Working with Shared Microsoft Office documents

With Jive Connects for Microsoft Office, the add-in for Microsoft Office, you can share your Office documents with others in your online community. As you make changes to a shared document on your computer, Jive Connects for Microsoft Office synchronizes the document with the version that's visible in the community, and provides real-time notifications to users working in the same document. The notifications tell users that content has changed, plus give them the option to incorporate the changes into their version using a merge tool. This keeps the content on the community up to date, but also synchronizes comments, tags, and collaboration settings between the community and your document.

This feature is supported for Microsoft Office versions 2003, 2007 and 2010 running on Windows.

Note: If you have the appropriate permissions, you can edit everything but the content of a shared document in the community. In the community you can edit descriptions, tags, categories and comments, and you can use an Office program to edit the document content.

What You Can Do

With the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office add-in, you can upload Microsoft Office documents to your community, then keep changes to the document in sync while you work in Office.

In particular, with Jive Connects for Microsoft Office you can:

Up to: Using Jive Connects for Microsoft Office

Get set up

You'll need the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office add-in to share documents between Office applications and your community, which requires Microsoft Windows. If you don't have the add-in, you can get it when you're viewing an uploaded Office document in the community.

To get the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office add-in:
  1. In your community, navigate to -- or upload -- an Office document.
  2. To the right of your document, click the Download Jive Connects for Microsoft Office link as shown in the following image.
    Download Jive Connects fr Office link
  3. In the dialog box that appears, click Run to run the setup program. If you're prompted to open the executable file, click OK.
    Note: If you have a version of Jive Desktop installed, you need to remove it using the Windows Add or Remove Programs before installing Jive Connects for Microsoft Office.
  4. If you see the Internet Explorer Security warning dialog, click Run to run the setup program.
  5. Click Install in the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office Installer program to install the add-in. When complete, you should see the new Jive menu in your Office program.
  6. Click OK when you see the success message.

Get connected to your community

After you first install the desktop add-in, it might not be completely set up to connect to the community you want to synchronize documents with. To connect, you need to provide your username and password.

To get connected to your community:

  1. In the Jive menu, click the Settings > Accounts.
  2. Click Add to add your Jive SBS account.
  3. Enter your Jive SBS username and password.
  4. Enter the Community URL, which is th exact URL that you use to navigate and log in to your community.
  5. Click OK.
  6. If you need to enter proxy settings manually, click Settings. You can return to these settings any time by going to Jive > Settings > Accounts > Settings.
    Note: You can check with your system administrator to see if entering proxy settings is necessary.
  7. Select Use a Proxy Server, enter the proxy information that from an administrator, and then click OK.
  8. Click Close.
  9. To begin adding documents to the community, see Add a document to the community.

Add a document to the community

To have an Office document appear in the community, you can either add it using Jive Connects for Microsoft Office or upload the document from inside the community.

To add a document using Jive Connects for Microsoft Office:

  1. Connect to the community. For more on this, see Get connected to your community.
  2. Open or create a document in Microsoft Office.
  3. Click Jive > Save as shown in the following image.
    Note: Once the document lives in the community, clicking Save uploads your changes to the community.

    Jive Connects for Office tab
  4. In the dialog box, navigate to the place in the community where you want to save the document.
  5. Enter the name in the Document Name field at the bottom of the dialog box.
  6. Click Save.
  7. To synchronize documents with the rest of the community, see Keep documents synchronized.

Once the document is added to the community, you can click Jive > Dashboard to display a panel of information about the document, such as comments, ratings, and version number. The following image shows the Dashboard.
Jive Connects Dashboard

To add a document from inside the community:

  1. From your community, click New > Document.
  2. Select Upload a File.
  3. Select the location for your document.
  4. Click Choose File.
  5. Select the file from your desktop.
  6. Click Publish. Depending on the size of your document, it might take a few seconds to upload it.

Create a new document from an existing one

To avoid a few steps, you can just upload an existing document and rename it as a new document to start fresh with in the community. This creates a new uploaded document in the community, leaving the previous uploaded document in the community as it was when you last synchronized. The new document will have the content of the previous one, but won't have its other properties, such as comments, collaboration settings, tags, and so on.

Note: Making a new document in this way leaves you with an Office document that has the same content, but without all of the community-related information. To get the previous Office document with that information, go to that document's page in your community and click the Download link beneath its preview.

To create a new document from an existing uploaded document:

  1. In Office, open the document you want to start from.
  2. Select Jive > Save As.
  3. In the dialog box, navigate to the place in the community where you want to save the document.
  4. Enter the new name in the Document Name field at the bottom of the dialog box.
  5. Click Save.

Keep documents synchronized

After you've connected your community to Office, Jive Connects for Microsoft Office keeps your documents synchronized with the community. Jive Connects for Microsoft Office does the following:

To grab document updates from the community:

  1. When your document has been updated by someone in the community, you get a real-time pop-up notification.
  2. Click an action in the notification dialog or select Update > Check for file updates in the Jive banner.
  3. If there are no changes, a message tells you so. Otherwise, you can select how you want to deal with the changes:
    • Merge Changes to accept updates from the community without reviewing them.
    • Overwrite local version to erase any changes you have made locally and replace with the community version of the document.
  4. Save your changes so others in the community can see your recent changes.

Work with document versions

As you work on a document in Office, Jive Connects for Microsoft Office keeps track of changes, including community-related information such as comments. It can sync your changes with what's going on in the community with the click of a button. You can even view the changes that have been made since previous versions of the document while in Office. You can also save a previous version as the current one.
Note: The version management feature does its work in part by using the change tracking feature built into Office. That means that if you download a document that someone has made changes to, you might see revision marks placed there by the change tracking feature. The document is fine, but the revision marks can make it hard to read. You can hide the marks in the following ways:
  • In Word 2007 or 2010, select the Review tab. In the Tracking group, select Final in the Display for Review dropdown to hide the changes.
  • In Word 2003, locate the Reviewing toolbar. In the Display for Review dropdown, select Final.

Work with document revisions

Jive Connects for Microsoft Office creates a new version of a document whenever you save changes to the document.

To view previous versions of a document:
  1. In Office, click Jive and then click the Dashboard button.
  2. Under Versions, if the version you want to see isn't visible, scroll down to display it. Previous versions will be listed with the name of the person who saved them and the date/time when they were saved.
  3. From the list of versions, click the one you want to view.
To save a previous version as the current one:
  1. In Office, click Jive and then click the Dashboard button.
  2. Open the version of the document you want to save.
  3. In Office, with the older version open, click Jive > Save. Notice that most toolbar options are disabled until you save the older version as the online version.
  4. When the dialog asks whether you want to save the past version as the latest, click Yes.

Work with document activity

Jive Connects for Microsoft Office displays a list of activity related to the document. This activity includes versions saved and comments added. By clicking certain items in the activity list, you can add information to it. For example, You can view and add comments from the Comments tab.

To view document activity:
  1. In Office, click Jive and then click the Dashboard button.
  2. In the Overview panel, you can see details about the document, such as when it was last edited and what version you're looking at.
  3. Click the arrows next to tags, categories or description to add or edit this information and have it show up in the community.
  4. Click the Comments tab and then Reply to add a comment to the open document. These comments show up in the community as comments. For more on this see Add a comment
  5. You can also browse other documents that the author has created or documents similar to the open document.

Add a comment

Comments you add while working on a document in Office are synchronized to the community. In addition, comments people add to your document in the community will appear in Office.

There are two kinds of comments for shared Office documents:
  • Document comments are like those people make elsewhere in the community. People can usually comment on shared documents just as they comment on other kinds of documents. These are added in the community or in Office. You can see these in Office when you go to Jive > Dashboard and then click the Comments tab.
  • Inline comments are those you make in Office, and which appear in the document itself. An inline comment is a way to add a comment to a particular part of the document. When you add an inline comment, it shows up in the community on the inline comment tab at the bottom of the document, as well as in the document preview. These can be seen in Office when you select the Review tab and then in the Tracking group, select Final Showing Markup in the Display for Review dropdown.

Both kinds of comments are visible in both Office and the document view in the community. In Office, you'll see them on the Comments tab of the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office panel. You'll also see document comments in the document itself. In the community, comments appear beneath the document text, on Comments and Inline Comments tabs.

To add a document comment:

  1. In Office, go to Jive > Dashboard and then click the Comments tab.
  2. Type your comment.
  3. Click Add.
  4. You can also click Reply to reply to an existing comment, or Delete to delete an existing comment.

To add an inline comment:

  1. In the Office toolbar, select Review and then, click New Comment.
  2. Enter your comment in the text box provided.

Add collaborators

By default, when you use Jive Connects for Microsoft Office to add a document to your community, the document's collaboration options are set as follows:

You can change these defaults to fit the document needs.

To change collaboration options:
  1. On the Jive toolbar, click the Permissions button.
  2. In the dialog box, select the option to set who can edit:
    • Specific people -- Only the people whose names you choose can make changes. If you select this, begin typing the person's name in the box beneath Specific people. When their full name appears, click it to add it to the list.
    • Just you -- Only you can make changes to the document's content.
    • Anyone -- Anyone in the community can make changes.
  3. Click Update.

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