Seamless editing of SharePoint documents using reverse proxy (SMA 11.4.0)

03/26/2020 6 13020

DESCRIPTION:

SonicWall SMA supports Microsoft SharePoint access using Reverse Proxy access. Customers that deploy SharePoint also wants editing of SharePoint-documents inside MS Office applications like Word.

When user logs into SharePoint through SMA using browser(IE), session information is stored only with browser and not shared with external applications like Office. This prevents user from editing documents in Office.

To share session details between browser and Office applications, Microsoft recommends using Persistent-Cookie instead of session cookie. So ExtraWeb/TeamID cookie is made as persistent which allows Office to pick it up and send to SMA during all document operations like Open/Edit/Save.

RESOLUTION:

AMC Configuration: URL Resource Settings:

Configuration - Device Zone

WorkFlow  - Login

Workflow Navigate & Open document

Workflow Document Check-Out

Workflow Edit & Save document

Workflow Check-In new changes

Troubleshooting

User Session Access Request

User Session Zone details

Caveats:

Since this involves interaction between IE browser and Office applications, Microsoft enforces following conditions in order to share cookies between them,

•  This method works only on Internet Explorer browser.
•  Client machines should have valid certificates for the FQDN configured.
•  On client machines, FQDN should be added in "Trusted Sites" (Internet Settings).
•  For Seamless editing of Office Documents on SharePoint server Protected Mode needs to be disabled for Trusted sites in Internet Explorer.