Working with shared Microsoft Office documents

With the Jive Desktop 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 Desktop synchronizes the document with the version that's visible in the community. 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 and 2007 running on Windows.

Note: A shared document can be viewed and commented in the community, but it can't be edited there. You continue to use an Office program to edit the document.

What You Can Do

With the Jive Desktop 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 Desktop you can:

Up to: Creating Content

Get set up

You'll need the Jive Desktop add-in to share documents between Office applications and your community. (Microsoft Windows is required.) 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 Desktop add-in:
  1. In your community, navigate to -- or upload -- an Office document.
  2. In the Actions box, click Download the Office Plug-in.
  3. In the dialog box that appears, click Save File to save the downloaded setup program.
  4. Locate the file you downloaded and double-click it to run the setup program. If you're prompted to open the executable file, click OK.
  5. Click Run to run the setup program.
  6. Follow prompts in the setup program to install the add-in.

Get connected to your community

After you first install the desktop add-in, it might not be set up to connect to the community you want to synchronize documents with. To connect, you give the add-in the community's address on the web, along with the username and password you use to log in to the community. There might also be other proxy settings you'll need give. You can usually get those from an administrator.

  1. In the Jive Desktop panel, in the upper-right corner, click the Settings button (it looks like a little wrench).
  2. Under Settings, type your community username in the top box and your community password in the bottom one.
  3. Click Network Settings to view Jive Desktop's connection settings.
  4. In the Network Settings dialog box, in the Server box, enter the address of your community. This will probably be the URL you use in a web browser to get to your community's home page.
  5. If you need to enter proxy settings manually (your administrator will know whether you do), select Manual proxy settings, then enter the proxy information you got from an administrator. Otherwise, leave Automatically detect proxy settings for the network selected.
  6. Select check boxes to set how you want the Jive Desktop to handle your documents. These settings will be the defaults for all documents you work on.
    • Enable Jive Desktop Plugin -- Clear this to turn off the Jive Desktop.
    • Sync documents automatically -- Documents are kept in sync with the community unless you click the Syncing button on the Jive Desktop ribbon group. The Syncing button will show as enabled the next time you start the Office application.
    • Send usage data to help improve Jive Desktop -- Select this to have the add-in send information to the add-in's developers if something goes wrong. This data is completely anonymous, and doesn't include anything about your document.
  7. Click OK.

Keep documents synchronized

After you've connected to your community, you can have Jive Desktop keep your documents synchronized with the community. When automatic syncing is enabled, Jive Desktop does the following:
  • Updates the document preview in the community when you save changes to the document's content.
  • Updates the community's document preview with inline comments added in Office.
  • Updates the Office document comments list with comments made in the community.
  • Keeps changes to community-related document properties in sync between the Office application and the community. When a change is made in one place, it shows up in the other. These properties include:
    • Collaboration settings
    • Tags
    • The document's title
    • The document's description
    • Revision activity

If you don't have the Jive Desktop set to sync documents automatically, people using the community won't see changes you make in Office. By the same token, while working in Office you won't see comments that people in the community add to the document.

To enable automatic syncing, do one of the following in Jive Desktop:
  • Click the Syncing button on the Jive Desktop toolbar ribbon so that it appears highlighted.
  • On the top of the Desktop panel, click the Settings button (it looks like a little wrench), select the Sync documents automatically check box, then click OK.

Add a document to the community

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

To add it using Jive Desktop, Jive Desktop must be able to connect to the community. See Get connected to your community.
  1. Open the Office document.
  2. If the document isn't yet in the community, Jive Desktop will display the Sync to My Documents command.
  3. Click Sync to My Documents.

The document will be added to the community. After this is done, Jive Desktop's Home tab will display information about the document as content in the community. This includes a URL to reach it there, along with other information.

To add the document inside the community, click New > Document, then select Upload a File. Depending on the size of your document, it might take a few seconds to upload it.

Create a new document from an existing one

You can upload a document again if you want to make a new document you can start fresh with in the community. Doing this saves you the trouble of saving your Office document as another document, then uploading the new one.

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. In the Jive Desktop panel, on the Home tab, click Reset this document.

Work with document versions

As you work on a document in Office, Jive Desktop keeps track of your changes, including community-related information such as comments. If you have automatic syncing enabled, it will sync your changes with the community. You can 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, select the Review tab. In the Tracking group, select "Final" for 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 Desktop creates a new version of a document whenever you save changes to the document.

To view previous versions of a document:
  1. In Office, on the Jive Desktop panel, click the Information tab.
  2. Under Versions, if the list of versions isn't visible, click the triangle to display it. Previous versions will be listed with the name of the person who saved them and the 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, on the Jive Desktop panel Information tab, click the version of the document you want to save.
  2. In Office, with the older version displayed, on the Jive Desktop panel, click Make this the latest version.

Work with document activity

Jive Desktop displays a list of activity related to the document. This activity includes versions saved and comments added. By clicking an item in the activity list, you can get more information about it. For example, clicking an item about comments added will display the list of comments.

To view document activity:
  1. In Office, on the Jive Desktop panel, click the Home tab.
  2. Under Activity, view the list.
  3. To see details about a particular item, click it.

Move a document

Just as you can when you're using the community, while you're using Jive Desktop you can move a document from one space in the community to another.

To move a document:
  1. In Office, on the Jive Desktop panel, click the Jive Desktop Home tab.
  2. Under Overview, click move.
  3. In the Move document dialog box, click the name of the space you want to move the document to.

    If you don't see the space listed, you can search for it.

  4. Click OK to move the 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, but only viewed (or replied to) in Office.
  • 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 are added in Office, but can only be viewed in the community.

Both kinds of comment 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 Desktop 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 your community go to the bottom of the document view and click the Comments tab.
  2. Click Add a comment, then type your comment and click Add Comment.

    You can also click Reply to reply to an existing comment.

To add an inline comment:
  1. In Office, on the Jive Desktop Comments tab, click Add.
  2. In the new box that appears under Comments, type your comment, then click OK.

You can also click Reply beneath a particular comment to write a reply to that comment.

Add collaborators

By default, when you use Jive Desktop to add a document to your community, the document's collaboration options are set so that only you can edit the document. You can change this so that others can edit as well.

To change collaboration options:
  1. On the Jive Desktop toolbar ribbon, click the Share button.
  2. In the Collaboration options dialog box, select an option to set who can edit:
    • Just you -- Only you can make changes to the document's content.
    • Anyone -- Anyone in the community can make changes.
    • 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.
  3. Click OK.

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