Portal rendering errors using IE10

[alancecchini]

Hi,

We've recently patched all of our SAP systems (portal and backend) and checked we're at the requisite level for IE10 support in the PAM.

We're currently in the process of testing all of our applications for IE10 compliance and have identified two issues which someone may have experienced or can advise upon:

Issue 1) SAP Transaction iView (ITS) raising following error in popup dialog box 'The application was stopped due to a critical rendering error.  The IE compatibility view is not supported (Note 1586993).'

This iView connects from our portal (EP 7.0 EHP2 SP14) to a backend SAP ERP (ECC) system patched to NW EHP3 (SP09).

Note 1586993 is not particularly helpful as it simply states 'The administrator must assure, that IE frame content is compatible and correctly configured'.

Additional research identified note 1970427 which I have applied to the backend system - subsequently I added application parameter 'sap-ie=EmulateIE8' to the iView (both within the iView config and at runtime) but this made no difference to the behaviour.

I checked the user's framework page and the 'Browser Document Mode' iView is linked in and has it's property set to 'IE=EmulateIE7'.  I tried moving this iView further up the order sequence (i.e. putting it first) as well as changing it's setting to 'IE=EmulateIE8' but once again this had no effect on the behaviour.

I notice when logging into the portal, at first the F12 console shows Browser Mode = 'IE10', Document Mode = 'IE5 quirks' but when the problematic iView renders, the Document Mode changes to 'Quirks' which I'm assuming is why the error occurs.

I'm not sure what I can do to make the iView render in 'IE5 quirks' mode?

This iView is called dynamically at runtime with some URL parameters that are passed to the backend transaction so I cannot follow the advice in note 1590563.

Issue 2) BSP iView for 'CRM Web Interaction Centre' - all F4 dialog popups are displaying empty with no content, e.g. Inbox search help for classification field

This iView connects from our portal (EP 7.0 EHP2 SP14) to a backend SAP CRM system patched to NW EHP2 (SP04).

I tried setting my user parameter CRM_THTMLB_IE_COMP to 'IE8' but this had no effect.

Note, if I set the IE10 property 'Display intranet sites in Compatibility View' both issues above are resolved.  We're trying to avoid this as we've had this setting in place for a number of years and it affects the correct operation of non-SAP applications.  Given there are numerous ways of making SAP operate by emulating older compatible IE versions, I expected we could work around needing to do this but it may be a last resort.

Please offer any advice you can as it will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Alan

[former_member186017]

Hi,

Good blog for rendering issues in portal:

BR,

Nadav.

[daniel_bischofer]

Hi Alan,

we have just upgraded our portal to 7.31 and are facing the same issue.

Do you actually have a solution for the problem?

Kind regards

Daniel

[Former Member]

Daniel, did you took a look to provided documentation? This is a possible solution in fact, do you have any troubles to implement this in suggested form?

cheers

[alancecchini]

Hi Daniel,

We eventually decided to retain our IE setting which enforces compatibility for intranet sites (as our portal runs on this domain). This effectively meant issue 1 and 2 I mentioned went away.

Additionally, to get all ITS portal applications working correctly we had to set the iView property Launch in New Window to 'Display in separate headerless portal window (standard mode)' otherwise we had rendering problems and the application would hang.

We're aiming to transition all our web applications to a newly set up Fiori launchpad running in standards mode rather than waste effort trying to get legacy applications working on the portal in standards mode, which is a drain on resource.

Good luck.

Alan

[daniel_bischofer]

Hi Lawrence,

yes we took a look at the documentation. In addition we read a bunch of OSS-messages and other SCN-Threads . The problem is that the portal seems to behave in different ways depending on how the Iview is triggered.

When we first called our portal in IE10 Standard mode, the document mode was automatically set to "Quirks" (not Standards as expected, and Quirks seems not to be compatibility mode). Setting "Browser Document Mode" to "EmulateIE7", the document mode is now set to "IE5-Quirks", which means the portal now runs in compatibility mode.

