MS Office Integration

Added by Dr. Philipp Pott, last edited by Dr. Philipp Pott on Dec 18, 2005  (view change)

Overview

My idea is to integrate Word, Powerpoint and Excel more into the Wiki-work with Confluence by using the Remote-API. Having a VBA toolbox within Office would enable you to login to a Confluence-Server, browse to a certain page and download it into the client application (Word, Powerpoint...). Once done with editing the content could be uploaded to the server again.

Details

MS Word

Being used to the automatic document backup in Word or the typical command CTRL+S for saving the content I am missing this ability in Confluence very often. Since our test server wasn't very stable I had to retype content several times.

Idea:

  • write a VBA toolbox using the remote API to connect to the confluence server
  • lock in to a confluence server by user & password
  • browse through a certain space
  • select a page for download
  • convert the wiki-markup to RTF
  • download attachements if necessary
  • enable RTF-editing in Word (this means, disable all features not suitable to wiki-markup)
  • save the RTF-document on the local hard drive
  • after editing allow upload/publishing back to Confluence

MS Powerpoint

Having many powerpoint presentations on our server I would like to have a possibility to convert presentations into wiki content. As a workaround we did screen shots and uploaded them as attachments - quick and dirty.

Together with a presentation plugin however, confluence could be used to store complete presentations. I've seen a very nice implementation in xWiki and think this would be a nice feature.

Idea:

  • identify text within powerpoint and convert it into wiki-content
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Comments (10)

 

  1. Mar 03, 2006

    Keith R. Bennett says:

    I personally would be happy with having the edit button launch my text editor wi...

    I personally would be happy with having the edit button launch my text editor with the wiki markup text. I am often frustrated by the limited nature of the default text editor and wind up copying and pasting to and from an external text editor. Don't know if what I'm asking for is technically possible though – I know the text file could be fed to the user, but don't know if there would be a way to automatically write that back (upload the edited file).

    Keith

    1. Mar 03, 2006

      Dan Hardiker says:

      There are a couple of people working on WebDAV plugins (which would allow you us...

      There are a couple of people working on WebDAV plugins (which would allow you use your favourite editor to edit the wiki markup) - and I know office can read/write to WebDAV ... makes for an interesting prospect.

      It would be really interesting if you could read/write using WebDAV using word documents (so the export/import process is run during open/save)! That really would be a technical minefield - although a prototype would definately be possible.

  2. Jul 19, 2006

    Jérôme Nicolle says:

    Powerpoint integration is, IMHO, the hardest part. It's almost impossible to ren...

    Powerpoint integration is, IMHO, the hardest part. It's almost impossible to render a ppt file without MS software, although OOo tries hard but still miss some functionalities.

     A nice lead to a solution could be an automated flash export of the attached ppt file. Flash can handle most ppt effects and transitions, and is often considered as the simpliest way to export online presentations. It's also easilly embeddable into a wiki page.

    The process could be to automatically export as flash when saving a ppt file to the WebDAV export, and to display the <embed> code in a popup window, ready to be pasted to confluence's page editor.

    AFAIK the best way to do flash exports is still to have macromedia flash studio installed on the computer running Powerpoint. The main drawback is the extra licence fee :s

    1. Jul 19, 2006

      Jérôme Nicolle says:

      note : flash content will not be searchable. If search capabilities are required...

      note : flash content will not be searchable. If search capabilities are required, a PDF export is more likelly what you need. It may be displayed in a iframe.

  3. Jul 25, 2006

    Martin Cleaver says:

    So how about a webservice that sits on a windows machine that accepts PPT as inp...

    So how about a webservice that sits on a windows machine that accepts PPT as input and returns a choice of HTML+graphics, PDF or Flash as output?

    Invoke the converter on save, and fork. Have an asynchronous upload return path so that the user is free to work and that confluence catches up once the result is available?

    1. Jul 25, 2006

      Martin Cleaver says:

      See

      See http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF20/Embedding+PowerPoint+Presentations+in+a+Page?focusedCommentId=182209#comment-182209

  4. Sep 01, 2006

    Tomi Nummi says:

    I would be perfectly happy to download presentations as separate picture (or PDF...

    I would be perfectly happy to download presentations as separate picture (or PDF) files if they could be somehow viewed in a predefined order in a slideshow.

  5. Sep 03, 2006

    Michael McKeown says:

    Have a look at the Microsoft Office Add In

    Have a look at the Microsoft Office Add In. This Office plug in converts a page to wiki markup and uses SOAP to upload the page (and any images as attachments).

    It currently works with Word and Excel, and can easily be extended to include PowerPoint, Visio, Publisher, Project, Outlook, Frontpage and Access if needs be. If anyone has done any VBA to convert any of these products, I'll gladly add it to this plugin.

  6. Aug 30, 2007

    Subhash Mathur says:

    I dont know if this page is still actively been looked at, but I will ask my que...

    I dont know if this page is still actively been looked at, but I will ask my questio anyway - somebody earlier asked it, and I dont see a reply that helps me.
    I understand, The MS Office Add-In should help in converting existing word or excel docs. into Wiki.
    However, if the users preference is to use the MS editor (for example) for changing such a document after it has been entered, is it possible to open up Word from such a Wiki page (may be as an option) instead of the Wiki native rich-text editor, update the document (rather Wiki page).
    This I suspect is not possible - but I just wanted to get a confirmation.

    1. Aug 31, 2007

      Dan D'Eramo says:

      Are you thinking of this? CONFEXT:Word.DAV plugin Dan

      Are you thinking of this? Word.DAV plugin

      Dan