Is it mandatory to sign in with office online account in office for web approach with WOPI Protocol

Question

I have a plan to provide user experience to open and edit excel sheets from my web application for which I am conducting research on the WOPI protocol. It's shown at many places like we should be a member of the Office 365 partner program for this. My confusion here is, is it mandatory for users to sign in to Office Online with Microsoft account to track their subscription in this WOPI protocol approach?

Or is it like joining the Office 365 Partner Program would make us capable of using the office for the web? Also, it would be great if someone can tell me where to add WOPI Domain list, and are there any recommendations for the WOPI host server? Is it possible to implement a WOPI host with Python Django or NodeJS technologies?

Answer 1

If you want to use the Cloud Storage Partner Program, then your users will need to have an Office 365 business licence to edit documents (a license is not required for read-only operations).

You can do WOPI with Office Online Server, but it seems to present an old version of the Office web applications, so you may not get the features you want. To access Office Online Server you will need a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft that includes Office Online Server.

Answer 2

As per this docs: https://wopi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html it says that Business users require an Office 365 subscription to edit files in Office for the web. However, there isn't a clear distinction between Business users and normal users. I assume Business users will be those who will be paying for your web app services and normal users as in non paying users.

Answer 3

To answer the remaining questions:

Where to add WOPI Domain list

• You need to take part in the Office 365 - Cloud Storage Partner Program to be able to add your URLs to the WOPI domain allow list

Are there any recommendations for the WOPI host server? Is it possible to implement a WOPI host with Python Django or NodeJS technologies?

• It's possible to implement a WOPI server using any web framework that allows building REST APIs - including Django and NodeJS

Answer 4

When we were doing the Production Shipping for WOPI API, One of the mandatory criteria was to have business user flow. We had to implement that flow. That means to edit/view MS files on WOPI frame, users need to login to their O365 accounts.

https://wopi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/build_test_ship/shipping.html