How to setup connection between Office and SharePoint automatically? (script, GPO, etc)

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to automatically configure the connection between Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. This option is available for the end users by clicking the "Add to SharePoint Sites" in the document library. This will make the document library appear in the "SharePoint Sites" in Windows Explorer like this:

From my understanding, this is a two step process;

1. Configure the link between Office and SharePoint. Office will then regurarly retrieve the links from "My Links" in SharePoint.
2. Add a link to "My Links" list in SharePoint.

I need help for step 1 - the initial connection. I have searched "up and down" on the internet, and cannot find any answers to this. Everywhere I look, it's suggested to let the end users find the option in the library, which is not an option for us;

The best option would be to have a Group Policy Object (GPO) setting for this, or a script that could be executed upon login.

I would appreciate any help! :)

Answer 1

As I aleady stated in an older post (Hosting Office Templates in a Document Library (Office & SharePoint 2010)) you can manage those "links" in the Central Administration of SharePoint. The SharePoint Server & Office are then automagically syncin up - providing all the libraries specified in the Central Administraiton. In the end I came up with a solution that uses the SMB share of SharePoint because I found it not being reliable enought.

Little walk-throught which - in theory should reset the link between Office and SharePoint.

1. Close Office
2. Delete old/broken link to Office (Match 14.0 up with the version you use)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AppDataLow\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Portal] "LinkPublishingTimestamp"=- "PersonalSiteURL"=- [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Server Links\Published\My Site] [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Content] [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers]

3. Open http://sharepoint/Pages/OfficeLink.aspx and answer the dialog with "Yes"
4. Open Word, Open the "File Open Dialog" (File -> Open Dialog) and close it, close Word
5. Open word and check if the templates are available in the new category "SharePoint Templates"

To update the link later on simple delete the following key in the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AppDataLow\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Portal] "LinkPublishingTimestamp"=-

If you were to publish those links to other clients, I would have a look at the registry around the keys I mentioned.

While this solution indeed enables you to see the templates supplied in the linked libraries (Word templates just in Word, Excel templates in Excel ...) after restarting the single applications a few times - it does NOT recreate the bookmarks in Windows Explorer. You can maybe get Office to recreate those by choosing another linktype in Central Administration.