We found that after creating a link in the service catalog, if the link was somewhat long then it only worked sporadically. I opened a ticket with TD and was given this solution:
I was able to reproduce this issue and discovered that it was a result of the way in which we treat links to ensure that they are not harmful to the user or our system as a whole. I was able to paste the link you sent into www.bitly.com, which is a URL shortener, and that caused the link to be properly formatted and function correctly.
I was able to do this and it worked. I double checked with David Carter-Tod to make sure this was a legitimate way to fix the problem and was given this helpful information:
It’s legitimate and people often use these tools to simplify urls. https://bitly.com/ is one of the main standard tools people use. There is also http://goo.gl/ and http://tinyurl.com/. I like the latter because I can give them custom aliases.
I’d add that Buzz2 is funky with urls. There is a lot of redirection and what you see in your address bar isn’t necessarily the authoritative url. You can, for example, use https://buzz2.vccs.edu/teams/HRS/Shared%20Documents/Absence%20Management instead of the url you pasted.
I also posted this as a question on their site and got this answer back:
What's happening here is that our system is intentionally removing this link when the service is being saved. The reason for doing so is that it triggers a login form when clicked, which we see as a security vulnerability. While we obviously don't classify the content that you're attempting to post as a security risk, it is not possible to analyze these links on a one-off basis, so we must treat them all as being potentially dangerous. If possible, I would recommend posting a link that leads your user right up to the point where they need to sign in, rather than a page that triggers a login. I hope this helps add some clarity. If you have any other questions at all, don't hesitate to ask.
Sincerely,
Phil Curl
TeamDynamix