Important Concepts in Word Automation Services

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

This topic discusses concepts that that are key to understanding Word Automation Services.

Concepts

Three concepts that are basic to Word Automation Services are conversion, conversion job, and document queue:

A conversion is a process in which Word Automation Services receives a file in a given format and then outputs the file in a different format. For example, the service might convert a Word 2010 document (.docx) to a PDF document.

All conversions proceed through the following steps:
1. Create a conversion job.
2. Provide the settings for the job (for example, the desired output file format).
3. Add one or more files to the job.
4. Submit the job to the document queue.
All conversion operations are based on the creation or use of a conversion job. A conversion job describes the files to convert and the operation to perfom on them. Each file constitutes a single conversion item, and each conversion item is mapped to a conversion job. A conversion job can contain many conversion items.
The document queue is a "first in, first out" queue that Word Automation Services uses to start conversions, based on the schedule that is set for the conversion job.