Modding the Winuser Console so Users Can View Their Own Tickets but Not Create New Ones

Do you publish your Winuser console to all users to view their Helpdesk Tickets? Do you worry that they have access to 'Create a new incident' and 'Request access to a resource'? Have you wondered how you can change that without disrupting your current Helpdesk users and consoles, as well as countless hours of changing and testing security settings? Here's how, in a few easy steps, to modify this worrisome page.

Here is the default Winuser console:

Click to view.

First is how to remove or hide the 'Common Requests', as well as 'Search for services containing':

Click to view.

To do this, you will need to edit the subServiceCatalog.ascx, found in \Program Files\Altiris\Helpdesk\AeXHD\templates\. Make sure to remove the Read only property, so you can save your edited file.

Remove these two sections:

  <aw:Repeater ID="rptCommonTasks" RunAt="server" DataSourceName="CommonTasks">
    <ItemTemplate>
      <div>
        <b>
          <aw:HyperLink runAt="server" Text='<%# Container.DataItem("workitem_task_resolved_name") %>' ImageUrl="icnRun" NavigateURL='<%# Container.DataItem("workitem_task_resolved_url") %>' ToolTip='<%# Container.DataItem("workitem_task_resolved_comment") %>' Target='<%# Container.DataItem("workitem_task_url_target") %>' />
        </b><br />
        <div style="margin-left: 20px;">
          <%# Container.DataItem("wuci_comment") %><br />
        </div>
      </div>
    </ItemTemplate>
  </aw:Repeater>

And

  <ItemTemplate>
    <table cellspacing="0" border="0" width='<%# GetColumnWidth() %>'>
      <tr>
        <td width="1" height="1" valign="top">
          <aw:image runat="server" width="50" height="50" visible='<%# (Container.DataItem("image_file") <> string.empty) %>' imageurl='<%# "~/images/categories/" & Container.DataItem("image_file") %>' ID="Image5"/>
        </td>
        <td height="1" valign="top">
          <div>
            <b><a href='<%# GetFindLink(Container.DataItem("item_guid").ToString()) %>'><%# Container.DataItem("name") %></a></b>
          </div>
          <div>
            <%# Container.DataItem("description") %>
          </div>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </ItemTemplate>

Then edit this section, adding visible="false" at the end:

<aw:ControlBar id="cbSearch" runat="server" CssClass="clsBar" ColSpan="2" width="100%" Expand="imgEnd">
<aw:Label id="lblSearch" runat="server" text="sidLblSearchForServices" wrap="false" visible="false" />
<aw:TextBox id="tbSearch" runat="server" width="200" visible="false"/>
<aw:Button id="btnSearch" runat="server" Text="sidSearch" OnClick="DoContinue" visible="false" />
<aw:Image ID="imgEnd" runat="server" ImageUrl="spacer" visible="false" />
</aw:ControlBar>
<aw:Separator ID="sepSearch" Runat="server" width="100%" ColSpan="2" visible="false" />

If you simply remove this section, the page will error out, so it is necessary to mark them as visible="false".

The results will yield:

Click to view.

But, the asterisk is still visible, which users can click to create a new incident:

Click to view.

So by editing the web.config (C:\Program Files\Altiris\Helpdesk\AeXHD\winuser) and adding privileges="privAdminister" to remove the icon to create new item for the icon on the top of the console (for non-admins):

<command id="newItem" moduleID="TemplateModule" name="sidNewItem" description="sidNewItemDesc" privileges="privAdminister" >

Click to view.

Now you will have a WinUser console for your end users to only display their incidents only.