Open a BizAgi (or any 'unknown' documenttype) directly without saving

Question

When I save some .BPM (BizAgi) files in my Sharepoint document library, I can't open them without either saving them locally or checking them out.

How can I allow a read-only option for these kind of documents? I've tried going to the document library settings and put the 'Open documents in the browser' setting to the 'Use client application' setting, but that didn't help.

Answer 1

In order to open documents directly in the client program, you need a custom Open Documents control (which needs to be available on client machines), and a reference in that control to the docicon.xml file on the SharePoint server (so this may not be possible for SharePoint online). Here is a blog post with some sample code for how to go about doing that. Note that the blog discusses PDFs; since Acrobat/Reader X all you need is the entry in docicon.xml to AdobeAcrobat.OpenDocuments - it is possible that your format also provides such a control.

Also note that these controls only work within IE, anyone using another browser will get the download/save/open experience. You can of course give people read only permissions to the library, which would prevent them from uploading any changes.