Enterprise deployment

Maarten Truyens Updated by Maarten Truyens

Involving your IT-admin

Probably the most likely installation stumbling block for most users is that your firm/company has blocked you from installing add-ins in Microsoft Word. In such case, you will notice that the "Get Add-ins" button is greyed out

If this is the case, then you will need to either switch to the browser-version of ClauseBuddy (see above — the downside is that you will have copy/paste between Word/Outlook), or alternatively involve your organisation's IT-expert ("administrator"), who has the required superpowers to grant you installation rights for the add-in. 

Be nice to this person, as he/she has a very good reason to block add-ins: the previous generation of add-ins had a very bad reputation of causing severe slowdowns and difficult-to-trace crashes. (We've all seen fast computers that take over a minute to load MS Word!)

If required, you can explain that the new generation of add-ins does not suffer from this problem. Unlike the old generation of add-ins (which install their tentacles into the brains, guts and nerves of Word), next-gen add-ins such as ClauseBuddy are forced by Microsoft to remain at the surface. They consist of so-called "JavaScript code" (instead of 32/64 bit executable files), and are executed by MS Word's internal web browser. This is also the reason why ClauseBuddy works in Word for Windows, Word for Mac and even Word Online. 

Even if your Microsoft Windows version of Word blocks the installation of addins, you may be able to install ClauseBuddy in the online version of Microsoft Word, without requiring the help of your IT administrator.

System requirements

All you need is a recent version of Microsoft Word for Windows or Mac, or Microsoft Word Online in a browser. 

  • Office 365 is ideal because most versions use moden web browsing technology, and are continually upgraded.
  • Some separately purchased versions of Office (i.e., non-Office 365 versions such as Word 2016) may also be fine, as long as they use "WebView2" (Chromium-based) browsing technology for the add-ins, instead of the ancient Internet Explorer or the old Microsoft Edge. It may be possible to separately install WebView2.
    Please check Microsoft's overview table to make sure you have the right combination of Windows and Word. You may also want to check Microsoft's website for detailed information about specific version numbers.
  • Even when WebView2 is installed, you should be careful with Word 2016, because it is missing certain features. ClauseBuddy may work on this version of Word, but some advanced features (mostly related to layout and metadata) will be disabled.
  • On a Mac and iPad, essentially any version of Word will work.
Background: The new generation of add-ins for Word and Outlook rely on modern internet technology. Those versions of Word that still use the ancient Internet Explorer browser (or the outdated version of the Microsoft Edge browser) cannot be used for ClauseBuddy.

Not only are those browsers missing important web technologies, but they are also very insecure and extremely slow. For those reasons, Microsoft has phased out the use of this browser for many years already — and even strongly warns users to not use it anymore. Unfortunately, for Word/Outlook add-ins, Microsoft will not upgrade old versions of Word to make use of the new technology.

Deployment

Unlike traditional desktop-software or the old generation of COM/VSTO plugins, there is no "installer" file, such as an .MSI file.

The enterprise deployment of ClauseBuddy is in no way different than the deployment of any of the other new-style Microsoft Office plugins (often technically referred to as "Office.js" plugins, because it used the Microsoft Office.JS API for Javascript to communicate with the "host" applications such as Word and Outlook).

See Microsoft's resources:

You may also check out Stackoverflow for community-based questions.

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