Overview:
The release of Office 2007 by Microsoft has brought a wealth of new features as well as a number of new challenges to the enterprise workstation management platform. Users and organizations are eager to embrace the promise of easier collaboration and intuitive user interface that Office 2007 brings.
With the new features, comes a new file format that is based on the XML standard allowing for a higher degree of interoperability between office products as they shuttle documents and data to collaborative web spaces and integrate with document search and management services. These file formats are incompatible with the older office 2000/XP/2003 format that has become almost universally accepted. Certainly, Office 2007 can save documents in the previous format, but this is not the default and is incumbent upon the end-user to make the change.
Some organizations are waiting to implement the Office 2007 platform, but will have to address how they will handle documents originating from the outside world that may be in the Office 2007 format.
To address this, Microsoft has released a number of resources to both provide compatibility with legacy systems, but also to control the behavior of Office 2007.
Tools & Resources
Office 2007 Open XML File Formats – These new file formats provide many new features as well as smaller file size and better integration with web systems.
Using GPOs to Set Default Office 2007 Save Options – The default behavior of the Office 2007 platform is to use the new file format. Using Group Policy Objects, one can change this default behavior to phase Office 2007 into an organization and provide backward compatibility with legacy systems.
Office 2007 Compatibility Pack – The Compatibility Pack allows some legacy versions of Microsoft Office to open, edit, and save files in the newer 2007 format. This package can be deployed across an enterprise to streamline the transition to office 2007 and provide interoperability with external partners. There is also an Administrative Template (.adm) for managing the behavior of the Compatibility pack through GPOs.
Office 2007 Resource Kit – Finally, the Office Resource Kit (ORK 2007) allows for the construction of automated deployment and custom packaged configuration of the entire Office Platform. The ORK can be used to fine tune Office behavior before deployment and standardize on a single, centrally-managed configuration.