How do I get access to the Customer Portal Reference Pageset, and what is it useful for?

Environment:

Customer Portal, Reference Mode

Resolution:

When troubleshooting Customer Portal problems, one of the best resources available to you is the Customer Portal Reference Implementation. This is the default page set, so it's a good way to see if the problem you're encountering is a system problem or a code problem. If it's a code problem, you shouldn't be able to reproduce the issue in the default environment. If you're still seeing the issue in the default environment, then you may be experiencing a system or configuration problem.

To view the Reference Implementation, first go to the Customer Portal Administration Area. You can get access to it by going to https://*yoursitename*.custhelp.com/ci/admin, and logging in with your admin console credentials. Note that you will need to have Customer Portal permissions to do this. You can read up on that here:

Answer ID 2600: Configuring WebDAV connection to access the Customer Portal

Once you have access to the administration area, you'll want to do the following:

1. Click on the Set Environment button
2. Under "Select the site mode you'd like to view" select Reference
3. Click "Set viewing mode and view the site"

Note that in the Set Environment editor you can also tell the browser to show you mobile or other pagesets if you'd like to be able to test those.

Once you're in the Reference Environment, try to reproduce your problem. If you can't, that's probably a sign that a custom code change has caused the problem, and it's not a product issue. You may want to check the WebDav logs by, in the Administration Area, clicking on Logs->WebDav Logs. If you can reproduce the issue, you may be experiencing a product or configuration issue. One good place to start would be to see if any of the following have been changed recently:

1. Reports that your Customer Portal pages are running
2. Configuration Settings
3. The answer/incident you are viewing, or the contact record you are logged in as
4. For answer display problems, SLAs and Product/Category visibility