

If you do not use M-Files Cloud, follow the instructions in the document Enabling Microsoft Office for the Web Services for M-Files to get these results:

Office Online Server is deployed.
M-Files Web is set to use Microsoft Office for the web services.

If you do not use M-Files Cloud and do not want to set up Office Online Server in an on-premises environment, your organization must be a part of Office Cloud Storage Partner Program. When you are part of the program and have set up your Microsoft Office for the web integration, you must set M-Files Web to use it (refer to Enabling Microsoft Office for the Web Services for M-Files).

Note: M-Files Desktop uses M-Files Web in the background for co-authoring. In other words, although the above-mentioned document discusses M-Files Web only, the same procedures must be done to enable co-authoring in M-Files Desktop as well.

After you are done with the tasks described in the above-mentioned document, follow the steps in this section to set up your vault to use Microsoft Office based co-authoring.

In M-Files Admin, access the custom vault data section.
1. Open M-Files Admin.
2. In the left-side tree view, expand an M-Files server connection.
3. Expand Document Vaults.
4. Expand a vault.
5. Click Configurations.
6. In the navigation area, expand Custom Vault Data.
Select Namespace Registry > Configuration.
Expand the Namespaces node, click Add Namespace, and expand the newly added namespace node.
In the Group field, type a suitable group name, such as Co-authoring.
Use the Storage Type drop-down menu to select the MFConfigurationValue storage.
In the Namespace field, enter the following value: M-Files.Core.CoAuthoring.Configuration
In the Namespace Label field, type a suitable label, such as Co-authoring.
In the Namespace Description field, enter for example Settings related to co-authoring.
Click Save to save the namespace settings.
In the gray navigation area, expand Named Values.
Expand the namespace group you just created, then select the namespace node, and finally the Configuration node.
Click Add Named Value, and expand the newly created named value node.
In the Name field, enter the value WOPI.

In the Value field, enter the co-authoring configuration according to the values explained in the table below and the example given below the table.

Name	Description	Example value
WopiRESTServer	The address of the server hosting M-Files Server and M-Files Web. M-Files Desktop communicates with this server via REST for starting the co-authoring process, as well as for opening the page hosting the Office Online editor. If your environment uses Multi-Server Mode, use a vault DNS name that the load balancer recognizes. For example: customer1.cloudvault.m-files.com.	myserver.mycompany.com
WopiRESTServerFolder	The REST server folder. This should be set to /REST/ in most cases.	/REST/
UrlSrc	The REST endpoint of M-Files Web communicating with Office Online Server. The value is entered in the following format: https://<your M-Files Web server address> If your environment uses Multi-Server Mode, use a vault DNS name that the load balancer recognizes. For example: https://customer1.cloudvault.m-files.com.	https://myserver.mycompany.com/
MainAppURL	A confirmation page is opened based on this URL after the user closes the co-authoring page. If your environment uses Multi-Server Mode, use a vault DNS name that the load balancer recognizes. For example: https://customer1.cloudvault.m-files.com.	https://myserver.mycompany.com/
UseHttps	Specifies whether HTTPS is used for communication. This should be set to true in most cases. Note: The value must not contain quotation marks.	true
WopiServerPort	The port used for REST requests. This should be set to 443 in most cases.	443
OperationTimeoutInMs	Specifies in milliseconds the time that M-Files Desktop should wait for Microsoft Office operations to complete. If exceeded, M-Files gives up and shows a timeout error. This is an optional setting, and if it is not included in the configuration at all, the default timeout of 10 seconds is used.	10000

The configuration should be entered in the same format as the example below:

{
   "WopiRESTServer": "myserver.mycompany.com",
   "WopiRESTServerFolder": "/REST/",
   "UrlSrc": "https://myserver.mycompany.com/",
   "MainAppURL": "https://myserver.mycompany.com/",
   "UseHttps": true,
   "WopiServerPort": 443,
   "OperationTimeoutInMs": 10000
}

Click Save to save the configuration.
Use Windows Task Manager to restart the MFServer service:
1. Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager.
  Result:The Task Manager window is opened.
2. Open the Services tab.
3. Right-click the MFServer service and select Restart.

The integration with Microsoft Office for the web is now in use in the vault. End users can check out documents for co-authoring as instructed in Checking Out a Document for Co-Authoring as soon as they have logged out from and logged back in to the vault. You can log out all vault users by restarting the vault, but taking a vault offline should always be done in a controlled manner and the vault users should be notified beforehand.

Troubleshooting for Enabling Co-Authoring

No co-authoring command in M-Files Desktop

If the command for starting co-authoring is not visible in M-Files Desktop, make sure that

the value for UseHttps does not contain quotation marks.
you are using neutral quotation marks (") in your configuration.
the values for UrlSrc, MainAppURL, and WopiRESTServer point to your M-Files Web server.