Mr V's SharePoint Blog

Workflow does not automatically start when emailing a SharePoint Group

2011-02-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

I recently created a simple workflow for an SP2010 site using SharePoint Designer 2010 which emailed a SharePoint Group when any document was uploaded to a specific document library. I found that for certain users the workflow would not start and nothing was logged in the workflow history list.

It seems that if the user uploading the document cannot see the membership of a SharePoint group they cannot resolve the email addresses of users within that group. The way around this is to edit the SharePoint group settings and set the "View Membership" setting to "Everyone" for the SharePoint group being emailed in the workflow. You can do this by going to Site Settings > People and Groups > Groups from the left hand navigation bar and editing the group in question.

This was also the case in MOSS 2007 and the problem and solution are described here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/spdsupport/archive/2008/06/16/how-to-fix-sharepoint-designer-created-workflow-that-periodically-stops-and-does-not-send-emails.aspx

Query Server Not Responding

2010-12-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

I Recently installed the "republished" October Cumulative Updates for SharePoint 2010. I then discovered that Search was not working. Crawl was going on forever and I was getting the message "Query Server not responding" therefore no propogation was happening . All my Search components were installed on a single server at this point. The Crawl component was also reporting a "Recovering" status. I added a new Query component and deleted the original one but this did not fix the problem.

I then remembered that I had seen something similar in SharePoint 2007 where updating the farm with a cumulative update would cause the Adobe PDF iFilter settings to be lost from the registry which in turn would break search. I have blogged this previously http://mrvsharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/03/moss-february-2009-cumulative-updates.html

It seems that this is still the case with SharePoint 2010 and certain Cumulative updates. I went back and added the PDF iFilter settings back into the registry (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2293357), rebooted the server, did a full crawl and it all worked again.

FIM Service Stops after Import and User Profile Synch Connection Disappears

2010-11-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

I opened a support call with Microsoft recently where miiserver.exe would fault after an incremental import every night which would cause the FIM services to stop. This would result in the User Profile Synch connection disappearing. Restarting the FIM services would fix the problem but obviously this wasn't ideal.

A description of the issue is as follows:

At 1am every night the Incremental User Profile Import runs. Following this the FIM Service enters a "Stopped" state. Inspection of the System Log indicates:

EVENT ID: 1000

Faulting application name: miiserver.exe, version: 4.0.2450.11, time stamp: 0x4c3e8067 Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bdfe0 Exception code: 0xe053534f Fault offset: 0x000000000000aa7d Faulting process id: 0x%9 Faulting application start time: 0x%10 Faulting application path: %11 Faulting module path: %12 Report Id: %13

The fix as suggested by Microsoft was as follows:

“Please add the following line (highlighted) to the miisserver.exe.config (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service\Bin) and see if it helps….restart the FIM services (through services.msc) and re-run incremental sync."

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>

<section name="resourceManagementClient"

type="Microsoft.ResourceManagement.WebServices.Client.ResourceManagementClientSection, Microsoft.ResourceManagement"/>

</configSections>

</startup>

</dependentAssembly>

</assemblyBinding>

</runtime>

</configuration>

An explanation for the line that resolves the problem can be found here at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms149581.aspx and is due to the stack size.

Event ID 3 ForeFront Identity Manager Error

2010-10-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

After applying the August 2010 Cumulative Update for SharePoint 2010, I started to see the following error in Application Event Logs around every 30 seconds. They occurred on the server that was running the FIM Services:

EVENT ID 3

Provider: ForeFront Identity Manager

Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Service: Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.WorkflowManagerException: Forefront Identity Management Service does not support workflows of type 'Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Activities.SequentialWorkflow, Microsoft.ResourceManagement, Version=4.0.2450.9, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'. at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.ActivateHost(ResourceManagementWorkflowDefinition workflowDefinition) at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.WorkflowManager.StartWorkflowInstance(Guid workflowInstanceIdentifier, KeyValuePair`2[] additionalParameters

After a call to Microsoft I was told that they are "aware of the issue" and a hotfix and associated KB article will be released very soon. The product group stated that these "errors are benign".

