Using the Office Taskpane

The Office taskpane lets you access key Oracle WebCenter Collaboration project features directly from your Microsoft Office documents. Your administrator must enable the Office taskpane for you to be able to use it. The Office taskpane is compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007.

Note: When this feature is enabled, we recommend that you check in your document by clicking the Check in... link on the Status tab of the Office taskpane.

This topic discusses:

Status Tab
Members Tab

Tasks Tab

Documents Tab

Additional Microsoft Office 2003 Features

Additional Microsoft Office 2007 Features

Making the Office Taskpane Automatically Appear in Microsoft Office 2007

Note: This topic describes only the features of the Office taskpane that are functional when working on Microsoft Office documents via Oracle WebCenter Collaboration. When the Office taskpane is enabled, some of its features are not functional because they do not serve a purpose in Oracle WebCenter Collaboration. Due to compatibility issues between Oracle and Microsoft products, some non-functioning features are grayed out, while others can be clicked on but serve no purpose.

Status Tab

Displays the user to whom the document is checked out. Click the Check in... link to check in the document.

The following versioning behavior applies:

Note: For your version control management, we recommend that you close a document after checking it in. If you leave a document open after checking it in, the Office taskpane allows you to make changes to and save the document. After making changes, the Check in... link becomes visible again.

Members Tab

Displays the members and portal groups that have been added to the project from which the document was checked out. Note that even if the Administrator Group belongs to the project, its group name does not appear on this tab.

Tasks Tab

Displays the tasks and subtasks that are associated to the document. This tab contains options that enable you to create, edit, and delete tasks. Note that Microsoft Office does not differentiate between tasks and subtasks; for this reason, all tasks appear in a flat list.

When you create a new task, Oracle WebCenter Collaboration checks if a task list is associated to the document that is currently being edited. If so, a new task list is created with subtask names that are generated from the first associated task list. If a task list is not associated to the document, a new task list is created using the name of the document being edited.   

Documents Tab

Displays a list of all documents and folders included in the parent folder of the document that is being edited. You can:

Note: You cannot delete folders from the Office taskpane.

Additional Microsoft Office 2003 Features

In Microsoft Office 2003, the Office taskpane includes the following features:

Additional Microsoft Office 2007 Features

In Microsoft Office 2003, an interface for managing a document's version history automatically appears in the Office taskpane.

To make the version management interface visible in Microsoft Office 2007:

  1. Click the Microsoft Office button.

  2. Click Server.

  3. Click View Version History.

To access document check in, check out, and discard check out options from Microsoft Office 2007:

  1. Click the Microsoft Office button.

  2. Click Server.
    The options appear to the right of the options list.

Making the Office Taskpane Automatically Appear in Microsoft Office 2007

In Microsoft Office 2003, the Office taskpane automatically appears when you open a document by clicking the WebEdit button.

To make the Office taskpane automatically appear in Microsoft Office 2007 documents:

  1. In the Office taskpane, click Options...

  2. In the Service Options dialog box, select The document is part of a workspace or SharePoint site.

  3. Click OK.

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