Missing a field on your form? - Step by step troubleshooting guide for ACL issues on your form

[Roger Chew]

If you are missing any form element on your form such as a Field, Attachment, Choice Field, or Button, chances are...you are running into an ACL configuration issue.

The most obvious indicator of an ACL configuration issue is that only specific users or users with a particular role (e.g. itil) are unable to see the field whereas you as an admin can see it just fine.

There are 3 main root causes:

• ACL configuration - There is an ACL restricting read or write access to that field.
  
  
• Reference Field Permissions - User does not have permission to the referenced table. (refer to step 6 below)
  
  
• Post Upgrade - ACLs could have been added as part of the upgrade. Check the ACLs for that table compared to an Out of the Box developer instance on the same version to see if you are missing something that would be expected OOB.

 Troubleshooting Steps:

 Prerequisite: You will need Admin role to perform the debugging steps below.

1. To start with as an admin role user you will login and go to System Diagnostics -> Session Debug -> Debug Security.
   
   
2. Impersonate a user that cannot see the field. In this case Joe Employee.
   
   
3. View an affected record (incident in this case).
   
   
4. A large amount of security related statements will be displayed below the record. 
   
   
5. Search for the field and operation (read, write, etc) that you are interested on the page by using the browser's search page function. In this case we search for work_notes/read. You should see an entry that looks like this:
   
   
   
6. If the field you are not able to see if a reference field you should also search for the table that is being referenced. For example if you are unable to see the Problem field on the Incident table you should look for the problem/read ACL.
   
   
7. Click the link that is next to the failing ACL to open it in a separate tab. In this case the link text is record/task.work_notes/read.
   
   
8. Note: You will not be able to view the ACL because you are still impersonating a non-admin user.
   
   
9. Switch back to your admin user account and refresh the tab with the ACL in it.
   
   
10. You can now see the ACL that is failing. Update this ACL script, condition, or filter values to allow access.

The following youtube video walks you through the steps above.

Resources:

KB0547221 - Fields do not appear on a form due to ACL's.

ACL Debugging Tools (Product Documentation)

ACL Troubleshooting reference (Product Documentation)

Create an ACL rule (Product Documentation)