Verdict: Harmless but annoying

People Search Results adds a :80 Suffix to results on an External Facing Site

2009-07-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Had an issue where doing a People Search by connecting to my external facing SharePoint site via ISA Server 2006 on say https://extranet.domain.com was returning People search results suffixed with a ":80" so for example People Search results done externally for a particular person would return something like:

https://mysite.domain.com:80/person.aspx?guid=08AE56E0-EA14 etc which does not resolve externally

Internally everything is fine so browsing to http://intranet and performing a People Search returns the correct URL for a person as http://mysite/person.aspx?guid=08AE56 etc which is correct

AAM Settings are:

Intranet Web Application

Default Zone: http://intranet

Extranet Zone: https://extranet.domain.com

MySite Web Application

Default Zone: http://mysite

Extranet Zone: https://mysite.domain.com

This could be caused by using the same web application for both port 80 and 443 access and tests showed that this was not caused by ISA 2006 but I managed to resolve this on the external side by adding a Link Translation mapping in my ISA Server Extranet publishing rule that maps https://mysite.domain.com:80 to https://mysite.domain.com

This works fine but in environments where ISA is not used it may be prudent to extend the Web App so that you have a dedicated SSL web application which may solve the issue (haven't tested this but a colleague has this scenario and doesn't have the problem.

Alternatively, I also found the following article which resolves the issue by editing the People Search Core Results Web Part and the Search High Confidence Results Web Part.

http://blogs.technet.com/victorbutuza/archive/2008/10/20/how-to-remove-something-the-port-from-the-url-as-returned-in-the-search-results-searchresults-aspx.aspx

NLB IP Address does not appear in IIS on Windows 2008

2009-07-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Had an interesting issue as follows - I configured Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) on my 2 SharePoint 2007 Web Front End Servers on Windows Server 2008 SP2 64Bit and then proceeded to assign IP addresses to my Main Portal Web Application and the MySite Web Application (both web apps are on port 80 so using IP addresses to distinguish them apart rather than host headers). The weird thing is that unlike Windows 2003 NLB in Windows 2008 your load balanced Virtual IP does not appear in the list of IP addresses you can bind to the web application. Looking around on various forums it seems that this is some kind of a bug on Server 2008. A workaround for now which I used is to manually type in the Load balanced IP address in IIS when selecting from a list of IP addresses to bind to the web application.

As you can see in the example below the 172.16.0.50 is my load balanced address but does not appear in the list of IP Addresses in the drop down list so I have typed it in manually and this works:

Access Denied messages when performing an Index Crawl and Event 2436 Warnings

2009-06-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

Had an issue recently where I could not Crawl a SharePoint site after setting off a full crawl of my default content source and was receiving the following message "Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content."

I was also getting Warnings with Event ID 2436 stating that Access was Denied.

I discovered that this was down to the Loopback problem described in KB896861 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 and was caused by the site URL not having the NetBIOS name of my SharePoint server, e.g. my server was called MOSS01 but I was trying to crawl my site collection at http://portal.domain.com

I followed the instructions for "Method 1" in the article which are as follows:

To specify the host names that are mapped to the loopback address and can connect to Web sites on your computer, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0
Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IISAdmin service.

I started another full crawl after an IISRESET but still received the same errors. I eventually resolved it by resetting all crawled content from the SSP Administration pages as follows:

SSP > Search Administration > Reset all crawled content

This allowed me to perform a full crawl without any errors.

Uninstall Issues with MOSS 2007, WSS Tracing Service Stuck in "Stopping" state

2009-06-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

Had a scenario where I needed to uninstall SharePoint 2007 from a server (single MOSS server holding all roles, separate SQL server) as the customers application of SP2 had been unsuccessful so they were getting search service and SSP errors. Also the Search Administration option was not appearing in the SSP (which is part of the Infrastructure updates and should also appear when SP2 is applied). I recreated the SSP and Search Administration appeared but I was still getting lots of Search and SSP errors. In the end I didn’t trust the implementation anymore and decided to reinstall SharePoint cleanly.

