Support FAQ - I dont know where to start or which KBs to read first?

The amount of knowledge articles can be a little overwhelming at first so let me list the must reads to get your knowledge up to speed quickly.

I spend a lot of my day answering questions or helping solve issues by simply summarizing these KB’s and have these memorized now to be our customers human Cireson KB search engine.

Portal Installation Instructions

Must read if your installing the portal, deep dives on installing the portal and the different supported configurations:

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/46#/

Cireson Portal and Service Manager Security Configuration

The Cireson Portal security model is a combination of the SCSM user role security model and security settings in the Cireson Portal itself.  In order to properly configure security, it is necessary to understand both. Recommend first reading the technet article for concept information if you are new to service manager.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh519690.aspx

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/1123#/

Cireson Cache Builder Overview

Important concepts here on understanding what and when the cachebuilder syncs data from service manager to the Portals database “ServiceManagement”. Understanding this process is crucial to troubleshooting and ensure you understand when and how information is cached.

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/1176#/

Cireson Portal Views

Description of the criteria of what is required for the out of box portal views My Requests, Team Requests, My Work, Team Work, and Active Work Views. Very helpful understanding what work items should show in the different views and how they can be configured.

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/1103#/ 

Cireson Portal Logging \ Log File request

Important when troubleshooting an issue is usually about finding where and when the error occured to help find the root cause of any issue, this is where having a good log \ clean log file is very helpful. I send this a lot to customers requesting this information (I know you must hate me for asking it – but it does usually lead to a quick resolution once I have this information)

• Stop the website
• Stop Cachebuilder
• Delete the existing webconsole.log file and cachebuilder log
• Enable ALL level logging for the website if you haven’t already.   Instructions to enable ALL level logging can be found here:   https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/34/?selectedtab=enduser 
• Restart the website
• Restart Cachebuilder
• Login again and attempt to recreate the issue.
• Review\Send the new webconsole.log and cachebuilder logs after issue has been recreated.

In other words, do what is listed on this KB: https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/34

Portal Version Information

Follow the upgrade path correctly is important to ensuring the portal has all the correct files and database stored procedures, however many customers dont know how to check which version they are running. Comparing versions.json (File found located in C:\inetpub\Ciresonportal\bin) with the below KB article can quickly show this.

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/94#/

In portal v5.0+ this is now shown in the admin settings to make it even easier, however the above table is still helpful making sure you are running the correct installer or have the required MP versions for asset management to show in the portal etc.

Completely Re-Syncing Data with the cachebuilder in v3.6+

The cachebuilder syncs our data (Workitems, CI’s, access etc) from servicemanager into the servicemanagement database, however sometimes its necessary when troubleshooting to force a complete resync, as what gets synced is determined by the last modified date set in the lastmodified table in servicemanagement compared with the lastmodifed date on a workitem,CI or setting. Truncating this table achieves this resync and is described in the below knowledge article.

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/1142#/

Creating Custom Forms for the portal

Useful knowledge article for when you have gotten all fancy and comfortable with the authoring tool in SCSM to extend your classes to add more properties to better fit your requirements and have more properties to automate the common pain points your service desk achieve on a daily basis. BUT these fancy new properties don’t show on the portal?! This is because the portal forms must first know about these names and types you have just created.You can amend the analyst view form to add these extended properties or have these extended properties appear for only certain AD users. The below KB article should get you started:

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/51

There are also videos on using custom forms here to disable fields which are a good help (Use the same principle but copy paste the extra fields you want and change the property names to those of your extended property names)

https://vimeo.com/115581944

Performance Tuning

The portal installed perfectly but certain people complain it is slow first thing in the morning? This is usually due to the app-pool recycling and we recommend:

1. Install Application Initialization
2. Set Idle Timeouts to 0
3. Configure ASP Session timeouts making sure it is set to 24 hours

https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/1173#/

Feel free to contribute any other information, favorite KBs or blogs in the comments below that you find helpful.