EP Issue: The webpage cannot be found

Periodically you may run across an issue in Enterprise Portal where a user opens a screen or clicks on a button and a HTTP 404 error box appears saying something to the effect of 'The webpage cannot be found'.

This can mean that the actual web page definition has been removed from EP somehow. We have found that if security is not set in a specific way in Enterprise Portal, a page could be inadvertently deleted through the portal itself.

Solution:

1. To identify the web page definition that is missing, right click on the error dialog screen and find the URL of the page. Since it is generally a pop-up box/window, it will not show up in the web address header. That URL will tell you the page definition in question. You want to find the name of the definition that ends in '.aspx'. This could be 'TrvItemization.aspx' for example. 
2. Go to the AX development workspace > open the AOT > Web > Web Files > Page Definitions and find the object with the same name from step 1. Right-click on the object and Deploy Element. It should give you an infolog saying it was successful.
3. Once deployed, go to the EP server itself where the webpage is hosted and do an IISRESET. 
4. Re-enter EP and try again to see it is resolved. 

How to avoid:

1. To avoid this issue, make sure user security on EP is set appropriately to only allow Read access for general users. Even 'Contribute' access can lead to inadvertent deletion of these pages. 
2. If your users need to be able to interact with Sharepoint to add documents to a shared library that shows up in AX role centers, you can limit this Read access to the EP folders/objects only. 
• Go to the EP link you want to lock down (for example: Expense page) > Site Actions > Site Permissions > All Site Content > click on Enterprise Portal folder > Library (top) > Library Permissions > Select the AD group to edit > Edit User Permissions > change to 'Read' > click ok. You will need to 'Stop inheriting permissions' from the higher level EP security.
• This should still allow users to interact with expense reports (or the EP function you are limiting access to), while not allowing deletion of any pages inadvertently.