SharePoint 2010 Products and SharePoint Workspace Mobile

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Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010 is included in Microsoft Office Mobile, which is available on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 6.5 devices. Users can use SharePoint Workspace Mobile to connect to SharePoint sites and open, edit, and save Microsoft Office documents that are on the SharePoint sites.

We've heard that users are having problems connecting to SharePoint sites from SharePoint Workspace Mobile. This post addresses some common issues.

NOTE: Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 6.5 devices provide two methods for connecting to a SharePoint site. Users can connect by using the mobile browser or by using SharePoint Workspace Mobile. This blog post focuses on connecting using SharePoint Workspace Mobile.

SharePoint product version

SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010 is required. SharePoint Workspace Mobile cannot connect to sites that are on an earlier SharePoint product version.

Virtual private network server

A virtual private network (VPN) server is used to publish SharePoint sites across the corporate firewall. This enables users to connect to internal SharePoint sites from outside the corporate firewall. Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) is the only VPN server that is supported by Microsoft Office Mobile on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 6.5.

NOTE: We recommend that you use Forefront UAG with Service Pack 1 (SP1) installed.

For more information about Forefront UAG, see "SharePoint Publishing Guide" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=206256) and "Publishing SharePoint sites for SharePoint Workspace Mobile" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=206257).

Authentication

SharePoint 2010 Products support many authentication methods. This section describes the authentication methods that are supported by SharePoint Workspace Mobile.

Intranet

To connect to a SharePoint site from inside the corporate firewall requires the following:

  • The user has set up a Wi-Fi connection on the mobile device that lets him or her access a SharePoint site on the corporate network.

  • The SharePoint site is configured to use NTLM authentication. NTLM is the only authentication method that is supported by SharePoint Workspace Mobile in the intranet.

Internet

SharePoint Workspace Mobile does not support directly connecting to sites in the Internet zone. To connect using SharePoint Workspace Mobile requires the following:

  • The SharePoint site has been published over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on the Forefront UAG server.
  • The SharePoint site has been published for SharePoint Workspace Mobile on the Forefront UAG server
  • The user has configured the Forefront UAG settings on his or her Windows Phone device.

When a user connects to the published site, Forefront UAG identifies the user agent sent by SharePoint Workspace Mobile and responds with a 401 challenge. SharePoint Workspace Mobile uses the user credentials that are configured in the Forefront UAG settings of the mobile device to authenticate to Forefront UAG using Basic authentication. Forefront UAG then authenticates the user to the SharePoint site.

NOTE: A site that has a fully qualified domain name (for example, https://hrweb.contoso.com) is considered to be in the Internet zone by SharePoint Workspace Mobile.

For more information about configuring SharePoint sites for external access, see "Configure external access for mobile devices (SharePoint Server 2010)" (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff393835.aspx).

For more information about SharePoint Workspace Mobile, see "Use Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Mobile" (https://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/office/use-office-sharepoint-workspace-mobile.aspx).

Information Rights Management (IRM)

Documents that are IRM-protected cannot be opened by Windows Phone 7. Do not set IRM policies on document libraries that you want to make available to Windows Phone 7 users.