SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery for End Users : WebDAV and Explorer View

The ability to access a SharePoint site, document library, or other type of list via Windows Explorer is pretty powerful, because it allows end users to easily manage the files and items in those repositories like they would any other folders in their Windows workstation’s operating system, rather than using the limited tools that are available through a browser. With the Windows Explorer interface, a user can drag a document into a SharePoint list to add it, rather than clicking through multiple Web pages, and do the same to copy that file back down to his workstation. Even more importantly, this can be easily done with multiple files, which can save time.

How WebDAV and Explorer View Are Used

To access a SharePoint resource, such as a document library, in Explorer View, navigate to the target resource in a Web browser and click the library’s Open with Explorer button that is present on the Library tab of the document library’s ribbon, as shown in Figure 1.

If your SharePoint environment and client workstation are properly configured to enable Explorer View, clicking the Open with Explorer button launches an instance of Windows Explorer and navigates to the document library.

To open a SharePoint resource directly via WebDAV, you must translate the resource’s Share-Point URL into a Windows Explorer–friendly UNC path. You can accomplish this by copying the target URL into a text file. (Don’t include the .aspx file name at the end of URL; focus only on the folder objects above that file so you can open the containing object for the resource and not an item within it.) Remove http://at the beginning of the address and replace it with \\. Replace all forward slashes (/) with backslashes (\). Then copy the address, paste it into the address bar of a Windows Explorer window, and press Enter to load the address. The SharePoint resource now opens as a folder within Windows Explorer on your desktop.

Like sites and list templates, Explorer View and WebDAV let you easily copy the contents of a SharePoint list or document library to your local workstation for backup purposes and likewise restore them to the resource as needed. They use a familiar interface, and the commands to manage the files within them are simple and common to Windows operating systems. But, like site and list templates, end users must manually execute them, and they are better suited to one-time actions, whereby an end user wants to create a copy of crucial content.

Server and Workstation Configuration

One drawback with using both Explorer View and WebDAV is the difficulty associated with configuring SharePoint servers and client workstations to use them without issue on a consistent basis. Configuration on the server side of the equation is largely a nonissue thanks to the Share-Point 2010 prerequisites installer that runs when SharePoint is being set up initially. Client-side configuration, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.

An end user’s ability to use Explorer View is greatly impacted by the combination of his operating system, his Web browser, and the versions of both items. Even when those are configured optimally (which can be difficult in environments with a variety of workstation configurations), Explorer View can be slow, prone to crashing, or simply unusable at times.

Explorer View and WebDAV also suffer from additional dependencies on client configuration. For WebDAV to work, for example, the WebClient service must be running on the client workstation you’re using to access the SharePoint resource. For most consumer operating systems, such as Windows 7, the WebClient service is running by default. If you want to use Explorer View from a server-based operating system, though, additional configuration steps are often necessary. On Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, for example, the WebClient service only becomes available after enabling the Desktop Experience feature, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Enabling a server’s Desktop Experience feature.

Failure to configure and enable the WebClient service is the most common reason for end users not being able to access a SharePoint list or document library through Explorer View and WebDAV. Until the WebClient service is running properly, SharePoint displays the dialog box shown in Figure 3 when attempts are made to launch Explorer View.

Administrative Concerns

As stated already, most of the difficulty in getting Explorer View and WebDAV configured for use with SharePoint lies on the client side of the equation. Whether or not this impacts you depends on the scope of your duties as an administrator.

On the server side of things, there isn’t much for you to do either except ensure that you install SharePoint properly and let the prerequisites installer do its thing during the initial setup process. There are no readily visible knobs and dials for the configuration of Explorer View and WebDAV for SharePoint; SharePoint handles and controls its implementation internally.