Cireson Portal

How To: Troubleshoot Issues in the Cireson Portal

This article applies to: Cireson Portal, version v8.0 and above.

Account not recognized as an SCSM Administrator

When you log into the portal as a domain administrator that is a Service Manager administrator you may not see the Admin Settings option.  This is due to a bug in System Center – Service Manager where the Service Manager SDK will sometimes return IsAdmin = false.  Workaround: Use a different domain account which is a member of the Service Manager Administrator user role to access the portal and configure the Admin Settings.

Login Page not loading

When using Forms Authentication, you open up the Portal website and it redirects your to the login page, but the actual page does not fully load and you get a 401 Unauthorized error in the Developer tools you simply need to ensure that the Anonymous Authentication is enabled in your IIS Settings.

IIS > Cireson Portal > Authentication > Anonymous Authentication = Enabled

Failed installation of Cache Builder Windows service

If installation of the Cache Builder Windows service fails you can investigate by doing two things:

  • Look at the installation log file located at: 'C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Cireson Setup'
  • Look in the Windows Application event log for errors

Browser Asking for Logon Credentials Before Loading the Portal

In new installs it is possible that the browser will display a logon page (different from forms base authentication page) before it will load the portal. Entering a correct username and password will get access to the portal but it is an additional log on request that users may not be expecting, or if single sign on is enabled this authentication request defeats the purpose of aingle sign on.

The reason for this authentication request is the portal can not find the currently logged on user in the Service Manager User Configuration items. Depending on the user account that is currently logged on this may be as expected and therefore the browser should be opened using "Run As" to run the browser as a known SCSM user, or, a browser opened on another machine that is opened as a SCSM user.

Additionally, this authentication may occur if the Cache Builder has not fully completed before the user attempts to log on. This will refresh over time and stop occuring but it may take 24 hours to do so. To speed this along, wait for the Cache Builder to finish running and the Recycle the Cireson Portal IIS AppPool from within the IIS control panel. As the AppPool holds cached logon details for the user to ensure a consistent session, this can hold invalid authentication details and recycling the AppPool resolves this.

New Button Not Appearing for Analysts

In new installs it is possible that the portal will load for analysts without showing the new button in the drawer of the portal.

The reason for this is the portal can not determine if the user is a member of the Analyst AD group or not. Depending on the user account that is currently logged on this may be as expected and therefore the browser should be opened using "Run As" to run the browser as a known SCSM user, or, a browser opened on another machine that is opened as a SCSM user.

Additionally, this may occur if the Cache Builder has not fully completed before the user logs on. This will refresh over time and stop occuring but it may take 24 hours to do so. To speed this along, wait for the Cache Builder to finish running and the Recycle the Cireson Portal IIS AppPool from within the IIS control panel. As the AppPool holds cached logon and group membership details for the user to ensure a consistent session, this can hold invalid authentication details and recycling the AppPool resolves this.

Cache Builder Not Starting

If the Cache Builder service does not start it could be because of any of the following reasons:

  • The Username and Password used for the service must be a domain account. The domain account must also be a local admin of the server hosting the portal and a database owner (dbo) of the ServiceManager and ServiceManagement databases.
  • Look at the CacheBuilder log file located at: 'C:\INetPub\CiresonPortal\Bin\Logs'
  • Look in the Windows Application event log for errors

Service Catalog Content Not Displaying on Portal

If service catalog content that you are expecting to show up on the service catalog is not showing up, it could be because of any of the following reasons:

  • End Users are unable to see any request offerings:  please see this knowledge article:  https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/77/
  • The request offering is not published.  Resolution: In the SCSM console, navigate to the Library/Service Catalog/Request Offerings/All Request Offerings view, select the request offering you want to publish and click the Publish task in the task pane.
  • The request offering is not contained by a service offering.  Resolution: In the SCSM console, navigate to the Library/Service Catalog/Request Offerings/All Request Offerings view, select the request offering you want to publish and click Add to Service Offering task in the task pane.  Select a service offering to add the request offering to and click OK.
  • The service offering containing the request offering is not published.  Resolution: In the SCSM console, navigate to the Library\Service Catalog\Service Offerings\All Service Offerings view.  Select the service offering and click the Publish task in the task pane.
  • If you are using security scoping for the service catalog in SCSM the following must be done:
    • The request offering must be status = Published
    • The request offering must be contained by a service offering
    • The service offering must be status = Published
    • The catalog group must contain the request offering(s) AND the container service offering(s)
    • The catalog group must be assigned to a user role (typically an end user user role)
    • The user role must have users or groups assigned to it.  Note: the special group "Domain Users" can be directly assigned to the user role, but it cannot be assigned to the user role via membership in another group (i.e. User Role -> Some Group -> Domain Users).
    • If you configured the ServiceCatalogLanguageCode option in the web.config to be something other than “*”, then it may be that the language code you specified doesn’t match the service offering(s) language code.  To check the language code of the service offerings in the cache do the following:
  • For v3
    • Open SQL Server Management Studio
    • Connect to the SQL Server hosting the ServiceManagement DB
    • Create a new query for the ServiceManagement DB
    • Run this query: SELECT * FROM ServiceOffering.
    • Look at the LanguageCode column to see what the language code value is for each service offering

Enable Logging for the Portal and CacheBuilder

Please Note: More Information about logging can be found here: KB34 - Reference: Cireson Portal Logging 

Enable logging for the Web Portal by navigating to "C:\inetpub\CiresonPortal\" and opening the 'web.config' file in a text editor.

Replace the word “ERROR” with “DEBUG”/"ALL" in the following line of code.

 


Enable logging for the CacheBuilder by navigating to "C:\inetpub\CiresonPortal\bin" and opening the 'Cireson.CacheBuilder.WindowsService.exe.config' file if you are using Cachebuilder as a Windows Service (by default) or 'Cireson.CacheBuilder.Service.exe.config' if the CacheBuilder is installed seperately.

Replace the word “ERROR” with “DEBUG”/"ALL" in the following line of code.

 

Make sure you restart the Cachebuilder for it to get the new logging settings

Work Item properties are not refreshing in the Grid Views

  • Cachebuilder updates Work Items based on the LastModifiedDate.  Any Work Items that are updated via other means like a Runbook must also update the LastModifiedDate to ensure the cachebuilder picks up the changes.
  • Workflows and other processes may complete an update sometime after the time specified in the Last Modified field. This gap can be accounted for by the LastModifiedAdjustmentInMilliseconds. By default, this is set to 5 seconds, but may need to go as high as 5-10 minutes if a particular workflow takes a long time to complete.