Uninstalling SharePoint was unsuccessful as the WSS Tracing service could not be stopped and was stuck in a “Stopping” state. I had no choice but to cancel uninstall and was prompted to reboot the server. Rebooting the server and trying to uninstall again prompted a message saying “Product Installer could not be found..” I could see that the SharePoint services such as WSS Timer, Office SharePoint Search etc were still present in the services console (in a disabled state). So I now had a semi-uninstalled SharePoint server.

There are many articles on how to uninstall SharePoint manually which involve removing registry keys etc but in the end I resolved the uninstall issue by installing MOSS with SP1, it allowed me to do this even though it had not cleanly uninstalled the previous MOSS version on the server. After installing I cancelled the running of the SharePoint Config Wizard and went to add/remove programs and uninstalled the MOSS with SP1 I had just put on. This allowed a clean uninstall of SharePoint. This then allowed me to install MOSS on a "clean" server.

Restoring a Site Collection based on the Publishing Portal template loses logo and Top Nav Bar Colour

2009-06-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

I created a vanilla site collection using the Publishing Portal template. Backed it up using stsadm –o backup command line then restored it over the same site collection using the stsadm –o restore command line. This resulted in the site Master Page changing appearance as follows:

Before (Vanilla newly created):

After (backed up and restored over vanilla):

As you can see the Top Navigation bar is white and the logo in the top left has disappeared.

I managed to resolve this by opening the Master Page in SharePoint Designer, not checking it our, altering it or saving it, JUST opening it. This fixed the issue. I am running MOSS 2007 SP2. I tried this on another SP2 system and got the same results.

Very strange that just looking at the Master Page in SPD 2007 fixes this.

Remote File Share Access Via SharePoint

2009-05-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

I have been looking at a number of remote file access solutions for a customer which allow users to access files located on a file share via a web part in SharePoint both internally and externally. Remote file access via SharePoint is also required to users home directories.

I am currently looking at two Solutions, the first one is a licensed set of two web parts - My Shared Documents & My Documents from http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/ . I started with the My Shared Documents web part which allows users access to a shared folder on a file server. This is fairly easy to set up once you deploy the soluution as you edit an XML file with the UNC path of the file shares you want to make available and add it to the root of you SharePoint front ends. You can then drop the web part to any site. The web part also allows you to configure whether users can write back to the share or if it is read only.

The My Documents web part is even easier to configure as it picks up the users home directory settings from AD so there is no configuration of the XML file required. The My Shared Documents web part is shown below:

Notice that the context menu is very MOSS even though all the folders shown are on a file share on another server.

I also found a free web part from http://www.hezser.de/blog/archive/2008/03/30/access-fileserver-data-via-sharepoint.aspx that does the same thing but this one is security trimmed so you can point it to a share and it will only show folders and files you have access to. I have not had a chance to fully test this web part and will post an update once I have. I have found that the configuration options compared to the SalamanderSoft solution are very limited. Meanwhile, here is a screenshot:

As you can see this has a nice tree view.

MOSS February 2009 Cumulative Updates Break 64bit Adobe iFilter v9

2009-03-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

After updating a customers MOSS farm with the February 2009 Cumulative Updates and performing a full crawl of my default content source I found that PDF files were no longer being indexed. I discovered that the updates had overwritten a registry key that the Adobe iFilter 64bit deployment guide asks you to change and therefore had changed it back to the default key.

To fix this issue perform the following on your Index Server:

Run Regedit by browsing to c:\Windows\system32\regedt32.exe and double-clicking it.

While still in RegEdit, within the left-side tree, browse to: \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf

Ensure that the values match the following as shown.
Default = {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

Backup Exec Remote Agent stops when restoring a site

2009-03-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

Had an issue when using the Symantec Backup Exec Agent 12.5 for SharePoint 2007. The remote agent was installed on the SQL Server and the SharePoint server. When we backed up the farm using the agent everything was fine. When we tried to restore a single item everything was fine. When we tried to restore a site the Backup Exec Remote Agent would stop on the SQL Server and the following errors would appear in the event log:

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Application ErrorEvent Category: (100)Event ID: 1000 Date: 11/03/2009Time: 13:59:47User: N/AComputer: UKOSPSQLTEST01Description:Faulting application beremote.exe, version 12.5.2213.0, faulting module bedssps3.dll, version 12.5.2213.0, fault address 0x00000000000483df.