Our problem is the Transaction Launcher inside the CRM Web UI. The CRM WebUI is called via a portal iview for SSO reason. The TL-Links don't work correctly when the mode is "Quirks".

If we call the CRM Web UI from portal navigation, everything is ok ("IE5-Quirks"). But despite the EmulateIE7-Setting in the portal the CRM Web UI is always set to "Quirks" when called via a direct link (e.g. from an e-mail).

Kind regards

Daniel

[daniel_bischofer]

Hi Alan,

thank you for the quick answer, even if it isn't very helpful for us.

We're aiming to transition all our web applications to a newly set up Fiori launchpad running in standards mode rather than waste effort trying to get legacy applications working on the portal in standards mode, which is a drain on resource.

Does that mean you will replace the portal with Fiori launchpad completely?

Kind regards

Daniel

[Former Member]

Daniel Bischofer wrote:

Does that mean you will replace the portal with Fiori launchpad completely?

Alan could have other plans on that, but afaik this is/would be a NP-hard task   The application integration is restricted currently: Preparing Content for SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal - Portal - SAP Library

In generally this of course depends on the content you want to integrate

cheers

[alancecchini]

Hi Daniel,

Our CRM transaction launches from the portal Web IC didn't work either until we switched them to open in new standards based windows (as per iView setting previously mentioned). Anything ITS-related seems to not work correctly when run in Quirks mode so that seemed the simplest solution.

Given SAP's longer term strategy to move everything to the Fiori Launchpad, we are opting to focus on gradually moving all our applications there and hopefully dispense with the portal. The Fiori Launchpad demarks a clean start and a chance to get applications working correctly in standards mode from the outset. We are also implementing true Single Sign On / Shibboleth which will improve the user experience (versus our portal which is user ID and password).

Alan

[Former Member]

Daniel, you are right, this topic isnt quite elementary. But you got the message right, insofar as I can say, quirks and compatibility mode should do the trick in generally.

Indeed:

Daniel Bischofer wrote:

Our problem is the Transaction Launcher inside the CRM Web UI. The CRM WebUI is called via a portal iview for SSO reason. The TL-Links don't work correctly when the mode is "Quirks".

If we call the CRM Web UI from portal navigation, everything is ok ("IE5-Quirks"). But despite the EmulateIE7-Setting in the portal the CRM Web UI is always set to "Quirks" when called via a direct link (e.g. from an e-mail).

this is depending on how you are creating and delivering the link, doesnt it? So, if you would use EP links, e.g. showing to a quicklink or something else in EP that renders your CRM content on the proper way, this would work for you. Assuming the rest is running well, I would dare to say this is practicable way handle this.

cheers

[Former Member]

Alan, just noisy:

Alan Cecchini wrote:

Given SAP's longer term strategy to move everything to the Fiori Launchpad, we are opting to focus on gradually moving all our applications there and hopefully dispense with the portal. The Fiori Launchpad demarks a clean start and a chance to get applications working correctly in standards mode from the outset. We are also implementing true Single Sign On / Shibboleth which will improve the user experience (versus our portal which is user ID and password).

Alan

so you are using custom application only in your EP, which are supposed to be migrated to UI5? All admin stuff will still use AJAX (PCD content administration, KM, system configuration etc) or you will develop all on your own using available API's? Does the new theme editor is working well for you resp your Fiori launchpad, means you are able to do all the design changes due your customers corporate design without facing any problems? What are you doing about lack of support on Fiori theming for UI5 applications? I know its offtopic, but would be glad if could find time to write a couple of lines regarding this, since I faced similar questions already regarding Fiori integration on EP. Thanks,

cheers

[alancecchini]

Hi Lawrence,

We have a mixture of custom and SAP standard portal applications developed over the past 10 years.

UI technologies include: Java Server Pages, Web Dynpro Java, ITS, BSP, Web Dynpro ABAP and BEx.

Quite honestly, the portal hasn't proved to be the best SAP product in our experience, and we've tried hard to keep it patched up-to-date. OK, it offers integration and navigation but that capability is offered by the Fiori Launchpad, albeit presenting new challenges and possibly some limitations on the integration of existing applications.

