Provision Word Automation Services

Word Automation Services is another new Service Application delivered with SharePoint 2010. This Service Application was developed to address the common issue of administrators and developers installing the client version of Microsoft Word on the server to facilitate tasks such as document conversion between different Word formats, conversions to fixed formats such as PDF and XPS, and form fills, just to name but a few of these tasks.

There is no out-of-the-box interface for using the Word Automation Service capabilities, but there is an API available for developers to support the creation of custom applications and workflows that leverage the service.

The steps for provisioning the Word Automation Service are very similar to that of provisioning Excel Services. The following list includes the steps that you will need to perform to provision the Word Automation Service: