Logging for Office 365 when acting as WebDav client

Kate Glickman 1

We have integrated Office 365 with our application using the WebDev protocol. The user clicks on a file in our application, the file opens in their locally installed Office 365, and the user's changes are saved back to the file stored in our application.

We have a customer who can save changes back to our application just fine when using Word but can not with Excel or PowerPoint. When we have them turn on our trace logging, we can see that Excel is not making the PUT request when the user clicks the Save button. The preceding LOCK request (and all other HEAD, OPTIONS and GET requests) completed successfully.

Is there any logging in the Office 365 WebDav code that we could turn on that could possibly shed any light on this why the PUT request isn't being made? I have done a lot of searching and have seen references to various registry settings but I haven't gotten anything working and it's not clear if they are relevant in this scenario anyway.

Jeff McCashland 476 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-05T18:30:40.61+00:00

The openspec-* tags are dedicated to supporting issues related to open specifications. You can find open specifications here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/. Since your question does not pertain to one of these specifications, I've removed the openspecs tag and added the office-itpro and office-sharepoint-server-itpro tags. Hopefully this will get your post the proper attention.

Best Regards,
Jeff McCashland
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-01-10T13:38:12.02+00:00

This is related to open specifictions. Our server is implemented using this protocol that is linked in the document you reference.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_protocols/MS-OCPROTO/2d268a23-420b-4339-8c56-9e4f8a924171

MS-Author-Via is set to "DAV"

Please restore the openspec tag
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-24T19:24:27.46+00:00
HI @Kate Glickman

This is Hung-Chun Yu from Microsoft Protocol Support. I will be helping you with your question.

Could you help us obtain the version/build that your customer is using? Make sure that they have applied the latest patch for Office 365.

Could you also help the customer to obtain the fiddler trace. Two different traces, from Word (working version) and from Excel/PowerPoint (not working).

Once you have above information collected, you can email them to the dochelp at microsoft.com, and in the body of email put hung-chun yu, so the email will be redirected to me.

Thank you very much

Hung-Chun Yu
Microsoft Open Specifications Support
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-24T22:08:13.717+00:00

Hi @Kate Glickman

Per our engineer from Product Group, Webdav should behave the same across apps for this basic save scenario. They do need Version info and Fiddler traces that would help them better understanding the issue. If Fidder Log is too big to transmit over email. Drop an email to dochelp at microsoft.com, with Hung-Chun Yu in the body. I can share the case link with you, so you may upload the log directly into the case.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Hung-Chun Yu
Microsoft Open Specifications Support
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-26T18:58:53.217+00:00

Hi @Kate Glickman

Could you also provide us the high-level descriptions of your application? Is it a SharePoint like services where people can upload/share/update their document files onto the platform?
Is possible that you can create a test account for us, where our engineers and myself can access the site to replicate the issues? You can send the access info to dochelp at microsot.com and include Hung-Chun Yu in the body of the email.

Thank you very much.
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-01-26T19:24:35.403+00:00

Yes, it is similar to a very simplistic SharePoint.

We can't give you a test account because the application is running on-premise, behind a firewall, at the customer's site.

I am still waiting to see if they can install Fiddler. Many of our users are subject to corporate policies that do not allow them to install software on their machines. They need to open a ticket with their IT department in order to install it, assuming they are able to get permission.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-26T19:38:02.067+00:00

Hi @Kate Glickman

Is there a dev/staging environment that issue can be repro on? For two folds, one we don't want to access customer files/data by accident. Two, in case we need to tweak the configurations, we don't want to impact the production. Another advantage is that we won't have to worry about getting access/change permission from the Corporation.

Other logging capturing would be fine as well, it doesn't have to be Fiddler. For example, the build in Network Trace from Chrome Developer Tool would work as well.
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-01-26T19:53:57.55+00:00

I doubt very much we can get you access to any sort of system. When we trouble-shoot, we need to do an online meeting with screen sharing and tell them what to do so we can see what's going on. It is a huge headache.

We can't use Chrome Developer tools because these requests are not happening through the browser. The are being made by Office on the desktop. I may have been hasty saying that it is similar to SharePoint as I have never used it and only have a vague idea of how it works.

The user clicks on a link that is something like ms-ms-excel:ofe|u|https://localhost:3334/app/api/msOfficeFile/nbqCbKTR-xmdHqvualsyn4zZlNDosVqJ7KWjlJsMDOhMwAKYjKLqGivzQx_p9F/10575/Test.xls

The browser asks them if they want to allow Excel to open the document.

Excel then sends requests to https://localhost:3334/app/api/msOfficeFile to get information about the file and to get it's contents. It sends a PUT request when the user clicks the save button. For this particular customer, the PUT request does not occur.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-26T19:58:51.447+00:00

Thank you for the clarification.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-28T18:07:41.337+00:00

Hi @Kate Glickman

While we are waiting to see if Fiddler can be install, could you take a look the following Stack Overflow post, to see if any of solution/work around suggested help your client?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34138554/webdav-microsoft-excel-2016-not-able-to-save-back-changes
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-01-28T18:22:33.48+00:00

That is interesting. It is not quite the same issue that we are experiencing because they are not getting an error saying that it was updated by another user, however, I wonder what happens when the server time and the client time are not in the same timezone. I'm not sure if that's the case here but it could explain why this particular customer is experiencing the problem. I also remember that Word did not care about ETags and last modified dates, which could explain why that still works. I will do some investigation. Thanks very much.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-01-28T18:27:02.847+00:00

Let us know what you find, If it's related to time zone difference, I will let product team know. So, they can add a KB for it.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-02-03T21:11:12.69+00:00

Hi @Kate Glickman

Did you get a chance to try out the theory where the issue might be caused by difference between server time and client time?
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-02-03T23:12:37.673+00:00

No. Sorry. The customer has not answered and unless they're agitating, I won't have time to try for a few weeks.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-02-04T00:51:03.03+00:00

No problem thank you for the update. I will resolve the case for now. I can reactivate the case once we have an update from the customer.
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-02-11T12:45:10.78+00:00

It turns out that when we asked them to install Fiddler, they actually did it and started investigating the problem themselves. Due to the PUT request that they get from Word and don't get from Excel, they have concluded that the issue is with Excel and not our integration and are apparently independently pursuing with Microsoft.

I did look at our eTag and it does not use any sort of timestamp so I guess timezone differences are not the problem. I do remember when I implemented the integration that Excel required the eTag and Word did not. Without the eTag, the user would get messages saying that the file had been updated by someone else

I guess you and I are done for now. I imagine the customer's case will land in your lap and in you will recognize it. If it seems like the issue is the integration, you or they can loop me back in.

Thanks for your help.

Kate

2 answers

Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-02-11T17:04:51.093+00:00

@Kate Glickman

Thank you very much for the update. Agreed, per https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34138554/webdav-microsoft-excel-2016-not-able-to-save-back-changes, it appeared one of the solutions is to use eTag. If you can share that information with your client that would be awesome.

Question, would you able to add eTag via the integration? Or is that something that your client would have to add from their end?
Please sign in to rate this answer.

0 comments No comments
Sign in to comment

Use comments to ask for clarification, additional information, or improvements to the question.
Kate Glickman 1 Reputation point

2022-02-11T17:44:45.733+00:00

The eTag is already added via our integration. It is based on our own internal version number and not a date.
Please sign in to rate this answer.
Hung-Chun Yu 976 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2022-02-11T17:49:58.403+00:00

Cool, thank you for the clarifications. As soon as I obtain the copy of the fiddler trace, I will share that with the product group. Thank you again for your help.
Sign in to comment

Use comments to ask for clarification, additional information, or improvements to the question.

Share via

Logging for Office 365 when acting as WebDav client

2 answers

Your answer