How does a WOPI host know when an editing session is finished?

While editing a file, a WOPI client will always maintain a WOPI lock on the file. When editing is complete, the file will be unlocked using the Unlock WOPI operation. Thus, once the file is successfully unlocked, the editing session is completed.

WOPI clients will always call Unlock at the end of an editing session, unless something happens that prevents the session from closing cleanly, such as a browser crash or a network dropout. In those cases the WOPI lock eventually times out, which is fundamentally equivalent to an explicit Unlock request.

Note

In co-authoring sessions, the Unlock operation will only be called when the last user editing the document ends their session. Thus, if hosts wish to track what users are editing a document, they cannot rely completely on the locked state of the document. Hosts can use the Edit_Notification message to help gauge activity within a co-authoring session.