In order for Polar Help Desk to work, SQL Server must be configured to allow user that ASP.NET uses (NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE) has full access to all SQL databases.

Here is how you do it manually:

1. Start SQL Management Studio (Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2008 > SQL Server Management Studio) and click "Connect" to connect to your SQL server
2. Expand "Security", Expand "Logins"
3. Check if user "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE" is already there, if so double click it and skip next 2 steps
4. Right click on "Logins" and click "New Login"
5. Under login name write "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
6. Click "Server Roles" and ckeck "sysadmin". This grants the user full rights.
7. Click "OK" button, close the SQL Management Studio

Additional steps which may be required, depending on how SQL is configured:

1. Open Server properties and go to Permissions section.
2. What you should see is a list of windows users and roles, among who should also be "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE".
3. Select "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE" and explicitly grant it permissions to connect to and create databases.

Create Database Manually:

Create a database in SQL manager and run these two scripts that can be found in the Setup folder, where you have installed Polar Help Desk.

        PolarServiceDesk_Database_CreateObjects.sql
        PolarServiceDesk_Database_Initialize.sql

Now that the database has been created:

1. When the web application starts, it will search all the SQL servers for valid Polar Help Desk databases and read the "InstanceConfiguration" table from these databases. Our next step is to let Polar Help Desk web application know what database it will use for our Help Desk.
2. Open the database table called "InstanceConfiguration". In "InstanceConfiguration" table, under column Url write the url of your Help Desk. Example of this url is "http://localhost/helpdesk/".
3. Make note that the url you enter is the url you use to access the Help Desk through your browser. Also, note that the url you enter needs to end with "/".

Configure Help Desk to use remote database

Replace helpdeskConfiguration in your web.config file with the XML below. This file can be found in the root of the Polar Help Desk virtual folder.

        <helpdeskConfiguration>
                <scheduler enable="true" interval="4"/>
                <database autodetect="false"/>
                <instances>
                        <instance url="http://company/helpdesk" connectionString="data source=(local)\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;database={0};" database="DatabaseName">
                                <shadows>
                                <!--<shadow path="shadow1/" database="aas"/>-->
                                </shadows>
                        </instance>
                </instances>
        </helpdeskConfiguration>

The only elements of interest are

        url="http://company/helpdesk"


        connectionString="data source=(local)\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;database={0};" 


        database="DatabaseName"

1. URL - is your help desk URL. www.company.com/helpdesk for example
2. Connection String - is the standard Microsoft SQL connection string. Data source can commonly be "data source=(local)" or "data source=(local)\SQLEXPRESS". More info can be found here: http://www.connectionstrings.com/sql-server-2008
3. Database - is the database name. Follow the procedure to create a new database, and then type here the name you have chosen for it.

You will have to update the URL, the database name and the connection string. Connection string needs to target your remote server. Note that {0} must remain intact.

External Resoruces

• Download MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Express - free version or here
• How to: Install SQL Server 2008 R2
• The Official Microsoft IIS site - http://www.iis.net/ - Installing IIS 7
• IIS 7 Performance: Optimizing Performance of IIS7 Configure IIS 7 Output Caching , Configure the HTTP Expires Response Header , Client Cache
• Understanding Sites, Applications, and Virtual Directories on IIS 7
• Internet Information Services - Wikipedia.org
• Security Guidance for IIS - Microsoft "TechNet"
• Download MS SQL Server 2005 Express

Recommended articles

You may be also interested in...