Experiences with WebDAV and Alfresco

[kurt2439]

Just curious if anyone else uses Alfresco with WebDAV primarily and what kind of experience you are having with it?

We want to use this over WebDAV but I have been frustrated by a few things, namely when you save to the WebDAV folder with Microsoft Office it converts spaces into '%20' for web compatibility. I know it doesn't have to do this since if I copy and paste the same file in explorer it does not do this. Also I noticed adobe reader cannot access WebDAV folders correctly (Doesn't display any folder or let you save from the program) which makes me think there may be other programs incompatible with WebDAV. Also .txt files open in IE. Blah, I can think of work arounds for all the above situations but I don't think users are going to be excited about extra work just to open and save files.

Anyone having good experiences and what is your setup?

[vsuarez]

You must use remote folders. If you create a remote folder pointing to the WebDAV resource, you will able to copy, cut, paste, drag and drop,… without problems, instead of the operative system (Windows, Linux, MacOS).

Opening or saving from applications or suites it is different: these applications or suites have to support WebDAV commands: MS Office and Open Office support WebDAV resource as you were working in a local resource; Notepad or Acrobat Reader don't support WebDAV. Linux (and I think MacOS) tools have often better WebDAV support.

I'm using WebDAV with gigas of document data and I have no problem (Alfresco 2.1 CE).

[kurt2439]

Hey, thanks for writing.

I am using remote folders as well and can do those things you mentioned without a problem. I think the issue comes when people expect to be able to save directly to the WebDAV folder as they do their "My Documents" folder or any other network share. I don't think people will like how Microsoft Word converts the filenames into the URL format, and I'm worried about further program compatibility as you said.

I wondered if there was a utility that let's you mount webdav folders more like CIFS folders so Windows sees it as a network drive instead of a web folder. I know using JungleDisk for instance it does something similar, and I imagine many of the web drives that install interfaces on your computer are nothing more than dressed up webdav folders. Looking around…

[kurt2439]

Anyone mounting Alfresco WebDAV as a network drive instead of a Web Folder on Windows XP? I see other people have success doing this with other WEbDAV implementations using "\\http://server/alfresco/webdav" as the server name. It connects but will not authenticate my user names. I found a registry change that is supposed to work (Change it to useBasicAuth) but that didn't work either. I wonder if you map it as a network drive if windows will obfuscate the need to use WebDAV commands and thus allow other programs to use the WebDAV share with more success.

Anyone tried this with Alfresco?