SharePoint 2010: People Search Results Not Showing on SSL secured portal

We started using SSL on our company portal at StoneShare and the people search results stopped showing up.

After checking the log files, we realized this was caused by a top level error where the sps3:// protocol handler could not browse to the my sites anymore. Essentially due to the new SSL address the default people search handler could not find the My Sites.

The fix is to modify the search content source crawl addresses to use change the following:

sps3://[root level address]

to this:

sps3s://[root level address]

The extra “s”in the address simply tells SharePoint to use the SSL protocol when the people search index is being built on that content source.

Hope that helps,

Nick

SharePoint 2010 Error: Document ID Not Set

Had an issue on a client machine where although Document IDs were enabled on the site collection, no IDs were being applied to the uploaded files.

SharePoint assigns these IDs as part of a timer job that runs in Central Administration. To fix this you will need to run the following two jobs:

Document ID enable/disable job

and

Document ID assignment job

for each site collection where this is not working. You can view the timer jobs in Central admin from this page:

/_admin/ScheduledTimerJobs.aspx

Hope that helps!

SharePoint 2010: Search Service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component

Had a strange Search error in a new SharePoint 2010 farm:

The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component 'bae8d161-c132-4570-aa0d-57baf6cf9d9b' in search application 'Search Service Application 1' is in a good state and try again."

I was unable to start any crawls as a result.

The search services were all started correctly but in the Application Services window it showed “Error”. The fix for me was to click on the Search Service Application name in the list of Application Services, choose Properties on the ribbon above, and change the Application Pool to another one (in my case, from SharePoint Web Services Default app pool to SharePoint Web Services System).

Hope it helps someone.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 “exceeds the lookup column threshold”

While trying to sync to a SharePoint site using SharePoint Workspace 2010, you may bump into the following strange error: "The query cannot be completed because the number of lookup columns it contains exceeds the lookup column threshold"

This is due to SharePoint’s new resource throttling settings for managing large lists. There is an easy fix in Central Administration.

Go to Central Administration and then browse to Application Management > Manage Web Application.  Select the web application you need.

In General Settings choose Resource Throttling. Set the value in the List View Lookup Threshold textbox to a higher value (equal to or greater than the number of site columns you are using on the list where you saw the error).

I bumped into this with Workspace but this error may appear for other client applications / systems that use SharePoint 2010 as a platform, and are trying to lookup lists that have more site columns than the throttle setting.

How To: In Place Record Views in SharePoint 2010

One of the great new features in SharePoint 2010 is the In Place Record declaration. This allows a user to apply Records management to any file in a document library.

To enable this feature, you must first activate the In Place Records feature in your site collection. Next, for a given library, go to its settings and choose “Record Declaration Settings”. Choose “Always allow the manual declaration of records”.

 

This will allow the Declare Record button to appear in the ribbon.

Now that you have a collection of records and documents in the library, you will probably wish to sort them using views. I like to create two extra views: Active (which means all active documents or “non-records” and All Records (which means anything declared as a record).

It is easy to create the views once you know the steps. The following steps come from my colleague Hoking:

To make the views, you need to first enable in-place records management in the library settings.  Then you need to actually declare 1 document as a record manually - this is in order to get the "Declared Record" field visible in the create/modify view pages.  For the Active view, filter on Declared Record equal to [blank], as in don't enter a value for the field.  For the All Records view, set the filter on Declared Record not equal to [blank].

Hope that helps!

MOSS 2007 Service Pack 2 Backup May Lock and Remove Site Actions Options

We had a very strange error suddenly appear on a client’s site last week – we got the following email:

Anyone know what's happening with site actions menu on the top level site of [the website]? I have limited menu options - i.e. there is no site actions, edit page, create page, create site, etc.

Our support team looked into this and figured out the following:

The issue appeared on the top-level site collection due it being set to “Read-Only” after a backup locked the site and then failed to release it. Changing it to “Not locked” immediately restored the menus.

This is what our guys had to say:

In SP2, Microsoft added a feature to STSADM to automatically lock the site collection during a backup:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287967(office.12).aspx

“In Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Products and Technologies, site collections are automatically locked as read-only before a backup process occurs. Therefore, there is no need to use the Setsitelock: Stsadm operation (Windows SharePoint Services) operation. If you do not want site collections to be locked as read-only, you must specify the nositelock parameter that is available in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2 (SP2).”

It is likely that some kind of error or exception interrupted the scheduled backup, and as a result the lock was not removed.

Here is the page link: http://[your address]/_admin/sitequota.aspx.

Hope that helps others out!

SharePoint 2010 Bug: Cannot Rename Title On Validated List

My colleague David has noticed what seems to be a bug in SharePoint 2010 on lists that have validation applied to them. If you try to rename the title, it will cause an error. The "fix" is to remove the validation and then the renaming can occur as normal. We're doing some more testing to see if there is a workaround. It would be a shame as we are already using and enjoying the list validation functionality.

I'll update if we find a workaround.

Familiar Faces at the SharePoint Summit 2010

Just got back from attending the SharePoint Summit 2010 in Montreal with my business partner Keith Carter.

