Polar Help Desk Professional :: FAQ

Polar Help Desk FAQ Categories

1. Top FAQ
2. General FAQ
3. Installation FAQ
4. User Interface Customization FAQ
5. Users FAQ
6. Active Directory & NTLM Integration FAQ
7. Incidents and E-mail FAQ
8. Service Level Management (SLM) FAQ
9. Knowledge Base FAQ
10. Reports FAQ
11. Licensing FAQ
12. All FAQ In One Page FAQ

Top FAQ

I cannot install Polar Help Desk because installation error appears.
What is the problem?

There could be several causes for this problem, depending on error which is received:

• If installation is interrupted with error: "The specified service already exists" you should do the following:
  • Go to Start->Run and type Regedit
  • Find the registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/
    CurrentControlSet/Services
  • Find Polar Help Desk Scheduler service folder there and delete it
  • Restart your computer
  • Start installation of Polar Help Desk
• If installation is interrupted and error in error log is following "An exception occurred during the Install phase. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Exception from HRESULT: 0x80005000."
  It means that an invalid directory path name was passed to the IIS (Internet information services) when choosing virtual directory during installation. Do not enter backslash ( \ ) or some other symbols that cannot be accepted as pathnames, try just entering default value: PolarHelpDesk and it should work.
  
  

What settings do we need to change in order to have the help desk system capture and send notifications?

You need to setup you POP3 settings.
Go to Administration Desktop > E-mail Automation > POP3 and fill all the fields in this form. Note! "Enable Receiving e-mails through POP3" must be checked.

I believe E-Mail notification allows us to define the collection of POP3 emails and convert them to incidents automatically?

If you want to receive incidents via email, and send notifications to your support representatives, you need to use “Email Automation” feature.

You need to define valid POP3 server information (for receiving emails), and SMTP server information (for sending notifications).

E-mail notifications are defined by using Service Level. There are three default service levels- bronze, silver and gold. Gold service level sends all possible notifications and the other two send only some of them.

The users have been imported from the AD and IIS setup to disallow a non access and use windows integrated instead. When they load the login.aspx page their user name is correctly populated domain\user but the password field is blank. Can this field be populated so I can auto submit the form on load?

To do this you first need to enable the NTLM:

1. Please go to the Control Panel - Administration Tools - Internet Information Services.
2. Find the virtual folder where Polar Desk is installed and browse for the HTTPRequestNTLMLogin.aspx. It should be on this path: PolarHelpDesk – CommonDialogs – HTTPRequestNTLMLogin.aspx.
3. Right click on this file and select properties. Once the dialog is opened, go to tab File Security and click on the Edit button in the Anonymous access and authentication control. Once the dialog is opened deselect all the check boxes you see except the “Integrated windows authentication” check box. Apply the changes and close the Internet Information Services window.

Now, when you go to the Login page, you will notice that your windows login name is already set as the username. Provided that this username also exists in the Help Desk database, all you need to do is click the login button.

Note that this is only required for AD authenticated users. You can still create users with short domain names. Only, PHD will not be able to authenticate these users through AD. Also, users can still be imported from AD without DOMAIN/Username. This is done by omitting method="AddDomainPrefix" from Translation Table.

The menu on the left side of the screen is showing as text only. What is the problem?

There could be several causes for this problem.

• Internet explorer web controls are missing. Check if webctrl_client folder exists in c:\inetpub\wwwroot (this is default directory). If it doesn't exist go to Polar Help Desk installation directory (default is c:\program files\polar\polar help desk\) and open folder setup\application and there you should find webctrl_client folder and copy it to wwwroot folder of your web site and give internet user appropriate permissions to access it. If folder already exists in wwwroot directory just give internet user appropriate rights to access it.
• Internet explorer security settings prevent menu from showing. You should go to Tolls->Internet options, find tab Security and add Polar Help Desk site to Trusted sites list.
• Firewall is blocking access, try disabling firewall to check if that is the problem.
• Internet information services default path is set to Polar Help Desk virtual directory and it appears as Polar Help Desk installed in root of a web site and that is wrong because Polar Help Desk cannot work correctly in root of a web site. To change default path go to Control Panel->Administrative tools->Internet information services and in directory tree find Default web site and go to properties. Find tab Home directory and set it to root of a we site (usually c:\inetpub\wwwroot). It shouldn't point to Polar Help Desk directory.
• ISAPI filtering enabled on your web site which prevent Polar Help Desk from working correctly. To check/disable it go to Control Panel->Administrative tools->Internet information services and in directory tree find Default web site and go to properties. Find tab ISAPI filters and try removing them and see if it works now.
• IP restrictions are enabled on your Internet information services. Go to Control Panel->Administrative tools->Internet information services and in directory tree find Default web site and go to properties. Find tab directory security and disable IP address and domain name restrictions and see if it works now.
  
  

Can I setup Multiple Service User Roles? I am trying to make it so some service users would use one template and others use another that I select. I want to set the template defaults and direct each user to a specific template.

Yes, you can achieve such functionality with Polar Help Desk software. We have prepared a How-to Guide to help you in accomplishing it.

Is there any way to allow a group of services users to see each others incidents?

Yes, it is possible to have service users, from the same business unit, to see each other's incidents. You will need to adjust the service user role to achieve this functionality.

I have problem with installing PHD on my computer (software is Windows server 2003 Standard, SQL Server 2000 SP3, .Net 1.1, not created ASPNET user acc in SQL server).

To add ASPNET user account to your database, please follow these steps:

1. Click on your “Security” folder of your database.
2. Right-click on “Users” folder and choose New Login.
3. In “Database user - New” window in “User name” text field type “(SERVER_NAME)\ASPNET”
4. In “Login name” click the “…” (Browse) button.
5. Now you have “Select Login” window, click the “Browse button” that will open “Browse for Objects” window.
6. From Object’s list check the “(SERVER_NAME)\ASPNET” user, after confirmation with “OK” button on last two dialog windows, your ASPNET user should be in “Login name” text field.
7. In “Database role membership” check db_owner and db_accessadmin checkboxes
8. Click OK button.

After this procedure, open new IE window, and try to run Polar Help Desk, if error persists, you should restart the web server by running the command ‘iisreset’:

1. Go to Start – Run;
2. Type ‘iisreset’ and run it;
3. When the web server is restarted, try to access the Help Desk again.

What are the steps to upgrade from version 4.x.x.x to the latest version?

1. Go to Download section of our web site.
2. Log in using your existing username and password.
3. Click to download the latest version of Polar Help Desk.
4. After the download, please follow these steps:
   • uninstall the product (the database is never deleted or damaged during uninstallation so all of your data will be saved and you can safely perform an uninstall);
   • backup the database;
   • install the new version of the product and choose the existing database during setup (the one you have backed up earlier).

Note: during the upgrade process your data will be saved.