Office Web Apps with SharePoint Server 2013

 

There are a few significant differences in installing Office Web Apps with SharePoint Server 2013:

 

1. You can no longer install Office Web Apps on the same server as SharePoint.  Instead, you have to install Office Web Apps on a COMPLETELY different server from the SharePoint Server.  In addition, Office Web Apps is not part of its own farm separate from the SharePoint Farm.
2. In addition to not being able to install SharePoint on the Office Web Apps Server, you also cannot install the following: Exchange, Lync, SQL Server or any Desktop version of the Office suite.
3. You ABSOLUTELY need to keep these ports open: 80, 443 or 809.
4. It can only be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012.
5. Office Web Apps 2013 REQUIRES Claims-based Authentication in order to operate.  If you are still using Classic mode Authentication, you will have to switch it over to Claims-based Authentication before you can begin using Office Web Apps 2013.
6. Office Web Apps 2013 supports a wider variety of browsers on both PCs & Macs for Editing and Viewing (IE, Firefox, Chrome & Safari) as well as Tables & Saltes.  Viewing is also supported on a variety of Smart Phones and it is optimized for touch screens.
7. In order to create a new Office Web Apps Farm, you will have to run a PowerShell command such as the following:

   New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl http://owa.spfarm.com -AllowHttp –EditingEnabled

   
   
8. Once you have run the PowerShell command, you can verify that your Office Web Apps Farm has been successfully created by navigating a to a Url similar to the following: http://owa.spfarm.com/hosting/discovery
   
9. Unfortunately, once you have created your Office Web Apps Farm, you have to manually configure your SharePoint Farm to communicate with the Office Web Apps Farm through using a series of PowerShell commands.