Troubleshooting: Uploading and Switching Customized Web Email Protection Templates (formerly known as Web Messenger Templates) can take several minutes to complete

Products

• Desktop Email Encryption
• Drive Encryption
• Encryption Management Server
• Endpoint Encryption
• File Share Encryption
• Gateway Email Encryption
• PGP Encryption Suite
• PGP Command Line
• PGP Key Management Server
• PGP Key Mgmt Client Access and CLI API
• PGP SDK

Issue/Introduction

Uploading and switching customized Web Email Protection templates will take some time. Even though a Web Email Protection customized template may be only a few MBs in size, the process can take several minutes to complete, especially if the PGP Server (Symantec Encryption Management Server) is part of a cluster.

While the template is uploading, additional problems can occur by attempting to make any additional changes to the Web Email Protection service.

 

Resolution

Be patient when working with customized Web Messenger templates.  The PGP Server will take several minutes to upload and/or switch to new customized templates because the uploading of new templates need to be processed as new Web Email Protection customization files on the server.  

Switching to a new customized template also needs to process these configuration files, so when uploading a new template to the PGP Server, and the Symantec Encryption Management Server UI shows the template has been uploaded, please wait an additional 20 minutes before attempting to *assign* the template. 

It is not unreasonable for this process to take upwards of 20 minutes for a fairly small MB customized Web Email Protection template, even when replication is very fast.

When incomplete templates have been assigned as a result of not waiting, the behavior may be errors when attempting to login to Web Email Protection or other incorrect behavior when using Web Email Protection, or the Default Template and the customized template may appear "mixed".  If the template has not yet completed processing in the background, java exceptions can be seen when attempting to assign.

 

 

Important Note: If reverting any of the above changes, this will affect the current production view of the Web Email Protection experience, so doing this on least-impactful times is highly recommended. 

 

When the "Restore To Factory Defaults" button has been selected, give the server 20 minutes to complete this process. 

The Restore button should be clicked on only one of the server nodes. 

If the templates still exist on the other servers, give the servers some time. 

The background process is replicating this information to each of the servers. If replication is working properly, this should complete successfully.

Check each cluster node and Web Email Protection Login page to ensure the server has been set back to default values. Login to each Web Email Protection Inbox and ensure the functionality is successful. If the login fails, or if the images appear to be mixed with the old, the process has not yet completed, so give it additional time.

After the Web Email Protection template has shown up on the server, and you have waited 20 minutes, then assign the template on *one* server, and wait another 20 minutes for this assignment to replicate to the other nodes. 

Following these guidelines will generally produce successful results.

 

If the above guidelines have been followed, and the templates are still not working properly, please contact Symantec Support for more assistance.

 

 

 

Troubleshooting:

Scenario 1: Upgrading May Break Complete Customization Templates
If you have upgraded Symantec Encryption Management Server and the template assigned is not working properly, you will need to re-configure the Complete Customization Template.  This is because there can be additional parameters and functionality added to the templates during an upgrade.  Sometimes the migrations have no changes so the templates continue to work.  If the templates are not working post upgrade, create completely new templates using the newer version and re-upload.

For example, if you are using a customized template from 3.4.2 and upgrade to 10.5 without creating a new template, you may have issues.

One issue reported is an exception observed when clicking the "Options" from the WEP inbox.  This is because the template for 10.5 has a new "option" feature and needed to be created.

Exception in Admin Log:

"Unhandled exception in Boomerang: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: 'org.example.com.html.HTMLAnchorElement com.pgp.xmlc.WMSettingsHTML.getElementCancel()'
EXCEPTION STACK TRACE:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: 'org.example.com.html.HTMLAnchorElement com.pgp.xmlc.WMSettingsHTML.getElementCancel()'
        at com.pgp.boom.BoomSettingsScreen.renderSettings(BoomSettingsScreen.java:544)
        at com.pgp.boom.BoomSettingsScreen.doEvent(BoomSettingsScreen.java:135)
        at com.pgp.boom.BoomServlet.dispatchEvent(BoomServlet.java:299)"

 

Scenario 2: Templates are not uploaded properly or do not replicate to other PGP cluster nodes, even after following all of the above steps
If you have followed all of the guidelines above and the templates are still not working, you may need to reach out to Symantec Enterprise Support for further assistance.
There is some additional functionality we can perform on the backend using a special template script with the assistance of Symantec Support.

This script is called the "scan_and_repair" script and can help to ensure the templates are properly assigned to each of the cluster nodes.  Reference this article when you reach out to support.
EPG-26043
ISFR-2053
ISFR-2054

Additional Information

153269 - Symantec Encryption Management Server Web Email Protection Troubleshooting

EPG-20671