Differences between opening and downloading a file

When you want to add a resource you the ES you normally have two options. Either use a native connector, or use the resources web interface.

For example when adding a windows files share you can use smb, or you can setup a webserver on the fileserver and just index it thru the webserver. Using a webserver is a tempting option. Normally you just setup IIS or Apace and are done. The ES and end users can then easily access it through a web browser.

Unfortunately when your users access a document they have to download it. If they make changes they will then have to figure out how and where to upload it again. On the other hand if you setup smb the file gets opened through smb. When a user saves the file the changes are written back to the file server, same way one can just save a file that was opened locally. The same goes for Exchange. If you uses the native connector user can open mails directly in Outlook, and reply on them just as normal.

Unfortunately many browsers have security blocks in place that prevent direct opening like this. The next part of the manual explains what changes you most do on your users’ local machines to get this working.

Also there will be no security information extracted from a file share if you set it up through a webserver. The default is to allow access to everyone (but you may change that from the access level tab for each collection if you have a user management system in place).

Opening files from network shares in Internet Explorer, FireFox or Google Chrome

The security model in many browsers prevent opening of files stored on Windows shares by default. To enable that you typecly have to find a way to allow the browser to open file:// url's.

• Internet Explorer
  IE should be able to open file:// urls without modifications, but may require you to add the url to the trusted website zone. If noting happens when you click on a file:// link, try to open the share from Windows Explorer, to double check that the end-user has access. It may take some time to access the file share the first time, so you may want to map the share locally to speed thing up.
• Firefox
  Please referee to this tutorial on how to enable local files in Firefox: http://www.techlifeweb.com/firefox/2006/07/how-to-open-file-links-in-firefox-15.html .
• Google Chrome
  There is a extension to Chrome called LocalLinks that fixes this issue: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jllpkdkcdjndhggodimiphkghogcpida .

Possible bug: While the instructions about has worked for all installations Searchdaimon has done, so have we also gotten a few reports that it don’t work. If it doesn’t work please see Greif excellent post at our forum for alternative methods. We are currently investigating this.

Exchange with Outlook 2008 or 2010 in Windows

When you click on a url from a Exchange connector in ES's search result page the email should open Outlook. This is done by crafting a special url in the format "outlook:000000003eb852348...". Sometimes Outlook don't register the "outlook:" url handler correctly. If this is the case noting will happen when you click on the link ( or the browser try to open a webpage ).

We have created a small program that fixes this, without doing anything more. It can be downloaded below. Please read the README.txt for instructions.

Download fix for url scheme in Windows: Outlook2007Scheme.zip

The program creates and sets the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell\open\command to the correct path for outlook.exe. Full source code is included.