One of the nice things about the summit (apart from being in Montreal, which is always fun – awful traffic excepted) was that I saw a lot of familiar faces.

There were a lot of vendors I knew from my days on the SharePoint trade show floors – folks like Gail Shlansky, Yancy Lent, and Ken Allen from Axceler, Dave Seaman from Syntergy, Michael Potter from Nintex, and Tony Lanni from AvePoint.

Other familiar faces included speakers like Ruven Gotz and Wouter van Vugt.

This year, I had a happy surprise - a lot of my former colleagues from Parks Canada were present. We had worked together in the Office 12 TAP days when SharePoint 2007 was about to release and it was  a nice reunion.

Like any summit, it was also a chance to meet new folks. Before the summit kicked off, there was a dinner for all the speakers at the Greek restaurant Restaurant Ilios, organized by Danny Boulanger and Alain Lord. We had some nice chats about SharePoint, Holland, and Canadian culture (it turns out we do have one!).

There were a lot of Canadian government folks at the conference – it seemed like a majority of the participants in fact were public servants. There were some interesting chats about the challenges of buying and deploying SharePoint in the government.

On Wednesday I presented on migrating to SharePoint 2010.The interest in upgrading to SharePoint 2010 was high, so the room was full. I’m embedding my slide presentation below:

SharePoint Summit 2010 - Stress Free Migration

View more presentations from Nick Kellett.

It was a good conference and I look forward to the next one!

SharePoint 2010 Beta Migration Gotcha – SSP Errors

One of the big changes to SharePoint 2010 is the replacement of the Shared Service Provider concept with a series of application services.

Essentially instead of a central managed “pool” or bundle of application services such as Excel, User Profile, Search, and BDC, the new model allows farm administrators to turn on or off (and separately configure) an infinite variety of services that can add extra functionality to their farm.

This is a much more flexible model.

This new model does cause one problem if you are doing “in-place” migrations of existing 2007 portals to 2010 using the beta bits. For some reason, the Shared Service Provider database does get upgraded to 2010 but it causes a number of portal errors while it does so.

You’ll find these in your upgrade log file, in the 14 hive. These vary from User Profile errors to “certificate” errors. One common error looks like this:

[OWSTIMER] [UserProfileSharedResourceProvider12Sequence] [ERROR] [1/8/2010 9:23:42 AM]: Action 14.0.1.0 of Microsoft.Office.Server.Upgrade.UserProfileSharedResourceProvider12Sequence failed.

[OWSTIMER] [UserProfileSharedResourceProvider12Sequence] [ERROR] [1/8/2010 9:23:42 AM]: Inner Exception: There are no online service instances for this application.

The “fix” is to delete all Shared Service Providers from your 2007 farm BEFORE doing the in place upgrade. The sts command to do this is:

stsadm -o deletessp -title SSP -force

This isn’t a big deal - this is only a beta problem.I very much doubt this will be the case in RTM which is due next month.

Hope that helps.

SharePoint 2010 Migration – Stress Free!

SharePoint 2010 Migration Seminar

In my new role as Chief Technical Officer at StoneShare Inc., a Canadian SharePoint solutions firm, I am currently working on SharePoint 2010 migration options, and will be presenting a seminar on migration at several different events over the next month.

This topic will be focused on administrators and business users who want to understand migration paths and how best to prepare for a 2010 move.

I will do a live demo of an in-place SharePoint 2010 Upgrade - not for the faint of heart :) - and discuss the various options, useful tools, what sort of planning is required, and actual technical steps to get a great migration result.

I’ll be publishing my slides once the seminar is complete. Here’s an overview of the demonstration:

Migrate to SharePoint 2010 - Stress Free!

Considering migrating your current SharePoint environment to SharePoint 2010?  Worried about what’s involved and how to manage it?  Don’t let it become a headache!  This presentation will discuss some common sense business and technical approaches to take away the pain, and help you deliver your SharePoint 2010 migration project on time and on budget.

Topics Covered:

• A little history: The SharePoint 2003 to 2007 Migration experience
• Common Migration Pains
• SharePoint 2010 Technical Changes
• Governance
• Migration Options
• Migration tools and utilities
• The Migration Process
• Recommendations

I will be presenting at the following events:

SetFocus SharePoint 2010 Seminar

This is part of a four-part series of seminars on SharePoint 2010 that SetFocus is putting on.

When: Thursday, March 18 at 1 – 4 PM PST

Where: Online webinar. You can register for free here:http://www.setfocus.net/marketing/spseminarseries.aspx 

 

Microsoft Ottawa Federal SharePoint User’s Group

This is the monthly SharePoint user group – it is definitely open for more than just Federal SharePoint Users to attend!

When: Tuesday, March 30 at 5 – 7 PM PST

Where: Ottawa at the Microsoft Office on 100 Queen Street

SharePoint 2010 Summit

When: April 12 to 14

Where: Centre Mont-Royale, Montreal

Register online now for this great SharePoint conference in one of the world’s great cities.

http://www.sharepointsummit2010.com/index_e.htm

 

There’s really a lot to discuss and I’m looking forward to the seminars. I’m also crossing my fingers the live upgrade goes as planned each time :)