Editing documents via external services (Google Docs, MS Office Web Apps)

4 min read
Vlad Kovalskiy
September 11, 2013
Last updated: May 30, 2019
Editing documents via external services (Google Docs, MS Office Web Apps)
You can work with documents in Bitrix24 without an office suite now. Thanks to integration with Google Docs and MS Office Web Apps, you can open, view, and collaborate on documents stored in your Bitrix24 portal via your Google and Microsoft (Live ID) account.

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Collaborative work


Let’s look at a collaboration scenario in Bitrix24’s Activity Stream using Google Docs and MS Office Web Apps.

You can share files with colleagues and all the recipients of your post can be allowed to edit the document(s). You can view your colleagues’ versions of the document , make suggestions, and discuss the finer points of the text.

  1. We create new message in the Activity Stream, attach a file, and allow recipients to edit the document.

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  2. After saving, the team (the recipients) sees the new message in the thread. The file can not only be previewed, but also edited via the preview/editing window.

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  3. After the file is edited using an external service like Google Docs, a new comment appears with the new version of the document.

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In the thread itself, the latest version of the file is saved, so that after everyone in the team has made their contributions, the ready document is accessible. This new functionality makes document revision for a small group very simple, completely transparent, and it all can happen without navigating away from the Activity Stream!

How it works


When you click on a document link in your personal library, a group library, the Shared Documents library, or in the Activity Stream, you get a pop-up window with a preview of the document.

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This window allows you to save the file on a disk, open it for editing using Google Docs or MS Office Web Apps, view the file, or go to the next file using the slider.

Choose a service for editing, and put in your account information for that service.

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If you do not have an account, you’ll need to create one.

Next you will be asked to allow the application to perform the operations related to editing documents:

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Note: the next time you use this service for editing documents from Bitrix24, the sign-in process will be omitted – the login data you enter the first time will be used automatically.

Allow access and use the service of your choice to continue working with documents.

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After you close the window in the service (after making any changes you wanted to), Bitrix24 will ask whether or not you want to save the changes.

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Settings


The Settings -> Intranet Settings page now allows/disallows all intranet users to use external tools to work with documents in this manner.

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If you choose “Allow individual users and groups to activate document editing via external services”, then the users themselves will have the choice of using external services in individual document libraries – both their personal libraries and group libraries. A separate settings point in the document library will appear (as below).

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The end

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