Connecting SharePoint 2016 with Office Online Server 2016

Office Online Server 2016 is the new name of Office Web Apps Server 2013. Most of the features remain the same but the most important addition is the Excel Web App has replaced Excel services. OOS is required to view and modify Excel sheets in browsers. Just like OWA 2013, OOS must be installed on its own box. All features like PowerPivot, Power View and Data refresh will work exactly the same. Additional configuration will be required to connect OOS with Analysis Services or Business intelligence services using Server to Server Trust. You must also add the OOS Server as administrator in to Analysis Services Security in SQL Management Studio.

Microsoft has not RTM’d Office Online Server till now. You can download the preview from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49028

Some people have reporting issue with SSL Certificate with preview if you use SSL wild card cert. I suggest you only use SAN certificate for Office Online Server. To find out what kind of certificate you must create you can check the link below

http://www.wictorwilen.se/office-web-apps-server-2013—machines-are-always-reported-as-unhealthy

I would not spend any time in installation as it is exactly the same as Office Web Apps 2013. You can find all the steps are any applicable configuration from the link below.0

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219455.aspx

Overall the steps to install OWA are

1. Installing the required Windows Features e.g. .NET, Web Server etc.

2. Installation of OOS Bits

3. Creation of Office Web Apps Certificate (SAN). Do not use Wildcard cert.

4. Creating the Office Web Apps Farm either using http or https using New-OfficeWebAppsFarm cmdlet.

5. Adding the Wopibindings to SharePoint and Setting up WopiZone.

There are few cmdlets that you must know. First the combination of Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm and Set-OfficeWebAppsFarm. These cmdlets are handy to double check the configuration of OOS Farm.

Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm

Set-OfficeWebAppsFarm -CacheSizeInGB 30

You can change any properties you want using this cmdlet.

The first thing you must do is to ping your web application from Office Web app serve to make your connectivity is good. On the other side, make sure you can ping your OOS box from SharePoint.

Now Open SharePoint Management Shell as Administrator and type the following cmdlets

New-SPWOPIBinding -ServerName sp2016wac.contoso.com -Verbose

Set-SPWOPIZone –Zone External-https

Get-SPWOPIZone to confirm the Wopi zone.

Close all browsers and open a fresh window and then open the SharePoint Site.

If all looks good, you will see the New button right on top of the library to create documents. Create a test Word or Excel files to confirm.

You can create Word document and then rename it right from top of the document

Let’s creat an Excel Sheet.

 

Let’s create a PowerPoint file as well.

Finally OneNote File

 

Let’s check the new search preview. Make sure you run an incremental or full crawl before testing this.