Installing the Service Manager 2012 Self Service Portal

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There is a lot of information on installing the SCSM 2012 portal on SharePoint. Recently I ran into a lot of different issues installing it at a customer and the information I found didn’t point me in the right direction. We ran into various issues including the dreaded blank white screen. I ended up setting up SharePoint in my own lab the same way the customer had it configured and documented the steps I took to get the portal working. I figured these might be useful for others having similar difficulty.

Scenario: Deploy SP 2010 SP2, the SM 2012 R2 Web Content Server, and the SM 2012 R2 Web Parts (manually) on the same server. Clients connecting to the site will use 443 and a trusted certificate plus a vanity URL. The connection between the site and the web content server will use 444 and a self-signed certificate.

Server Name: sp2010-1.fabrikam.com

Vanity URL: helpdesk.fabrikam.com

  • Install SharePoint 2010 SP2 on sp2010-1.fabrikam.com
  • In DNS create an A or CNAME record for helpdesk.fabrikam.com
  • In IIS, go to Server Certificates, and click Create Domain Certificate (Must have Certificate Services Installed or get the certs elsewhere)
    • Common Name: sp2010-1.fabrikam.com
  • In IIS, go to Server Certificates, and click Create Domain Certificate (Must have Certificate Services Installed or get the certs elsewhere)
    • Common Name: helpdesk.fabrikam.com
  • Run setup for SCSM 2012 R2 and choose Server Manager web portal
  • Choose only Web Content Server
  • For directory, choose \System Center Service Manager Portal\Content Server
  • When you get to the Portal name and port, change the port to 444 and choose the sp2010-1.fabrikam.com certificate created earlier
  • Enter the appropriate database information for Service Manager
  • For accounts, I use the SCSM service account. This account has public and security admin roles in SQL and dbo access to the Service Manager data warehouses and Service Manager database
  • Copy the Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.Portal.SharePointSite.wsp from another install of the portal to your c:\temp directory.
  • Open SharePoint 2010 Central Administration console
    • Go to Manage Web Application and click New
    • For Create a new IIS web site enter Service Manager Portal
    • Under Port enter 443
    • Under Path change 443 to Service Manager Portal
    • Under Authentication Provider: choose Kerberos
    • Under SSL check Yes
    • Under URL enter https://helpdesk.fabrikam.com:443
    • Under Create new application pool enter Service Manager Portal
    • Under security account, I use Configurable and the Service Manager service account
    • For Database Server I used the same SQL server the Service Manager database is on and chose SharePoint_SMPortalContent as the database name (Ensure the account running the SP Admin Pool has rights to create the DB on the SQL instance)
    • Click OK, then OK on the Kerberos message
    • Run setspn -S HTTP/helpdesk.fabrikam.com fabrikam\scsmsvc
  • Run the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell as an administrator
    • Add-SPSolution c:\temp\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.Portal.SharePointSite.wsp
    • Install-SPSolution Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.Portal.SharePointSite.wsp -GACDeployment -WebApplication https://helpdesk.fabrikam.com -Force
  • Open the System Center Service Manager Portal\ContentHost\Web.config file
  • In IIS, go to the Service Manager Portal site and click Bindings
    • Edit the binding for 443 to use helpdesk.fabrikam.com as the certificate
  • In IIS, go to the Service Manager Portal site and choose Application Settings
  • Under Actions click Add naming the setting "SMPortal_WebContentServer_URL"
  • On the client machines that will be using IE to open the site, ensure the site is a trusted site and the User Authentication\Logon:Automatic logon with current user name and password is checked. Also make sure Silverlight is installed.
  • Open https://helpdesk.fabrikam.com from IE, it should automatically logon with no certificate error
    • Go under Site Actions\Site Settings
    • Click on Site Collection Administration\Site collection features
    • Activate the SMPortal SharePointSite Feature
  • Open https://helpdesk.fabrikam.com/smportal from IE, it should open the portal without the white screen