The issue with this solution is that when you are configuring a subscription that will output to a file share you have to specify a username and password that has access to this location. The problem with having to do that is that each time the account password changes, in this case it was 180 days, the client would have to go out and manually update this password for each individual report subscription. With a large number of reports and subscriptions this is just not an efficient or sustainable solution.
There was no way to get around the requirement that you had to supply account information to output this to the file share. So I asked the client how this other application accessed the file locations that were setup in the configuration of this application and found that it used UNC paths.
Once I had this information I knew I had a workaround to the issue. I let the client know that you can access a SharePoint site or library via a UNC path with minimal configuration required and that this would solve the issue at hand.
After I had everything configured I tested accessing the sites and found that I could not. I would just receive the generic error that the network path could not be found. I checked that all required services on the client and server were started and they were. I started looking into the issue a bit further and after some searching found the bit of information that I was missing. These sites were all running SSL and I found that the path used to access an SSL site in this manner was slightly different then if the site was running HTTP. After correcting my path everything worked as I would expect it to and the subscription output issue was solved.
Since I could not find a single place that had all the required information to get things configured as well as how to access the sites on different ports I thought it would be a good time to pull all the information together in one place. Below are all the steps required to get this setup as well as the different paths that are used when accessing sites running on ports other than 80.
In order to make SharePoint sites accessible via a UNC path there are steps that need to be taken on both the client and the server. This will cover what is required in order to make this work on Windows Server 2008 and a Windows client.
Windows Server 2008 Configuration
We need to install desktop experience feature. This feature will also install Ink support. In earlier version of windows the webclient service could be installed by enabling the WebDAV component in IIS.
- Start the Windows Server Manager.
- In the tree view, highlight the Features node.
- In the details pane, click Add Features.
- In the Add Features Wizard, check the Desktop Experience box, and then click Next.
- Click Install.
- When the Add Features Wizard has finished, click Close.
- Click Yes when prompted to restart the computer. There will be two restarts that will occur during this process ad you will want to make sure you log back into the server after the last reboot as it will bring back up the installation screen and you will need to acknowledge that it has completed.
Windows Client Configuration
- On the Windows client machine you will just need to start the web client service
- Go to the run command or command prompt and type in services.msc
- When this opens find the web client service in the list
- Change the start up to automatic and then start the service
Accessing the site via a UNC path
The way in which you access a site via the UNC path will differ based on whether you are using HTTP or HTTPS.
The example below provides the format required for each of these scenarios to access a document library named reports.
HTTP
\\intranet.contoso.com\sites\sales\reports
HTTPS
\\intranet.contoso.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot\sites\sales\reports