We could have opted to integrate the Fiori Launchpad with the portal but decided it was cleaner to perform a standalone installation on our newly built NetWeaver Gateway server.

We're starting our Fiori journey by implementing selected SAP delivered apps for the first pilot projects then plan to replace or migrate existing portal applications.

We'll replace any custom Java apps with UI5 apps built in-house as we need to rationalise UI technologies and this one is a prime candidate given the lack of in-house skills and SAP direction. 

Our expenses application is currently an SAP ITS transaction iView in the portal but will be replaced with the My Travel and Expenses Fiori app this year.

CRM Transaction Launch isn't used often so we may kill it off.

BSP's are solely in the CRM area and I read they're not supported yet in the launchpad - hopefully they will be in a future version (?).

We have quite a few Web Dynpro ABAP applications so these will take some time to rewrite if required (assuming we cannot port them).

BEx may be replaced with Business Objects or taken out of the portal in favour of the Excel version we also run (portal offers little value for massive reports so users download to Excel in any case).

My understanding is that the Fiori Launchpad does support integration of legacy SAP technologies so we'll need to gauge if and when we each a tipping point where any remaining portal applications can either be integrated with the launchpad or replaced with alternative new applications. Obviously all of the above will take time.

We're working on developing a custom Fiori/UI5 theme and have hit a few snags. We've just patched to SP09 on our development Gateway system but the UI Theme Designer is still a bit flaky (we run the tool there but could also do this on our portal). My colleague is now trying the cloud version to see if that proves a more viable route. In either case we'll be seeking SAP assistance as we really want our UI5 apps to adopt recently developed corporate branding rules. Our portal currently uses a copy of Gold Reflection with simply the SAP logo replaced for our company's logo.

If you have any further queries just let me know, or similarly advice/experience on the above.

Hope this helps.

Alan

[Former Member]

Alan, thank you very much for your detailed statement. So regarding your case of migration to Fiori I would see following main points:

1.) you have time for doing this, your description sounds like there are no hard deadlines for the whole change to the Fiori stuff. Your customer is unusual willing to compromise on lack of functionalities and is obviously prepared to learn something new or replace obsolete technologies

2.) on of your main goals is consolidating available applications to one technology resp migrating all of them to UI5. This needs a lot of resources and development work, furthermore its imho difficult to get good SAP UI5 developers in Europe, because the technology is simple not that old and I dont see any growing industrial need on this topic in my environment currently. However, this doesnt seem to be a problem in your case

Both of these points are ideal start points to do such kind of projects, but unfortunately Im not that lucky. While 1 could be enforceable, 2. is very difficult for me. I would have to tell my customers they will loose all the effort they had with custom development, this is nearly impossible as matters stand.

Anyway, Im glad we have obviously same assessments regarding main technical aspects, e.g. same problems with the theme designer or needed support for integration of legacy content. Thank you again,

cheers

[Former Member]

Did this open the SAP GUI for HTML transactions is a very tiny iframe ?

That's what is happening here. If I change the properties of the iview like what you mentioned, it ignores any properties related to Appearance - Size of the iview and opens the transaction in a tiny frame

[alancecchini]

Hi Prem,

No, we had no issues with the iView opening in a tiny iframe.

Our SAP GUI for HTML iView for expenses is a SAP Transaction iView (transaction PR05) and the settings are unchanged from the default (fixed height, 80 pixels).

Our CRM transaction launcher which also uses ITS has also had no issues with sizing but I don't believe we can control the window size.

We're now at NetWeaver Portal 7.4 SP08.

Alan

[Former Member]

Hello Alan,

We are facing a similar issue but with the CRM launch transaction with open document URL to BoBI reports, We got the same error when the URLs are launched in IE10 compatibility mode or in IE9 or lesser browsers. We did the following to address the issue - added quiks=true parameter to the URL which opened them in quirks IE8 mode and stopped the error from occurring. However, this is only working for launch transaction URLs configured inside a CRM UI work center group box(in a page), and not the ones on the navigation(not in any page). Do you know what could be done to address this?