This issue was finally resolved by going into Central Administration > Application Management > Policy for Web Application and then adding the Backup Exec Service account with Full control permissions to the Web Application containing the site you are trying to restore.

Going into Search Settings in SSP is very slow

2009-03-04T04:08:00.000-08:00

When accessing Search Settings in the SSP Admin it was taking around 40 seconds to a minute to access the settings page. The same was true when accesssing things like Content Sources, in other words search related stuff. Now i'm not sure whether this is related to the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 issue I blogged about previously here:
http://mrvsharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/02/when-you-to-search-settings-you-get.html

I eventually found an article on the web that alluded to a similar problem in a .Net application where in there case the application was trying to download a certificate revocation list from Microsoft. You can read about it here http://www.dotnetscraps.com/dotnetscraps/post/ASPNET-Response-time-is-very-slow-for-the-first-request-to-application-(452b-seconds).aspx

I then realised that the account I was using to log in to my servers was not permitted access to download files from Microsoft as I was on a customer site and this was part of their security policy. Once access to the internet was negotiated for the account the Search Settings issue resolved itself. As to what exactly it was trying to download is still a mystery.

When you to Search settings you get "Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream." and you get Event 6482 errors

2009-02-19T01:18:00.000-08:00

Came across an interesting problem that I had not seen before. After implementing a MOSS farm (2 x WFE/Search, 1 Index) and trying to get to Search settings in the SSP I was presented with the error

"Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream."

Looking in Event Viewer I was getting an Event 6482 error every minute as follows:

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Office SharePoint ServerEvent Category: Office Server Shared Services Event ID: 6482Date: 19/02/2009Time: 09:39:43User: N/AComputer: UKOSPWFE01Description:Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (7eb931e4-0269-447d-acec-dabe2f151f33).
Reason: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.
Techinal Support Details:System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. ---> System.IO.IOException: Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream. at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReadFrame(Byte[] buffer, Int32 readBytes, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst, Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult lazyResult) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Net.TlsStream.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult result) at System.Net.TlsStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) at System.Net.PooledStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) at System.Net.ConnectStream.WriteHeaders(Boolean async) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.RunOnServer[T](CodeToRun`1 remoteCode, CodeToRun`1 localCode, Boolean useCurrentSecurityContext, Int32 versionIn) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi..ctor(WellKnownSearchCatalogs catalog, SearchSharedApplication application) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

I had never seen this before so at first I thought it was something to do with the December cumulative updates but googling it I found this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962928 which goes on to explain that you get this problem when the following conditions are true:

The server that is running Office SharePoint Server 2007 has the query role in a server farm. (yep, two of them do)
The roles of the query server and the index server are not on the same server in the server farm. (yep, 1 index server and the query roles are on the two front ends)

The server farm was updated with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1). (yep, did this and this was the likely cause of the problem according to the MS article)

According to the article this causes the self-issued certificate that is used by the Office Server Web Services to become corrupted.

The solution involved downloading the IIS 6 Resource Kit and also applying an update for the .NT Framework 3.5 SP1. Full details taken from the article are as follows:

Stop the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Run, type cmd , and then click OK.
At the command prompt, type net stop osearch, and then press ENTER.
Type exit to exit the command prompt.
Download and install the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools. To obtain the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499)

On each server in the farm that has Office SharePoint 2007 installed, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type cmd , and then click OK.
At the command prompt, type selfssl /s:951338967 /v:1000, and then press ENTER. Where 951338967 is the default ID of the Office Server Web Services certificate and
1000 is the number of days that the certification will be valid.
Start the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. To do this, follow these steps:
At the command prompt, type net start osearch, and then press ENTER.
Type exit to exit the command prompt.
Download and install the following update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
959209 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209/ ) An update for the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 is available

Now I did all of this but still had the same problem so stopped and started the Search Service from within Central Administration, Services on Server and this eventually fixed it.

SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Resources

2009-02-13T08:10:00.000-08:00

I'm currently prepping for a MOSS Disaster Recovery session with a customer and came across the following material on Technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/events/bb530366.aspx

Whilst the training material goes through the basics of the Recycle Bin etc what I found particlularly useful was the PowerPoint slide deck as it lists Pro's and Con's of the different approaches - SharePoint Native backup vs SQL Backup.

The PowerPoint also depicts failover methods like SQL Clustering and Log shipping also listing Pro's and Con's of each one. The only downside is that it does not mention SQL mirroring.

Get the PowerPoint from here http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/b/1/ab13fe7e-2b58-4173-9a7e-f3140e215181/DSK-106_PPT_and_Transcript.exe

Error changing SMTP settings in IIS Manager after configuring incoming email in the farm

2008-10-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

Came across one of those bizarre scenarios where you apply a hotfix to resolve an issue and it causes a separate issue.

After configuring incoming mail settings on a MOSS farm I started to get an unspecified SMTP error when I tried changing SMTP settings from within IIS Manager. Further investigation revealed that the issue was caused by my applying the hotfix (KB946517) to resolve Event ID 6398, 7076 and 6432 errors.

The problem is described in detail here on the MSDN blog http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2008/04/14/issue-smtp-configuration-unspecified-error.aspx

and the subsequent Microsoft Knowledgebase article is here http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/KB/950426

A hotfix is now available from Microsoft which resolves this issue.

Clicking on a user clickable link does not redirect to the Person.aspx page but stays on the Userdisp.aspx page instead

2008-10-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

I came across this problem recently where clicking on a user's clickable link, for example in the column "Modified By" took you to the userdisp.aspx page but instead of redirecting you to your MOSS profile page (person.aspx) which should happen if you are using MOSS as opposed to WSS 3.0 you are left at the userdisp.aspx page.

There are a number of thoughts on why this happens and each of these are published around the web ranging from the redirect getting confused by AAM settings to a bug where your portal FQDN and your MySites FQDN do not share the same root URL (e.g http://intranet/ and http://mysite/). I have tested this and found this problem does not occur if for example you have the following URL's http://intranet/ and http://intranet:8088/ being the MySite URL. This would seem to support the "Same Root URL" theory.

They way this was resolved by myself and my colleague Ajay Chauhan (http://sharepointetcetera.blogspot.com/) who was working on this particular project with me was to set up a Portal Site Connection on the Site Collection(s) that have this problem and the MySite host. Now this isn't ideal but we specified the name of the connection as a full stop to make it as inconspicuous as possible to users (as shown below). This full stop does appear in the breadcrumb trail on the top left hand of pages though.

Update:

Looking around I believe this may be resolved in SP2.

More details can be found in this blog by Larry Kuhn http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/LKuhn/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=47

How to get a link to go back to the parent site after you have deleted a site

2008-09-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Probably not that vital in the scheme of things but annoying enough that someone will ask for it.

Problem: When you delete a site you don’t get a link to go back to the parent site (in fact no links at all)

Solution: http://sharepointsherpa.com/2008/04/08/sharepoint-2007-back-link-after-deleting-a-site

Backup Exec not backing up Web Apps with Parentheses

2008-07-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

A little while back I came upon an issue where a customer was using the Backup Exec agent for SharePoint 2007 and experiencing an error message when adding a MOSS farm to the backup selection. The error message you receive is:

An error was encountered while attempting to browse the contents of SiteName (xx)\Content-DB 1 (SQLServerName\SQLInstanceName\DatabaseName). A network connection to the server could not be established.

The error occurs if you use Parentheses () in your web application names. Further details are provided in the following article: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/294620.htm

In other words if you have a Web Application called “SharePoint (MySite)” and one called “SharePoint (Portal)”. Backup exec will not back this up.

Symantec claim this issue is fixed with the release of version 12.5 of Backup Exec.

Interesting points from the SDPS Deployment and Customisation Plan

2008-07-02T14:41:00.000-07:00

Just been reading through the SDPS Deployment and Customisation Plan and picked up on the following stuff. Just wondered how many people are doing this already? I always make the SSP service and SSP App Pool identity separate accounts and was not aware of disabling NetBios over TCP/IP on WFE’s and Index Servers.

