'[en - Unable to process request - Server or Network error]' When Displaying the Tasks List or Task Properties Page

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

When trying to open the task list (on the Project views, Timesheet views...), the following error appears in the Clarity PPM UI:

After reviewing the app-ca.log, similar error might be observed:

FATAL 2019-05-02 11:39:54,702 [http-nio-8443-exec-3] web.XSLServer (clarity:Nsingh4:896744318__CED09DB2-8180-4F97-A280-3907B5F9F3DD:timeadmin.selectTimesheetTaskOpt) Transformation fatal error:Illegal HTML character: decimal 144; SystemID: file:///home/clar/clarity/META-INF/uif/xsl/../uixsl/cells_en.xsl; Line#: 2356; Column#: -1
; SystemID: file:///home/clar/clarity/META-INF/uif/xsl/../uixsl/cells_en.xsl; Line#: 2356; Column#: -1
net.sf.saxon.trans.DynamicError: Illegal HTML character: decimal 144

Cause

A task contains an HTML character that is not valid. Some of these characters might look like a rectangle in some views, or not appear at all.

Resolution

You can try one of the following methods:

1. Using XOG, export the project and its tasks. For simplicity, you can use the prj_projects_read.xml template included in the xogclient, and set
   • <args name="include_tasks" value="true"/>
   • All the rest of the include_xxx, set value="false".

Open the output file with an advanced text editor (e.g.: Notepad++) and look for any character that looks strange, specially if that character does not have a dedicated key in the keyboard. Then, delete the character and try to xog the result back to Clarity PPM.

2. Open the "PPM Gantt" and find the task. Click on the task cell (inline editing) but not on the task name itself, as this would try to open the task properties page and throw the error again. Once you can edit the name of the task in the grid, remove any special character that appears, and save the new task name.