Troubleshooting Web Apps

Updated on 20-October-2016 at 10:16 AM

Business Catalyst End of life announcement - find out more details.


Here you can find some of the useful troubleshooting steps that can be performed in case of an unexpected web app behavior


{tag_edit} does not work, when we click on it an error is thrown for eg. 'Page Not Found' :

  • Make sure the 'Disable Detail Pages' is NOT ticked under 'Edit Web App Settings' -> Web App Item Options


Limitations when performing a web app ZIP code search

  • Assuming I have only 1 country selected in the web app details panel as shown below , the ZIP CODE field and the DISTANCE field are mandatory. 
If customers either do not fill in the ZIP code field or remove the distance field from the HTML code the form will return ALL the web app items as results.

  • Assuming I have multiple countries selected in the web app detail panel - in this case the mandatory fields are: COUNTRY, ZIP CODE and DISTANCE So, if somebody has items from multiple countries and wants to list all the web app items in a country (without filling in the ZIP code, just by selecting the country from the drop down) that will not work. If you have web app items from multiple countries and you do not select the country all the web app items are returned.


Files uploaded via web app submission forms and 2 or more files with a 'same name'

When uploading images (or any type of file) via web app, the file is already renamed when it is saved to the site. Simply put, there is no way to have 2 identical file names (even if two customers upload files with the same names).

Moving a step forward here is what happens:

- Lets say we upload a file through a web app submission form and that file is saved in the folder specified when building a web app


Now, suppose we uploaded 2 files with the same name (123123123.jpg)


/in order to assure the file names are unique this is the naming logic:

4231134 is the ID of the individual web app item, 1072 is the ID of the field the file was uploaded through and lastly the actual name of the file.


Changing 'From' email address in the web app item approval notification email

Unfortunately, at this stage you cannot change the 'From' email address in the web app item approval notification email. By default, the 'From' email address is your partner site's default 'From' email ie. under Site Manager -> System Emails


Web app items become inactive after running an import

If a web app items are inactive, they do not appear and seem to be missing. This occurs because of the item's detail settings, specifically the release date and the expiration date. If the release date is set to some future date or if the expiration date is in the past, the item will be inactive.



In Microsoft Excel, the column where you enter an expiration date of 1/1/9999 (to avoid an item from expiring), is automatically truncated and re-formatted to 01-Jan-99. When you import the web app items into the system, the data is reset to the year 1999.



Highlight the expiration column in Excel and set its type to text. Type in 01-Jan-9999, copy the cell, paste the date into the other cells and re-import it. Now, all of the Web App items will not expire until 01-Jan-3000. This resolves the missing items issue. This setting ensures that you'll have no inactive items upon adding or updating data with Excel.


The web app 'edit' and 'delete' tags are not visible in the web app list even though the customer is logged in and the tag_edit and tag_delete tags are inserted into the list layout


  • Ensure the Web App module you have inserted on the page is:"List of Submitted Web App Items" module_webappscustomer and not:"List of Web App items" - module_webapps as explained here

Difference between a Site Search that targets web app items and a regular Web App Search Form

The web app search tries to find an exact match for all the keywords in the order you enter them, for example let's take a default Car Catalogue web app. If you search for 'Ford Focus' the Ford Focus web app is returned. If you search for 'Focus Ford' then no web app is returned.

In order to get past this behavior you can use a Site Search instead. The Site Search works differently, it tries to find any of the keywords, Searching for 'Focus Ford' for example will return the Ford Focus web app unlike the web app search.


You wish the customers (secure zone subscribers) to edit only their web app items and not the ones they have not submitted

The output of the depends on the checkbox under Edit Web app Settings -> Anyone can edit items. If that box is unchecked the module outputs only the web app items submitted by the currently logged in user.

If the option is checked the module will output all the web app items, even the ones submitted by other users.


No more than 500 web app items can be displayed on a page

Any module output is limited to a maximum of 500 items that can be displayed on any given page.

If for example we try to render 600 web app items on a single page (without pagination) the system will add the pagination 'breaking' the listing in 2 chunks. This is a hard-coded limitation and cannot be disabled at this stage.

As a workaround, it is recommended to add the web apps or products into 2 or more categories (less than 500 items in each category), render each category on a different page and then using jQuery/custom code, aggregate the outputs of the 2 pages on a single page.

However, the implementation of an actual script that aggregates the different pages is outside the scope of our support.