OfficeImporter Application

OfficeImporter Application

Imports office documents into wiki pages

Requirements

The Office Importer Application requires the following essential components:

• XWiki Enterprise 1.8M1 or above
• OpenOffice 2.1 or above (on the server)

Installation / Configuration

The Office Importer application comes pre-bundled with XWiki Enterprise versions greater than 1.8M1, so there is no need for a manual installation. Office Importer makes use of a running OpenOffice server to convert office documents into HTML before they are finally transformed into XWiki 2.0 syntax. Thus, an OpenOffice server instance is required on the server computer which hosts your XWiki Enterprise installation. Beginning with XWiki Enterprise 1.8.4 you can configure an OpenOffice server in one of the two different ways described below.

Internally managed OpenOffice server process (default)

This is a very easy (and safe) option where your XWiki Enterprise application takes care of managing the OpenOffice server process for you. To configure the OpenOffice server management scheme, you can use the WEB-INF/xwiki.properties configuration file:

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Settings for the OpenOffice server instance consumed by the OfficeImporter plugin
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#-# Type of the openoffice server instance used by officeimporter plugin.
#-# 0 - Internally managed server instance.
#-# 1 - Externally managed (local) server instance.
# openoffice.serverType=0

#-# Port number used for connecting to the openoffice server instance. 
# openoffice.serverPort=8100

#-# If the openoffice server should be started / connected upon XE start.
# openoffice.autoStart=false

#-# Path to openoffice installation (serverType:0 only).
# openoffice.homePath=/opt/openoffice.org3/

#-# Path to openoffice execution profile (serverType:0 only).
# openoffice.profilePath=/home/user/.openoffice.org/3

#-# Maximum number of simultaneous conversion tasks to be handled by a single openoffice process (serverType:0 only).
# openoffice.maxTasksPerProcess=50

#-# Timeout for conversion tasks (in miliseconds) (serverType:0 only).
# openoffice.taskExecutionTimeout=30000

If you leave your XWiki Enterprise application to manage the OpenOffice server process (which is the default behaviour), your Office Importer admin UI will look something like below:

Externally managed (local) OpenOffice server process

This option allows you (the system admin) to control the OpenOffice server process as desired. This is very useful if you wish to customize OpenOffice server start-up parameters. You can configure this behaviour within the xwiki.properties file as shown below:

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Settings for the OpenOffice server instance consumed by the OfficeImporter plugin
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#-# Type of the openoffice server instance used by officeimporter plugin.
#-# 0 - Internally managed server instance.
#-# 1 - Externally managed (local) server instance.
openoffice.serverType=1

#-# Port number used for connecting to the openoffice server instance. 
# openoffice.serverPort=8100

#-# If the openoffice server should be started / connected upon XE start.
# openoffice.autoStart=false

Once XWiki Enterprise is configured in this manner, an OpenOffice server must be manually started as a separate process. You can issue the following command to accomplish this:

soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" -nofirststartwizard

Don't forget to replace <soffice> with the path to your OpenOffice executable. More information regarding OpenOffice server deployment is provided here. Also note that the Office Importer admin UI will change reflecting the new configuration as shown below:

Linux users may refer to additional installation notes here.

Auto start / Auto connect (feature)

This feature was introduced beginning with the XWiki Enterprise 1.8.4 version. With this option enabled, you don't need to worry about starting / connecting the OpenOffice server from the Office Importer admin UI every time you restart XE. This option can be configured from xwiki.properties file as shown below:

#-# If the openoffice server should be started / connected upon XE start.
openoffice.autoStart=true

Using Office Importer Application

Once XWiki Enterprise is configured correctly (and OpenOffice server started), users will be able to access the Office Importer Application via the Actions menu:

Finally, Office Importer provides a self-explaining UI which makes it easy for you to import office documents: