Environment
Novell Vibe OnPrem 3
Situation
You login in any Vibe account and then browse to any of the workspace tree hierarchy, some folder that holds a document that you want to review. After clicking on Edit this file link to review a content of the document, you get extra login prompt despite of a fact that you are already authenticated.
Resolution
You might want to ask a question why I am asking for extra authentication when I am already authenticated to my Vibe account.
If I would add the same file as attachment to some mail and want to access it from the same workstation, I do not get any extra login prompt - I am authenticated to my mail server / mailbox so why do I need to authenticate within the Vibe ?
When you click a link to a Word file from within a browser, it is the browser that retrieves the content, and using the MIME type mapping, it can bring up the correct application (Word in this case), and pass the content to the application.
Vibe does exact the same thing - If you go to file entry view, and click the file name (or the thumbnail next to it), the browser will download the content and open in Word.
With WebDAV, when you click a WebDAV link in Vibe, the browser passes the "WebDAV URL" to the Word as opposed to the content itself. So it is the Word not the browser that now has to go back to the server and fetch the content.
Because MS Word is running in a separate address space than the browser, it does NOT know anything about the fact that the user has been authenticated from the browser side (that is, no standard mechanism for passing this session information from browser to Word or any other WebDAV client application). This is what's forcing re-authentication.
Then why bother with WebDAV? Because WebDAV allows the application to interact directly with the server, you can not only view the content, but also modify and upload the updated content to the server. Going back to your web-based
email client example, you can view Word document, but you can not edit it and reflect the changes back to the email server in place from the browser.
The Vibe Add-in app (new in Vibe 3.3) solves this dilemma to "some extent", by integrating more deeply into MS Office. It will remember your credentials once you provide it for a Vibe server so that you don't have to keep entering it for each document you're editing, if you're willing to use it for data navigation.
However, it's not integrated with WebDAV as yet.
Vibe does exact the same thing - If you go to file entry view, and click the file name (or the thumbnail next to it), the browser will download the content and open in Word.
With WebDAV, when you click a WebDAV link in Vibe, the browser passes the "WebDAV URL" to the Word as opposed to the content itself. So it is the Word not the browser that now has to go back to the server and fetch the content.
Because MS Word is running in a separate address space than the browser, it does NOT know anything about the fact that the user has been authenticated from the browser side (that is, no standard mechanism for passing this session information from browser to Word or any other WebDAV client application). This is what's forcing re-authentication.
Then why bother with WebDAV? Because WebDAV allows the application to interact directly with the server, you can not only view the content, but also modify and upload the updated content to the server. Going back to your web-based
email client example, you can view Word document, but you can not edit it and reflect the changes back to the email server in place from the browser.
The Vibe Add-in app (new in Vibe 3.3) solves this dilemma to "some extent", by integrating more deeply into MS Office. It will remember your credentials once you provide it for a Vibe server so that you don't have to keep entering it for each document you're editing, if you're willing to use it for data navigation.
However, it's not integrated with WebDAV as yet.