E-mail messages that are generated by the Alerts feature in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 contain an incorrect URL to the My Site personal site (843602)

SYMPTOMS

In a server farm deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that is configured to use shared services, you configure the Alerts feature for an area of the portal site. The Alerts feature sends you an e-mail message to notify you when content in that area changes. When you open the e-mail message, you notice that it contains an incorrect URL to the My Site personal site of the portal site. The name of the server is incorrectly displayed two times in the URL.

CAUSE

This issue occurs if the following conditions are true:

Your server farm is configured to use shared services.
The My Site personal site is hosted on a portal site that is not the parent portal site. That is, the portal site that hosts the My Site personal site is a child portal site. This child portal site uses shared services that are provided by the parent portal site.

In this situation, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 incorrectly assumes that the path of server in the URL is a relative path. Therefore, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 adds the server name to the URL two times.

RESOLUTION

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest SharePoint Portal Server 2003 service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.

Service pack information

This problem is corrected in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for SharePoint Portal Server 2003. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

889380 How to obtain the latest service pack for SharePoint Portal Server 2003

How to obtain the hotfix

This issue is fixed in the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 post-Service Pack 1 Hotfix Package that is dated September 17, 2004. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

883919 Description of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix package: September 17, 2004

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about how to deploy, configure, and administer SharePoint Portal Server 2003, see the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.