Description

This article describes troubleshooting steps for possible issues in Employee Portal.

You can also refer this article for frequently asked questions about the Portal: https://www.crowcanyon.help/article/197

Case 1: Item Creation Failed

Applies to: SharePoint Online and On-premises (2013, 2016, 2019)
Employee Portal Version: Portal site created through ‘Power Portal App’

Issue: Error shown while creating Ticket from Portal – “Field or Property does not exist”:

Cause: The cause of the issue is that number of lookup (lookups + person or group) columns in the tickets list exceeds the lookup threshold limit in Central Administration (fixed as 12 lookups in SP Online).

Fix: To avoid this, we can increase the lookup threshold limit in SharePoint Central Administration for the required web application for On-premises as described below.

SharePoint Online:

For SharePoint Online case or if you cannot increase the threshold then delete any unused lookup / person or group columns from the list. You can also convert lookups to NITRO Lookups fields to get around this threshold. See our manual for more information: https://www.crowcanyon.info/nitro/appmanual_v2/lookup-settings.html

SharePoint On-premises:

To increase lookup threshold in, follow below steps:

Go to SharePoint Central Administration –> Application Management –> Manage Web application –> Select the web application and click “Resource Throttling” from General Settings and increase the lookup threshold limit see screenshot below:

Case 2: “Portal Settings” button is not visible for users who are members of ‘Site Owners’ group

Applies to: SharePoint Online and On-premises (2013, 2016, 2019)
Employee Portal Version: Portal site created through ‘Power Portal App’

Portal settings button is shown to users having manage-web permissions on portal site. Generally, ‘Site Owners’ group has this permission, and this button is visible for users who are members of this group.

Issue: “Portal Settings” button is not visible even though user has Manage Web Site permissions (via Site Owners group).

Cause: This is an environment specific issue, and it is not clear why permission check is not giving the correct result for logged-in user.

Resolution: Configure new menu link for portal settings page with permissions to show only for owner’s group. This provides similar functionality as the standard portal settings button.

Instructions

1. Go to “Configure Portal Settings” page by navigating to below URL:
   URL: ##Portal Site URL##/SitePages/AddEditSettings.aspx
   Example: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Helpdesk/IT/Portal/SitePages/AddEditSettings.aspx
2. Navigate to “Menu Section” tab under ‘Common UI Settings’ section and click “New Menu Item” as shown below:

3. Configure new menu item link and save the settings. URL to be used is same as in step #1 above.

Sample Output

Case 3: User gets a prompt for credentials on clicking ‘Service Catalog’ link in the Portal

Applies to: SharePoint On-premises (2013, 2016, 2019)
Employee Portal Version: Portal site created through ‘Power Portal App’

Issue: User gets a prompt for credentials on clicking ‘Service Catalog’ link in the Portal.

Cause: This issue can happen if user does not have ‘Browse Directories’ permission on root site of the site collection.

Resolution: Grant ‘Browse Directories’ permission on root site of the site collection for end users group.

Instructions

Standard “Read” permission level does not contain this permission. So, we need to create a custom permission level and then grant this permission to end users group.

1. Create a custom permission level.
2. Grant newly created custom permission level to end users group.

Detailed steps

1. Navigate to root site of the site collection (in which portal site exists) -> Site Settings -> ‘Site permissions’ under ‘Users and Permissions’ section -> Permission Levels -> click ‘Read’ permission level -> click ‘Copy Permission Level’ and create a new permission level as shown below:

Name the new permission level as ‘Read with Browse Directory’ and select the ‘Browse Directories’ permission.

2. After creating the new permission level, assign it to end users group. In this example, we have assigned custom permission level to ‘End Users’ group.

Go to ‘Site permissions’ page -> select the end users group and click ‘Edit User Permissions’ from the ribbon.

Select the new permission level ‘Read with Browse Directory’ and save settings.