Linking Custom Document Properties to SharePoint

Question

We currently have a Microsoft Office Add-in that, among other things, reads and writes Custom Document Properties. Our add-in includes a user-dialogue through which these values are captured and subsequently displayed within the document.
We now have a requirement to integrate this functionality with SharePoint 2010. In particular, we want our Office custom document properties to be co-ordinated with equivalent SharePoint server properties (i.e. site columns in Document Libraries) so that,
when a given SharePoint property value is changed the equivalent custom document property is also changed.
Users must be able to set the properties in either SharePoint or in an Office App (Word for example) and the changes be reflected in both places.
Our solution must work with the desktop versions of Office 2010/13 and the non-Office365 versions of SharePoint 2010/13.
During our initial prototyping we have looked at a number of possible approaches (including Document Property Promotion and Demotion) but are still not sure which appropriate to use.
With regard to Document Property Promotion and Demotion for example, we found that, if we create a document outside SharePoint, then invoke our add-in to set document properties, then upload the document to SharePoint; the SharePoint properties and the
Office Custom Document Properties are initially in step, any subsequent changes cause problems.
If we now change the SharePoint properties by editing them in SharePoint and then open the document in Word, the Custom Document Properties are unchanged. Similarly, any change we make in Word is not reflected in the
SharePoint properties when the document is saved back to the SharePoint library.
Our properties are all of type string in Word and type Choice in SharePoint.
For various reasons, our solution must not depend in any way on Office templates.
We would like to know what would be the recommended approach to implementing this functionality.
Below provides a basic diagram of our requirement:

Answer 1

Hi,
According to your description, you might want to sync the custom document properties between document and SharePoint Library.
A solution can be like this: We can add an Event Receiver to this library, it will be triggered when there is a file is checked in or the item of list is updated, then we can
read/write the specific document properties and sync between document and SharePoint Library.
The whole scenario would be like this: When a document is uploaded and checked in, the method put in the Event Receiver will be triggered and update the related columns of library.
When we updated these columns in library, we can capture the ItemUpdated event and update the corresponding properties of this document.
Here is a step by step sample on creating a simple Item added event receiver:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff398052.aspx
More information on Event Receiver for your reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg749858(v=office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff408183(v=office.14).aspx
For about how to update the custom properties of an Office Document, it is recommended you post another question to the Microsoft Office for Developers forum, you will get more
help and confirmed answers from there.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/home?category=officedev
Thanks
Patrick Liang
Forum Support
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