Desktop Integration with Office 365

[STEVEG]

The documentation for Windchill 11.0 and 11.1 both state Office 365 with local installation is supported.  But when 365 is in the cloud it is not supported.

Can anyone from PTC, or anyone else, state whether Office 365 in the cloud will be supported at some point?  What are the plans?

[BenLoosli · Accepted solution]

This has been asked before.

If I remember right, it cannot be integrated with the cloud version because PTC modifies some of the Office files and they cannot do that with the cloud version.

[STEVEG]

Thank you for the reply Ben.  I searched to see if I could find something about it but didn't come across it.

[jbailey]

That is the excuse they give, however it seems that is because PTC isn't spending any time developing a new add-in for DTI.  Microsoft is not doing away with add-ins in the cloud office 365

[ScottMorris]

As far as I understand, the problem with the Office 365 web apps is they require the content file to exist in a Microsoft container, such as SharePoint, OneDrive or Azure. When it comes to Windchill, the content file exists in Windchill. Last time I checked, Microsoft was not offering their web apps outside a Microsoft environment, so there is no way to enable the Office 365 web apps in Windchill.

Do you have a specific use case or reason why you'd like to use the Office 365 web apps vs. the locally installed Office applications?

I can see the need if there were a mobile app for Windchill, but that died quickly and is no longer available. There's also a good use case for MacOS since the PTC DTI tool is only available for Windows.

Microsoft and Google really own the market when it comes to web based authoring apps for office documents and their web apps are not extensible outside their own environments. This leaves Windchill and many other content management applications stuck with the download/edit/upload paradigm vs. live editing.

[STEVEG]

          Do you have a specific use case or reason why you'd like to use the Office 365 web apps vs. the locally installed Office applications?

Yes.  My work makes me.  I have no say in the matter.  They did this whole going to the cloud thing.

[jbailey]

We are also being forced down the Cloud rabbit hole.  As a Widnchill admin tho, it would be very useful for MAcOs (as well as CreoView)

[TomU]

Same here.  I.T. is moving everyone possible from Office 365 to G Suite (world-wide.)

[ksingh]

Hi, I have a question, what if organization's all NON CAD documents (*.doc,*.xls,*.pdf*.*mpp) are kept in office 365 SharePoint and hosted on microsoft azure cloud. And at the same cloud(Azure) ptc windchill pdmlink, projectlink are installed and their instances are running than in that case will office 365 is interchangeable with windchill or does they have simplex seamless integration ??