Scripting

Trying to develop an automatic proxy configuration solution for our company laptops, which sometimes are in the office and on the company network (going through the proxy server), and sometimes at a user's home using their private network. Right now users have to fire up a custom exe that switches the proxy server on/off and changes their default home page based on whether they choose the "in the office" or "out of the office" button in the custom dialog in the custom exe, and remember to run the exe each time they go on/off the network.

I'd like to be able to do this in an automated manner, and from what I've read, it looks like using a proxy.pac file might be the answer.

But my first hurdle is just getting a sample file to work properly on my test laptop, and so far I'm stumped.

Here's the contents of proxy.pac, which I'm referencing in IE (Tools > Internet Options > "Connections" tab > "LAN settings" button, then selecting "Use automatic configuration script"):

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { return "PROXY proxy_server_name:port_#; DIRECT"; }


But it doesn't seem to work. If I'm connected via a wireless network, everything appears fine and I can get to any page, but if I'm going on the company network and going through the proxy server, I can only get to our intranet site, and can't get to any external web sites. I've also thrown an alert message into proxy.pac, but I'm not seeing it, so it appears that the script isn't working at all.

Not sure what to try next.