How to use a .pac proxy file with Essentials

Overview:
This KBA will explain how make Essentials use your organization's proxy.pac file to connect to network resources.  PAC stands for Proxy auto-config, and is a type of script that you can use to determine when to use a proxy server, when to bypass a proxy server, or when to use a different proxy server. 

Solution:

Assumptions:

1. Your .pac file is hosted using the application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig MIME Type
2. You are not planning on using the bypassonlocal option.  If it is included, the proxy.pac configuration will be removed whether it is true or false.

Steps:

• Specify the following setting in the REST and REST manager web.config files (located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\REST\Web.config and here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\Manager\Web.config respectively), in the system.net element:

<defaultProxy useDefaultCredentials="true">
  <proxy usesystemdefault="False" scriptLocation="http://pacproxy/proxy.pac" />
</defaultProxy>

Notes:

• If the configured proxy for a given URL times out, it will access it directly. This is the default behavior with .NET and cannot be changed for Manager. You can however specify multiple proxys in the proxy.pac file such as:

return "PROXY proxyaddress1:proxyport1; PROXY proxyaddress2:proxyport2; PROXY proxyaddress3:proxyport3";

• If you have the proxy.pac configuration setup through "Control Panel" --> "Internet options", you can use:

<defaultProxy useDefaultCredentials="true">
  <proxy usesystemdefault="True" />
</defaultProxy>