AssetPortalBrowser 403 Access Denied

Are You familiar with the following Screenshot:

The story:

Some user calls you up and tells you that when he wants to browse for an url, he gets this error page. As admin you can't reproduce the problem but with the reporters user account you can...

You say to yourself: No problem, It's jus a matter of giving the user some rights ... hmm but what rights?

The Solution:

Well for this, I make a separate Permission Level called "Browse". I do this because I don't want to mess with the existing levels, and I can decide in a flexible way who can browse what. This Permission Level has 3 Site Permissions flagged:

• Browse Directories - Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces
• View Pages - View pages in a web site
• Open - Allow users to open a Web site, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container

For the people who have a Dutch installation:

• Zoeken in mappen - Bestanden en Mappen van een website inventariseren met SharePoint Designer en Web DAV interfaces
• Pagina's bekijken - Pagina's weergeven op een website
• Openen - Stelt gebruikers in staat een website, lijst of map te openen zodat ze toegang hebben to items in dat onderdeel

You're feeling pretty good about yourself by now, so you apply the Permission Level to the group/person reporting the problem on that site. Problem fixed !?!

Or isn't it? Are you sure you applied the permission to the correct site?
There is a small gotcha here. SharePoint is so user friendly that it saves the last selected browse location on a per user basis. When you don't fill in the Selected URL textbox and just click on browse, SharePoint looks up that URL and tries to display the content.
Now if for any reason, the user lost rights on that site (maybe he moved to a different team), he is going to get the 403 Error.
A simple workaround here is this:

1. Fill in the url of the current page in the textbox, and then click browse.
2. You will see that Location (URL) points to the current page
3. Click OK
4. You've just overwritten the old invalid url! Job done, Go have yourself a cup of Tea/Coffee

Let me know if this helps any of you.

Greets Steven