The Word Automation service application in SharePoint Server performs the conversion of documents supported by Microsoft Word.
Not a very popular nor configured service application from my work experience, but it can be useful.

In this post, we’ll learn how to create this Word Automation service application using Central Admin (GUI) as well as PowerShell.

Create the Word Automation service application using Central Admin (GUI)

When using Central Administration, the process is pretty straight forward.

• Log into SharePoint Central Admin
• Under Application Management >> Manage Service Applications
• Click on “New” >> Choose Word Automation Services

• Give the service application a name (e.g.: Word Automation Services)
• Choose an Application Pool or create a new one
• Select or not if the application should run in partition mode
• Select or not to add this service application’s proxy to the default list
• Click on “Next“
• Database Server should be populated (if not, changed it)
• Enter a name for the database
• Click “Finish“

After a few seconds (where nothing seems to happen…), the Word Automation SA is created!

Create the Word Automation service application using PowerShell

There’s also a possibility to create the Service Application using PowerShell. Obviously! 🙂
So start your editor of choice and let’s use the New-SPWordConversionServiceApplication cmdlet (make sure to add the PSSnapin first)

# Declare variable for the SA
$AppPoolName = "DefaultAppPool"
$SAName = "Word Automation Services"
$DBName = "SP2016_WordAutomationServices_DB"
$DBServer = "DCSQL\SP2016"

# Create Service Application
$newSPWordConversionServiceApplicationSplat = @{
    DatabaseName = $DBName
    Default = $true
    ApplicationPool = $AppPoolName
    Name = $SAName
    DatabaseServer = $DBServer
}
New-SPWordConversionServiceApplication @newSPWordConversionServiceApplicationSplat

Run the script, and look at the results!