Search attempts to access feedbackserver

[Thack]

I have webhelp being served by a 2003 server. When a user enters a string on the Search tab and presses Enter, IE7 displays the following message:

"Content from the Web site listed below is being blocked by the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration.
<http://feedbackserver.madcapsoftware.com> "

What can I do to prevent MadCap Flare v 4.2.1 from attempting to contact your server during a simple search of my Help topics? And why is it trying to do so?

This may be the same issue that was reported by mattf on Tue May 27, 2008. However, I'm not sure of this because Richard Ferrell replied that, "Its not actually calling the server, But this has been logged as a bug, and will be corrected in the next version of Flare." That was 11 months ago and well before the release of version 4.2.1.

Any insight offered will be greatly appreciated.

[doc_guy]

Thack, welcome to the forums.

I think you will want to take this case directly to support. Not a lot of people in the forums seem to use feedback server, thus, there isn't much activity in the feedback server forum.

My guess is you'll get a quicker, better response if you contact Support directly. And try to contact them via the madcap website, as the people you may have talked to a year ago might no longer be with the company.

[Thack]

I don't use feedback, either. That's why I'm surprised this occurs.

[doc_guy]

Interesting. I didnt' realize that. How bizarre. I wonder why a webhelp search does that.

[mattf]

doc_guy,
The call is made upon searching presumably so that MadCap's Feedback Server can gather data about how users use your help. We don't use the feedback service either, but we had this issue a year ago with Flare 3.x, when one of my dev guys got the IE security message that Thack is talking about. We think it is code that is in place and gets activated if you sign up for the feedback service.

At the time, Rick Ferrell assured us no call was actually being made, but the story was actually more complex. No user info was being sent, but there was definitely a call going off the local machine, which was unacceptable for customers who use our help. Rick's team sent us several java scripts to drop into our directory, and one of those stopped the call from going out. Rick said it was a known issue and that a bug was logged, so we assumed this had been fixed and gave it no more thought, but since Thack has reported this happening in 4.2.1. we're now trying to find out if it really did get fixed or not. For us, this is NOT OK.

I'll report back if/when I learn more.

[mattf]

Thack,
This may be an irritating question, but are you SURE that no one on your team/in your company has entered a license and activated the Feedback Service? This would be done in the Target editor on the Feedback Service tab. If you're not using this service, I'd expect to see this whole section disabled.

[doc_guy]

Fascinating. Thanks for the info. Let's hope this gets resolved for all of us.

[Thack]

Yeah, I'm the only technical writer at HP's Application Security Center (developers of WebInspect and the Assessment Management Platform), so I'm certain we haven't entered into an agreement for feedback service. And the feedback service is not enabled in our Target settings.

[mattf]

Thack,
That bodes ill for us all (hand of Sauron, etc...). What I don't understand is why you're getting the message and we're not. I'm using 4.2.1 like you and creating WebHelp. I'd really like to find out if there are any calls going out from my help, but since we aren't getting the message, it would take a lot of testing (I have a smart dev here who has a way of finding out if an attempt to call the feedback server is being made, even without the IE7 messages, but it's not trivial). I emailed Rick and asked him if this bug actually got fixed last year (for Flare 4) but haven't heard back.

What is the repro for you getting the message? Is it something you could post in here or email me? I could try and we could compare, or it might become clear why you're Help is triggering the IE message when mine is not. This is a big issue for us, so it's worth a little time on our end to try to figure this out, even if we're not having the problem.

[mattf]

doc_guy,
[OT]
How do you get your avatar to change like that? Is it some kind of rotation on your pic host service? Cool.

[doc_guy]

doc_guy,
[OT]
How do you get your avatar to change like that? Is it some kind of rotation on your pic host service? Cool.

I'll reply via PM. If anybody else wants to know, PM me.

[Madcap Guru]

Create a new taret and see if that corrects this issue.

[LTinker68]

I think he meant to say "create a new target". Don't know what a taret is.