Configuring clients of Lync Server 2013 for use with Office Web Apps Server

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Topic Last Modified: 2013-02-25

If you want users to experience the full capabilities of Office Web App Server then you should upgrade those users to Microsoft Lync 2013; only users of Lync 2013 will be able to do such things as scroll through PowerPoint slides independent of the actual PowerPoint presentation. (That is, these users can look at any slide in the presentation at any time, without interfering in any way with the actual presentation.) Users who are not using Lync 2013 will still be able to join online conferences and view the PowerPoint presentation; however, they will not be able to independently scroll through the slides, nor will they be able to see slide transitions or view embedded videos.

Note that these capabilities will always be available to users of Lync 2013; this is true even if the PowerPoint presenter is running Microsoft Lync 2010. If a PowerPoint presentation is being hosted by a user running Lync 2010, Lync Server 2013 will coordinate with Office Web Apps Server to make sure that Lync 2013 users will view the Office Web Apps Server version of that presentation. Office Web Apps Server does not provide PowerPoint services for users running clients other than Lync 2013. Instead, those users connect to the Conferencing server service and view PowerPoint presentations the same way they did in Microsoft Lync Server 2010. This also means that these users will only have access to the more-limited capabilities offered by Lync Server 2010.

Although no client configuration is required for Office Web Apps Server (other than upgrading users to Lync 2013), it is recommended that conference attendees be upgrade to Internet Explorer 9. Although conferences can be accessed using Internet Explorer 8, there are some limitations to using that Web browser. For example, users of Internet Explorer 8 will not be able to resize the PowerPoint stage to a custom size; instead, they will be limited to using one of three predefined stage sizes. Likewise, Internet Explorer 8 users will not be able to play media files.