Problem:
Sometimes the view for one or more users gets broken, resulting in system error when user navigates to it.
Some symptoms a user may see:
- An error appearing such as: System error. Contact system administrator instead of data on the page.
- A user might see other types of page corruptions such as buttons (example: Save, Save and Return, or other buttons) or icons missing.
Some causes of this can include:
- The user had fields in the view that do not exist in PPM anymore
- Corruption of the view for other reasons
Resolution:
Issues like this can typically be resolved by doing a Restore Default. There are a couple of methods that can be used to get to this page for a user seeing the issue.
Method 1: Fiddler
Fiddler can be used to retrieve the needed URL to restore defaults if the user cannot get to the Restore Defaults page due to the issue they are facing. Fiddler is needed in that situation since PPM does not reflect the link for the Restore Defaults page in the URL.
Below are the steps on how to do this:
1) Install the Fiddler2 tool. The link to download this can be found at: http://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler/fiddler2.
2) Log in to PPM as a user who does not have the issue.
3) Navigate to the page where the user is facing the issue.
4) Launch Fiddler.
5) Once Fiddler is open, go back to PPM and click on the Options icon in the upper right hand corner, then select Configure.
6) Go to Fiddler and click on the last link, which should be the trace for navigating to the configure page in Clarity.
7) In the request headers section, copy everything after "action=" and prior to "HTTP/1.1".
8) Log in as the user with the issue.
9) Take the data you just copied from Fiddler and paste it in the PPM URL after "action:".
10) This will take you to the List Column Layout view.
Note: It’s recommended to take a screen shot of the view you see on the List Column – Section for two reasons:
a) This will help in troubleshooting to determine if a particular field the user added is causing the issue.
b) Users may have customizations in their view they don’t want to lose. Since restoring defaults removes user’s customizations, taking a capture of the view will enable the user to reconfigure their view after restoring defaults.
11) Click on the General tab, then click Restore Defaults.
You may get system errors when trying to take users directly to the General tab from Fiddler, so that is why we recommend taking the Fiddler URL directly after clicking Configure (This places you on the List Column - Section page and not on the General tab).
Method 2: Create a bookmark in Firefox
1) In Firefox, log in to PPM with a user ID that doesn't have the issue.
2) Navigate to the portlet page with the issue.
3) Right click on the configure link and select "bookmark this link".
4) Log in to PPM as the user with the issue and select the bookmark.
5) This will bring you to the configure portlet page where you can restore defaults as the user with the issue.