Configuring SharePoint aware file types

When opening SharePoint files using the Open and/or Open With… behavior (in OnePlaceDocs Explorer app, or OnePlaceMail embedded Outlook Grid Style View) some applications are ‘SharePoint Aware’. These applications have been developed to integrate directly with SharePoint and are capable of being run accepting a SharePoint URL as a start-up parameter.

 

For all applications that are not ‘SharePoint Aware’ you cannot simple start them and give them a SharePoint URL, these applications typically expect a local file and do not know what to do with a SharePoint URL. For these non ‘SharePoint Aware’ applications we rely on the WebDAV framework to allow us to work with SharePoint files within these applications.

 

There is no standard way to determine at runtime which applications support SharePoint URLs and which don’t. For this reason OnePlace Solutions products ship with an internal list of applications that are known to be ‘SharePoint Aware’.

 

These include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader. The preferred methods of working with SharePoint files is directly with the SharePoint URL if the application is “SharePoint Aware” rather than relying on WebDAV.

 

If you have an application that is ‘SharePoint Aware’ you can configure OnePlace Solutions products by adding to the list of “SharePoint Aware” applications using the <sharePointAwareApplications> element as defined below.

 

Property 

 Mandatory / Optional

 Description

 action

Mandatory 

Set to "insert" to change the default behavior
Set to "delete" to revert to default behavior value

 apps

 Mandatory

This setting identifies any additional SharePoint Aware applications.
When specifying an application, it must be all lowercase and include the executable file name with extension.
Separate multiple entries with a comma.

 

Example: This adds the application notepad.exe to the list of SharePoint Aware applications

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration> 
       <sharePointAwareApplications action="delete"/>
       <sharePointAwareApplications apps="notepad.exe" action="insert"/>               
</configuration> 

 

 

note

 

Note, if you are adding multiple applications they must all be defined in a single <sharePointAwareApplications> node in a configuration update. Updates do not accumulate.

 

Example: This adds multiple applications (notepad.exe and mspaint.exe) to the list of SharePoint Aware applications. 

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration> 
       <sharePointAwareApplications action="delete"/>
       <sharePointAwareApplications apps="notepad.exe,mspaint.exe" action="insert"/>                
</configuration>