Hosting Office Templates in a Document Library (Office & SharePoint 2010)

Question

I know, SharePoint added this wonderful feature with those document templates, where i can stick a document directly onto a library, and integrate it into SharePoint with some simple clicks (and an Office restart).

My company has several different documents all over the place, hanging in the department's document libraries, and the management asked me now to search for an easy method to integrate all those document templates into the users office applications (in Create what and Save where menu).

I found out that there is the possibility to setup "Published links to Office client applications" in Central Admin -> User Profile Service, and i tried to add link of the type "Document Library with Template Synchronization", but had no luck with that yet.

Sadly, i found nothin helpfull on google at all whith the query "Document Library with Template Synchronization" beside Microsoft's patent for this feature and the specification of the link to office...

I tried searching for the german translation and found a blog from austria, talkin about that feature and how to enable it.

So i created a new Documentlibrary called "DocumentTemplates", gave everyone the rights to read & write, and added the Link of type "Document Library with Template Synchronization" directly to the librarys path (SharePoint/DocumentTemplates/).

After a restart of the Office application i still dont see a new entry in Word -> New -> SharePoint Templates.

So, my question ... How do i setup my SharePoint & my Office to fetch all the Document Templates from this Document Library, and the second - how do i deploy this setting to EVERYONE in my company? The template should NOT force to create a document in SharePoint, and i dont want to create a contenttype for every documenttemplate either.

Answer 1

Do you see the libraries listed in word when you go file > new? If not you haven't connected the library to office which is required for you to see the templates.

Here is a much better guide than the one you followed, it seems to have some parts missing probably because of the translation.

Check the section called "To Publish Links to Office Client Applications follow these steps:"

Access SharePoint templates from Office client application

I used this guide the first time I did it and it worked, it also provides debugging solutions at the bottom of the blog.

Answer 2

I think that this option publish templates for My Sites only, thats why is stored under User Profile Service page in CA. And you have two ways how to see them in Word.

You can connect documents like templates from any library by click on "Add to SharePoint Sites" link from ribbon menu, but it could not be easily spread to all computers in company, it's task for AD admins and group policy I think.

If you want to manage content types automatically for whole portal, use content type hub instead. You can manage and publish all your content types from one library.