Document creation freezes in Word - known Symantec issue

About this article

This article will explain how the document creation works from Templafy perspective and how Symantec Endpoint Protection comes into play and prevents the process from being completed. 

Sections in this article: 

• Symptoms
• What is happening in the background- Technical perspective
• Possible solution

Prerequisites

Symptoms

When creating a document using Templafy Add-in in Word, Templafy task pane appears to get stuck on creating the document and no document is generated.

If you close down the Templafy task pane, keep the same Word instance open and re-open Templafy, the document gets created succesfully.

Additional findings based on futher investigations: 

What is happening in the background- Technical perspective

1. User starts an Office Application
2. Templafy Add-in contacts the settings endpoint https://<customer>.templafy.com/api-v1/UserSetting/GetAutomaticallyOpenTaskPane port 443
3. Office Application opens with Templafy buttons available from Ribbon and Templafy web app is loaded in Office Task Pane
4. The Templafy web app redirects to customer Security Token Service (STS) to authenticate user
5. If authentication is successful, the STS returns token and claims to the Templafy web app
6. The Templafy web app HTML / JavaScript / CSS is loaded and presented from https://<customer>.templafy.com port 443
7. Navigation in the Templafy web app makes api calls like https://<customer>.templafy.com/api-v2/AssetFolder/GetAssetFolderContent port 443
8. Opening a document calls https://<customer>.templafy.com/api-v2/Document/CreateDocument port 443 to generate the document
9. The server fetches the template from Azure Blob Storage templafyprodstor.blob.core.windows.net
10. A document download link is provided to the Templafy web app using the endpoint https://<customer>.templafy.com/api-v1/Document/OpenDocument port 443
11. The document is stored temporarily under %localappdata%\Temp\Templafy\WordVsto until it is opened in Office Application. At this point the document is handed over to Office application (Word) to carry out the move.

The step 11 is interrupted by Symantec Endpoint Protection (Auto-Protect function – live scanning of files being manipulated, created, moved), whereby Symantec deletes the document from %localappdata%\Temp\Templafy\WordVsto before this document can be moved to an active Word instance.

Possible solution

Please note that the solution suggestions outlined below might not prove successful for your organisation, as they are dependent on the policies and their sensitivity level applied in Symantec Endpoint Protection software and these might differ for each company. 

• Excluding Office16/WINWORD.exe from Download Detection function in Symantec Endpoint Protection
• Excluding Office16/WINWORD.exe from Sonar in Symantec Endpoint Protection

In addtition to the above, we recommend whitelisting/excluding Templafy Temp folder %localappdata%\Temp\Templafy\WordVsto as well as Templafy Add-ins %localappdata%\Templafy\AddIns\Libraryfrom Symantec Endpoint Protection