SSP App Pool Identity and Service account recommended to be the same account
NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT ) support should be disabled on all network cards on the Web Front End and Index servers.
Avoid more than eight Application Pools per farm

Going into Page Settings from Page Editing Toolbar on a restored site collection using Collaboration Portal template gives "Unexpected Error"

2008-04-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

I backed up a site collection which used the Collaboration Portal and then restored it over a new site collection using stsadm -o restore and the -overwrite switch. I then found that going into page settings from the Page Editing Toolbar on the portal home page gave an "unexpected error". After searching the web I found that this is caused by the Page Layout URL not being correct or somehow becoming unnattached for the page. The page will load but Page Settings will give an error.

The fix I implemented was using one of Gary Lapointes enhanced STSADM Extensions command http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/08/stsadm-commands_09.html:

stsadm -o fixpublishingpagespagelayouturl

"Page has been modified by another user" error when sites have been moved between site collections

2008-04-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

If you move sites by using stsadm -o export or backup a site collection and restore it over another site collection you may find that editing the quick launch navigation within team sites will give you the following error: "The page has been modified by another author " where time is the exact time in which I have pressed Ok to submit the changes. You will also notice that the HEADINGS in the quick launch still point to the old URL but when you try to edit the heading you get the error above.

I found a fix to reset the corrupted headings but it is not ideal and goes as follows:

Remove all the lists under the corrupted heading
Remove corrupted heading
Go to the list settings and add a removed list to the quick launch

This does not happen all the time and may go unnoticed unless you click on a heading of course.

MLG Web Parts, SLK and Parent Observer Role on a 64Bit Platform

2007-11-29T09:13:00.000-08:00

I have installed the version of SLK (includes the Observer role) that comes with the MLG Refresh Web Parts and it seems to work fine on a 64bit platform (I have tested with Solitaire and a Class Server 4.0 resource).

I have got the parent access working where parents can view their childs assignments. I followed the Microsoft Learning Gateway Refresh Deployment guide but there is one thing that is not mentioned and that is, you have to give the Parents group Observer rights to the Class Sites that the student is a member of so that Students Assignments appear in the My Childrens Assignments web part on the parent site. Assignments also appear in Teachers, Students and Parents Planners.

When adding SharePoint calendars to be viewed via the My Planner Web Part you may receive an 'Error 401 Unauthorised'

2007-08-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

The My Planner web part which ships with the Microsoft Learning Gateway Refresh package allows you to display your Exchange calendar and also SharePoint Calendars such as a school calendar or staff calendar,

To ensure that SharePoint calendars can be viewed by the 'My Planner' web part do the following:

Go to Central Administration, Application Management
Under 'Application Security' go to 'Authentication Providers'
Select the Web Application that hosts the School Site
Under 'IIS Authentication Settings' clear the 'Integrated Windows Authentication' check box and select the 'Basic Authentication' check box

This process is not mentioned in the deployment guide.

MLG Refresh web parts give an error when using SLK v1.1

2007-08-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

If you install the SLK release 1.1 and then the current MLG Refresh Web parts you will receive the following error on pages containing the My Planner Web Part: ERROR: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.LearningComponents.Storage, Version=1.0.799.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=abc4ed181d6d6a94' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I believe this is because the web part is looking for an older version of the SLK assembly file mentioned above. The only way I could solve this was to remove the new SLK and install version 1.0.799.

In any case if you install the version of SLK that comes as part of the MLG Refresh package you shouldn't have any problems.

"Value does not fall within the expected range" when a user attempts to create a MySite for the first time

2007-07-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

Had a wierd issue on a customer site when I tried to create a MySite for the first time I got a an error stating

"There has been an error creating the personal site. Contact your site administrator for more information."

Yes I know, very unhelpful. Looking in Event Viewer I came across an Event which contained

"The following exception occured: Value does not fall within the expected range. "

This issue is highlighted in the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937207 and a hotfix is available.

