KB suggestions not working with IE

[jgo564]

Script URL: intranet site
Version of script: 2.4.2
Hosting company: company server
URL of phpinfo.php: intranet
URL of session_test.php: intranet
What terms did you try when SEARCHING for a solution:
KB suggestions not working, KB suggestions IE

Write your message below:
For some reason that I, obviously, can't explain, the KB suggestion feature does not work a lot of the times when using IE (tested on both 8 and 9). Since our systems are IT maintained, I thought that maybe a setting had been disabled that allows some scripting to execute, but from testing it on the hesk.com help page, the KB feature there works perfectly fine on IE.

The feature seems to work perfectly fine in Chrome and Firefox, however, since the machines the field uses are pre-installed with IE, that's going to be the common browser that accesses the application.

The application runs on IIS (Win Server 2008 R2 SP1). I initially had Windows Authentication enabled throughout the website, but I've disabled it on just the help desk directory thinking that that might be the problem, but it doesn't seem to have corrected it.

Initial thought is that IE is terminating the script, but I'm not experienced enough to diagnose/correct if it is.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Klemen]

I've got a feeling that this will be hard to troubleshoot.

Is the problem that no articles are found or that nothing shows (not even the "No relevant articles found." notice shows)?

Does this happen when submitting a new ticket or when searching the knowledgebase (or both)?

Did you modify any HESK files (especially header.inc.php, header.txt and hesk_javascript_v24.js files)?

When this happens does IE show any notifications at the bottom saying "Internet Explorer restricted this webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls (with an "Allow blocked content" button)"?

[jgo564]

HI Klemen,

Thank you for your response. The issue seemed very similar to this post, viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3805&p=16685&hilit ... ing#p16685, but it wasn't limited to just the admin screen.

Is the problem that no articles are found or that nothing shows (not even the "No relevant articles found." notice shows)?

Similar to the issue in the post above, the "Loading knowledgebase suggestions..." message displays and never loads anything. The weird part is that if I hit the refresh button on the browser, sometimes the suggestion works, but only once (wont re-suggest if I update the field) or it'll immediately go to the "No Relevent....." message.

Does this happen when submitting a new ticket or when searching the knowledgebase (or both)?

Both.

Did you modify any HESK files (especially header.inc.php, header.txt and hesk_javascript_v24.js files)?

I did update the header.inc.php so that it would load some additional CSS codes. header.txt is empty. Only one modification to the hesk_javascript_v24.js file to add an additional script at the very bottom to hide/show divs.

When this happens does IE show any notifications at the bottom saying "Internet Explorer restricted this webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls (with an "Allow blocked content" button)"?

None of those message pop up within IE.

[jgo564]

I also just want to add that I just did a clean install of the application, creating new data tables as well, to see if any of the modifications I had made are causing the issues, but I'm getting the exact same results. I added in several KB articles to test on. I saw that there's a post recommending to add in more articles due to MySQL limitations, but when tested on Chrome, suggestions work fine... that darn IE that seems to be making something not work properly.

[Klemen]

So, my feeling was correct, this will be a hard one to troubleshoot.

The problem is - I cannot duplicate the problem. I ran several tests using IE and it works fine here. Also, as you mentioned, it works fine for you on the demo at the hesk.com website?

If this is true (the demo indeed works fine), it appears to be some kind of local server-related or client/browser-related issue. However, I can't seem to be able to reproduce it.

I presume you don't get any extra error messages if you turn Debug mode to ON in HESK settings (admin panel > Settings > Help Desk tab > Features)?

Could you let me know what version of Windows your machines are running (not the server, but the machines having problems displaying)? Does Windows update show any available updates for those machines?

Also, is there any chance you can make your help desk public so it can be accessed and tested over the internet?

[Klemen]

Forgot to add - the real problem is that it sometimes works and sometimes not. If it didn't work at all it would be a no-brainer, something wrong with the code. But this is something else, perhaps a caching/connection problem?

[jgo564]

Right, http://www.hesk.com/knowledgebase/ suggestion feature works fine on both version of IE used.

Enabling debug mode doesn't return any error messages.

OS on the machines I'm using is Win 7. Windows/Security updates and patches are pushed machines company wide by IT so the normal windows update is disabled on our corporate OS image.

Unfortunately, I cannot make our server public. While I do maintain the server itself, my company (large corporation) manages the connectivity of it.

On another note, I did mess with some of the "Advanced" settings in "Internet Options" and under the Browser section, I unchecked "Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)" and "Disable script debugging (Other)" in hopes of seeing if I'd get any error codes/messages, but instead, it seemed to have resolved the issue with IE 9 as its working as designed, however, for IE 8 it only improved the function as it'll now load the suggestion, but only once; need to refresh the page for a new suggestion to work, but again, only improved, still have instances where no results will populate.

On this same note though, this wouldn't fix the overall issue because if this is how my settings were configured, our field users (internal employees) will have the same configurations and, more than likely, wont even have the ability to change due to policy restrictions (I have admin rights to my machine which is why I can modify).

I understand this is not going to be an easy issue to diagnose since I don't have the ability to let you see what I see, but I just find it strange that there's not a unique issue across all variables that would pinpoint the source of the issue.

[Klemen]

How about if you open suggest_articles.php in an editor and just below

Code: Select all

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset='.$hesklang['ENCODING']);

paste

Code: Select all

header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Pragma: no-cache");

Then save, do a force reload of Help desk in the browser (Ctrl + F5) and test - any luck?

[jgo564]

No luck. As before, loads once from the force reload and then it no longer re-suggests if content is changed.

[jgo564]

Klemen,

I think I found the solution, but I wasn't sure if it would negatively impact anything else and wanted to see what you thought. I ran a code parser and then attempted to use the KB Sug. using Chrome and then IE8 to see what the differences were and noticed that the "Connection" was being closed immediately after the first POST so subsequent POSTs would return an "UNAUTHORIZED" status. This wasn't happening with Chrome and the "Connection" value remained "Keep-Alive".

In the "hesk_javascript_v24.js" file, within this part of the code

Code: Select all

   xmlHttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
   xmlHttp.setRequestHeader("Content-length", params.length);
   xmlHttp.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close");

I deleted that last line that looks like closes the connection. I deleted from the "hesk_suggestKB()", "hesk_suggestKBSearch(isAdmin)" and "hesk_suggestEmail(isAdmin)" functions.

I'm hoping that this doesn't turn into a fix one, break two type of scenario, but if you can verify that these modifications will not harm anything, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again for your help,

[Klemen]

Thanks for this information.

I don't see an issue with having this removed - in fact, this will most likely be removed with 2.5.0.

[jgo564]

Great! Well consider this post resolved!

Thanks again for your help and for this awesome product.