Aeion Files + WOPI — Office Editing in Your Browser
Email a .docx file to a colleague and they download → edit in Word → upload → break the version chain. The WOPI (Web Application Open Platform Interface) protocol — published by Microsoft, supported by Collabora Online, ONLYOFFICE, and Microsoft Office for the Web — is built to eliminate that round-trip. Users click a .docx in Aeion Files and open it in their browser through a connected WOPI editor, which brings its own collaborative editing, comments, and change tracking. (See implementation status below — save-back to Aeion Files' own storage is still in progress.)
What WOPI Enables
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WOPI Protocol Implementation
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Deployment Options
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Security Considerations
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FAQ
Microsoft 365 best UX but content flows through Microsoft. Collabora/ONLYOFFICE self-hosted for privacy + cost. ONLYOFFICE has the best Office format compatibility.
Per-WOPI-server. Collabora Online community: ~20 docs concurrent / 10 users per doc. Commercial editions remove limits.
Responsive WOPI editors (Collabora, ONLYOFFICE) support tablet. Office Mobile apps integrate via the Office mobile WOPI spec.
Not via WOPI — offline editing means downloading the file and using the desktop app directly, then re-uploading. There's no automatic offline-sync path for Office documents today.
ONLYOFFICE supports JavaScript-based macros. Collabora Online supports limited LibreOffice Basic. Microsoft 365 supports VBA (security review required). These are properties of the editor you choose, not something Aeion Files adds.
Per-WOPI-server latency budget. Self-hosted near users for low latency. Cloud-hosted shared globally.
WOPI locks and WebDAV locks are currently independent — there's no unified arbitration layer between them today. Avoid editing the same file over both protocols simultaneously.
Collabora + ONLYOFFICE support PDF view + annotate. Edit PDF requires conversion to .odt or .docx first.
Not a WOPI-specific feature today — there's no per-tenant document template library wired to the "new file from template" flow yet.
M365 Business Basic: $6/user/month. Collabora self-hosted: server cost only (~$200-1000/month total). ONLYOFFICE community: free up to 20 connections.