"No Reflection content has been assigned to you" Message When Using the Administrative WebStation

When attempting to access components within Reflection for the Web's or Reflection Security Gateway's Administrative WebStation, an administrator may see an error message stating "No Reflection content has been assigned to you." This technical note describes the reasons why you may encounter this problem and provides solutions for it.

"No Reflection Content Has Been Assigned To You"

Typically, the message “No Reflection content has been assigned to you” indicates that no sessions have been mapped to a user who is attempting to access Reflection for the Web or Reflection Security Gateway. However, if this message occurs when you are accessing components within the Administrative WebStation, the problem is that cookies are being blocked. This may occur because:

• The browser is configured to block cookies.
• The URL contains non-DNS-supported characters in the name of the machine serving the Administrative WebStation (Microsoft Internet Explorer only).

Follow the instructions in the sections below to troubleshoot this problem.

Browser Configured to Block Cookies

A per-session cookie is accepted onto the client computer. (Per-session cookies are deleted when the browser is closed.) If you encounter the problem described above, check your browser's settings for cookies. Follow the instructions in your browser's Help file to enable cookies (or, at a minimum, enable per-session cookies).

Note: If you use a language version of Reflection for the Web that differs from the locale of your operating system, enable cookies to be stored on your computer so that your language choice persists.

Non-DNS-Supported Characters in Server Name

After applying Microsoft's cumulative patch Q319182 or higher for Internet Explorer, cookies are blocked if a server name used in a URL contains non-DNS-supported characters. For more information about cumulative patch Q319182, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q319182

DNS-supported characters include the following:

• The letters A through Z (upper and lower case)
• The numerals 0 through 9
• The minus sign [ - ]
• The period [ . ]

Note: The minus sign and period cannot be used at the end of a domain name.

No characters other than those listed above are DNS-supported. (For example, the underscore, [ _ ] the exclamation mark, [ ! ] and the blank space in the server name are not DNS-supported.)

Using tools in the Administrative WebStation requires a per-session cookie. Therefore, accessing these components will fail if you are using Internet Explorer patched with Q319182 or higher and the web server name contains non-DNS-supported characters. The message “No Reflection content has been assigned to you” will be displayed.

Note: Cookies are also used to store information about the language version of Reflection for the Web or Reflection Security Gateway that you use. If you use a language version that differs from the locale of your operating system, this problem may interfere with your language choice persisting.

Solutions

There are several ways to work around this problem:

• In the URL you use to access the WebStation, enter the IP address of the web server instead of the name. Note: you will see an alert that the server name on the SSL security certificate does not match the name used to access the site. You can safely bypass this alert.
• If you are launching the Administrative WebStation from the same machine where it is installed, replace the web server name in the URL with "localhost" to avoid using non-DNS-supported characters.
• Rename the web server to eliminate the non-DNS-supported characters.