Description:

Using SiteMinder SharePoint Agent(SMSPA) for MOSS 2007 and with Office Client Integration enabled, in some cases the for specific windows and Microsoft office client, the client integration does not work as expected. One specific example: When the user logs into the SMSPA protected site and opens a word document it opens up fine.

Steps to reproduce the problem:

1. Open a new browser and navigate to a SiteMinder protected SharePoint site
2. Login
3. Click on a Word document to open it in read-only mode
4. From Word, click on the Edit Document button. Get the following error: A problem occurred while connecting to the server. If the problem continues, contact your administrator.

Fiddler trace showed the user is being redirected to the login page by SiteMinder Agent.

Solution:

SMSPA Agent Configuration Object(ACO) parameter of "SPAuthorizeUserAgent" controls which User Agent request can be allowed for the protected resources. Similarly SMSPA would only allow for the defined and selected actions in the rule for the resource. These Web Agent Actions are defined under Web Agent Type object and would then show in the list of actions that can be selected for protection related rule. To resolve the issue for few specific Office clients like 2007 and 2010 on Windows below is the list of actions and User Agent that can be defined:

Add the following actions to Web Agent Agent Type and Allow the new actions in the rule for the protected SharePoint resource:

1. LOCK
2. UNLOCK
3. PROPFIND
4. PROPPATCH
5. DELETE
6. MOVE
7. MKCOL

Add the following to SPAuthorizeUserAgent in the ACO for SMSPA:

1. Microsoft-WebDAV
2. Microsoft Office
3. MS Front Page
4. Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider Protocol Discovery
5. Test for Web Form Existence
6. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MS FrontPage 12.0)
7. Microsoft Office Core Storage Infrastructure/1.0

Release:
Component: SMSPA