The strange thing is that it happened to me twice and with the same conditions, which were that I did not create a separate web application for MySite but instead put it on the same web application as the SSP. Now I know this is against best practice but in the first instance I did it as part of the Microsoft Learning Gateway 2007 Refresh solution, following the deployment guide to the letter even though it was asking me to do stuff like put the MySite's portal on the same web application as the SSP. In the second instance it was a Microsoft Virtual Server sandpit which I had to build in a rush.

I still haven't found out what causes this.

Email sent to Mail Enabled Lists is bounced back by Exchange

2007-06-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

Whilst on a customer site when mail enabling a document library called TestDocs the SMTP address for the contact created in AD was coming up as for example TestDocs@MOSS02.vsa.domain (name of my MOSS Server). Mail sent to this library was bouncing back as Exchange was trying to send it through its default SMTP connector and to a smart host which of course could not relay for MOSS02.vsa.domain

To get around this, once the list or document library is mail enabled a SMTP connector needs to be created in Exchange System Manager that allows mail to be routed to the SharePoint server. To allow this list to receive mail from external users you need to assign it a second SMTP address for the mail domain.

Viewing Site Usage Reports gives http error or you are prompted to logon again

2007-06-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

When viewing site usage reports you are asked to logon 3 times and this fails unless you log on as the application pool account or alternatively you get a http error. There is a hotfix available for the 32bit version of MOSS outlined in the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913384

Alternativeley if you log on to each MOSS Front end server at least once with your application pool account for the web application where you are viewing the site usage reports it solves the issue. This is caused by a weird ASP error where the account running the process needs a user profile on the MOSS server.

When you try to create a new schedule or change an existing schedule for the content source in MOSS you get an "Access Denied" Error

2007-05-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

This occurs when the WSS_WPG group account does not have the correct permissions to the %windir%\Tasks folder on the computer that is running the Office SharePoint Server 2007 indexing service. Follow instructions on the link below to fix this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926959

Issues with Gradual Upgrade to MOSS from the Learning Gateway

2007-05-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

I tried to do a gradual upgrade (making a copy of the existing content DB and running an upgrade on it) to MOSS on an existing Learning Gateway 2003 and it kept failing until I eventually removed the 16 LG web parts using STSADM. Unfortunately this broke a lot of the sites even though the upgrade procedure went through. The sites based on the LG templates were giving errors in MOSS mainly due to the 'Welcome' code embedded in the page. Also I found that document libraries in LG pages came across as Data Connection Libraries. Don't know if this is a one off but haven't had time to test it further as I am on a customer site. I have now created a new MOSS farm and recreated the LG site structure. I will be migrating document libraries manually.

Update:

The conclusion I have come to is that there is no upgrade path from Learning Gateway 2003 to MOSS 2007.

Multiple documents uploaded to a document library configured with minor versions and enforced check-out are draft and checked out

2007-04-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

When uploading a large number of documents to a document library in a migration scenario it may be a good idea to ensure that versioning and enforced check-out is disabled on the destination document library otherwise all documents will be checked-out to the account uploading the documents and files will have a minor version (draft). You can enable versioning and enforced check-out once all files are uploaded.

No Adobe PDF documents are returned in the search results when you search a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site

2007-04-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

This is for a WSS 3.0 implementation only. Detailed instructions can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927675

If the WSS 3.0 site already has PDF documents before you installed the Adobe iFilter on the server, you will have to modify a property of the existing PDF documents on the server so that WSS can subsequently crawl it.

SharePoint Learning Kit requires specific permissions for the SLK Database or you get an error performing E-Learning Actions

2007-03-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Had an issue where having successfully installed the SharePoint Learning Kit (v1) and created the SLK database my Application Pool account for the Web Application where SLK was activated did not have access to the SLK database. The error appears when you try to use the SLK E-Learning Actions option on a resource.

SLK reports "An error occurred. More information may be available in the server event log." You may also see

"Cannot open database "SharePointLearningKit" requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user '".

This is resolved by assigning the Application Pool Account for the Web Application in question the following rights to the SLK database in SQL Management Studio:
Db_datareader
Db_datawriter
LearningStore