Service Desk Express QuickViews Don’t Return Any Data

Recently I came across an unusual experience with Service Desk Express 9.8 where my QuickViews suddenly stopped returning any records. So following typical fault finding principles I considered what I had changed and all I had done was install a web application at the root of the same website containing the SDE virtual directory. The rest of Service Desk Express (and for that matter, everything else on the server ) all worked absolutely fine but the QuickViews simply returned “Retrieving data, please wait…”

I would love to say that I identified the root cause and the resolution but alas a gifted colleague did all that. Suffice to say, the issue was caused by the fact that the Service Desk Express web.config file failed to contain a default section that specifies which version of which compiler the application should use. As my new application did provide this information, Service Desk Express tried to inherit it and, as a result of .NET Framework version issues, promptly fell over.

Solution

So to the solution. If you want to have an ASP.NET web application at the root of the same website where Service Desk Express is installed, open the Service Desk Express web.config file (found in C:Program FilesBMCService Desk ExpressApplication Server by default) in Notepad and add the following section just above the </configuration> tag as shown below:

...
<system.codedom>
<compilers>
<compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v2.0"/>
<providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false"/>
</compiler>
</compilers>
</system.codedom>
</configuration>

Summary

Whilst this may be a somewhat isolated situation, hopefully it will save someone pulling their hair out as we did for a morning! As always, comments, positive or negative, are always welcome.

• quickviews
• Service Desk Express