Acrobat "send for shared commenting" and Confluence WebDav

[SSCI]

I am trying to use the "Send for shared commenting" feature in Adobe Acrobat (2017 Std, Windows 10.)   Acrobat allows you to sync comments between users with access to a shared drive (network drive or webdav folder.)    I can connect to a Confluence webdav folder from Acrobat, and the comments directory is created.  However when  I try to push or pull comments I get prompted for authentication again and it fails. 

The /var/atlassian/application-data/confluence/logs/atlassian-confluence.log file shows

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2019-01-07 14:11:42,009 DEBUG [https-jsse-nio-8444-exec-18] [atlassian.seraph.auth.DefaultAuthenticator] getUserFromSession getUserFromSession : Session found; BUT it has no Principal in it

2019-01-07 14:11:42,010 DEBUG [https-jsse-nio-8444-exec-18] [atlassian.seraph.auth.DefaultAuthenticator] getUserFromCookie getUserFromCookie : Got username : 'null' from cookie, attempting to authenticate user is known

2019-01-07 14:11:42,011 DEBUG [https-jsse-nio-8444-exec-18] [atlassian.seraph.auth.DefaultAuthenticator] getUser getUser : User not found in either Session, Cookie or Basic Auth.

2019-01-07 14:11:42,011 DEBUG [https-jsse-nio-8444-exec-18] [atlassian.seraph.filter.SecurityFilter] doFilter doFilter : Setting Auth Context to be 'anonymous '

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Acrobat works with webdav shares from Sharepoint and Owncloud (similar to dropbox) so I think there is some weird authentication interaction between Acrobat and Confluence.     The product management and issue tracking features are much better in Confluence than Sharepoint and not ridiculously overpriced.

[Shannon S]

Hello,

I noticed you raised the same request in a support ticket, but as the issue is when using a 3rd party product, it's likely this will not be supported by our team, so I will continue to work on this issue with you here. In the event I need to see your support zip, we can revert to your support ticket.

I'm testing this myself, Confluence is version 6.11, and Adobe Acrobat is version Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2019.010.20064.

I want to first mention that I have never used Adobe Acrobat before, so let me explain to you how I am attempting to test this, and you can let me know if you're going a different route.

1. I'm on a Mac, and I connected to my Confluence instance's WebDAV folder by clicking on My Computer under Files on the left-hand sidebar. I wasn't able to select a specific directory, but I navigated to a .pdf file on my instance and selected that.
2. I made a comment on the page, and then I selected Send for Review. I choose the email option, which I don't believe is what you were using, and was able to successfully send it. You mentioned you get the error when you try to push or pull comments, but I am not clear on how to do this.

Could you walk me through how you're replicating the issue? Please also confirm what you're using in Confluence for user management. Is it LDAP, Jira, AD, or the internal Confluence directory?

It can also help if you go to your Preferences in Adobe Acrobat, and go to Action Wizard and check the box Save warnings and errors in log file. You can try to replicate the behavior again, and have a look at the Adobe logs and let us know if it gives you any additional details.

Thank you for your help!

Regards,

Shannon

[SSCI]

We actually have 2 confluence servers.  One is for internal use.  The other we are setting up for collaborating with external customers and partners.      The 2nd one only has 10 user licenses (will be adding them) so when I created what I thought was a tech support ticket it ended up being a forum post.

On my Windows 10 machine, I can map a drive letter to the webdav share.  This is not actually used by Acrobat but it is useful for validating the webdav URL and seeing what files are (or are not) created.        

The basic steps in Acrobat (Std or Pro, 2015 or later)

• Open the document in Acrobat Std or Pro.  The document
• Under the tools menu, find "send for comments" and click "add."
• Return to the document, you should see the "send for shared commenting" and "send for comments by e-mail" buttons.
• Click on the "send for shared commenting"  button.  Assuming that no server profiles have been setup yet, it should show "Automatically collect comments" on my own internal server."
• The server types are network server, share point subsite, webserver folder.  Select "web server folder".  The URL   should be something like

  https://myserver.mydomain:8444/plugins/servlet/confluence/default/Global/PX/ProjectX

• You should then be prompted for the recipients.   Acrobat will recreate a copy of the original file and all it "mydocument_review.pdf."  Recipients will receive a notification via e-mail and either a copy of the review file as an attachment or as a link to the review file location.
• You should be prompted for your user name and password.  Acrobat should create one or two directories for syncing comments.    (You can verify this in the webdav folder.)
• Acrobat should then create a username.xml file for each user who has connected and wants to push or pull comments.  And this seems to be the step where things are failing with confluence.  

The reviewers do not need access to the original document.  In fact they don't need access to a common "mydocument_review.pdf" file.    Instead all comments and mark ups are synced via the webdav location.   The "mydocument_review.pdf" review file seems to have the path of the shared comments directory embedded.   So when it works it makes it really easy to use for all the reviewers-  they don't have to map drives.       E-mail is not used to sync the changes.   

The problem seems to be that while acrobat sends credentials to setup the initial comments directory, it fails to send credentials when users want to publish or pull comments.     I don't really understand if this is a basic authentication vs sessions authentication issue.       It doesn't seem to be a file permissions or file locking issue.

Our internal server is using AD authentication.   Our new server is using a separate LDAP backend.    We really want to make sure our corporate data is completely firewalled on all levels from anything that external users can access. 

I also tried this with the non-SSL URL (http://myserver.mydomain:8090/plugins/servlet/confluence/default/Global/PX/ProjectX)   but I am not sure if that removes variables (e..g SSL certificate trust) or creates them (e.g. if Windows does not want to transmit passwords in plain text.)  

As mentioned, this works with webdav shares from non-Atlassian servers and also works with standard windows server shares  (although windows shares are not an option for external users.)   

I understand that Atlassian is not responsible for supporting Acrobat but I am hoping for some insights on how Confluence WebDav might be working.        If this functionality works it means that we can use Confluence as an alternative to MS Sharepoint. 

Thanks

[Shannon S]

Hello,

Thank you for the explanation of your setup.

I suspect now it might be a matter of allowing authentication tokens in the URL path.

Could you please do the following from Configuring the Office Connector?

1. Go to  > General Configuration > Office Connector
2. Under Security, click the box next to Allow Authentication Tokens in the URL Path.

Can you see if that corrects the problem?

One more point; in the article Configuring a WebDAV Client for Confluence, it mentions including @SSL in your URL after your site URL when using SSL. I know you mentioned that the same issue occurs with or without SSL but I wanted to point that out in case you hadn't set it yet.

Regards,

Shannon

[Shannon S]

Hello there,

Just following up on this! I created a support ticket for you in our system, in case the above solution doesn't work. This way, we can obtain your Support Zip and investigate further.

If you were able to resolve the issue, please let me know, and I can close the case.

Shannon