Thanks,

Partha Gopalan

[alancecchini]

Hi Partha,

We are currently in a position where most parts of our CRM application runs in compatibility mode (document mode = 5), and other parts in standards mode (document mode = Edge). The compatibility mode is set by the portal but if we weren't running this, we could have set the default behaviour with user parameter CRM_THTMLB_IE_COMP (worth a try if you haven't used this already).

There are so many variables here such as the version of IE you're using, release/patch levels, which notes are applied in your system. It's a bit of a minefield to be honest. We realize that running CRM in compatibility mode is really a temporary workaround but so many parts of the application broke when we first tried moving to standards mode, that we backtracked. To be fair, we've since patched and each maintenance exercise helps obtain more fixes and standards support so we should get there eventually.

Here's something which may help you. Yesterday I was investigating an issue with CRM  and identified ABAP class CL_THTMLB_UTIL, method GET_USER_AGENT which sets the X-UA-Compatible meta tag which the browser uses to decide how to handle the page. If you read the code you will see it takes in all the possible variables which influence how the CRM application should be handled in the browser (e.g. it checks the initial browser user agent, whether user parameter CRM_THTMLB_IE_COMP is set, whether the sap-ie url parameter is set etc.). If you can at least debug to the end of this method and determine how the browser will be handling the application. You may even wish to force a particular mode by changing variable ev_ie_compatibility in debug to see if this would resolve an identified issue. From that point you can work back to decide where and how to change the behaviour accordingly. For example. I discovered that the url parameter sap-ie is not explicitly set anywhere in config but our portal framework page contains the browser Document Mode property iView, and this influences/ is controlling the value of this parameter on the CRM side.

Regards,

Alan

[Former Member]

Hi Alan,

Thank you. I am pursing a similar path, looks like OSS note 2094302 which is supposed to fix the IE9+ standards mode supports issue for BI integration. By the way I am stuck with another issue. I saw you asked me to check GET_USER_AGENT from CL_THMLB_UTIL class. Note implements a similar logic to read and modify the user agent in the CL_GBSIRP_BSPWDCOMPONENT_IMP class but the class CL_THMLB_UTIL doesnt have the method GET_USER_AGENT, so we are getting in syntax error. WE are on CRM BBP 713 release. Can you help me in figuring why this method is missing?

Thanks,

Partha

[daniel_bischofer]

Hi Partha,

method GET_USER_AGENT in class CL_THMLB_UTIL is a very essential function that is used nearly everywhere in web ui. So it's very strange that the method should not be there.

The class is not part of component BBPCRM but of WEBCUIF, for BBPCRM713 (CRM EHP3) you should be on WEBCUIF747. Perhaps you should check, if you have some problem using not the right combination of SAP_ABA/SAP_BASIS (740), BBPCRM (713) and WEBCUIF (747) version.

Regards

Daniel

[alancecchini]

Hi Partha,

As Daniel suggests it's worth verifying you have a correct supported package combination.

We're using the following packages:

Alan

[Former Member]

Hello Daniel, Alan,

Thanks for your quick response. It looks like we're at slightly lower support pack level on all 4 components.

Thanks,

Partha

[Sriram2009]

Hi Alan

Kindly follow the steps in IE 10

1. To open the IE Developer Tools press F12
2. On left side change to the options "Emulation"
3. Change the "Documents modus" to 5
4. Change the "Browser Agent" to "Internet Explorer 7

Regards

Ram

[alancecchini]

Hi Ram,

Please can you confirm the reason for your suggestion.

Is this to evaluate behaviour only as this would not be an acceptable resolution even if it worked?

Thanks,

Alan

[Sriram2009]

Hi

It’s a downward compatibility setting from the higher version of IE 9/10/11

Regards

Ram

[Former Member]

Is there any possiblity to set this configuration on server site?

[Former Member]

Yes, analogue to How to enable IE 9 compatibility mode for your website | The CodeFluent Entities Blog

resp

Daniel, its a good habit to open an own thread, if the question you have dont match the thread you have found

cheers