Administration & Configuration

Exchange (Outlook) distribution list (mailing group) not showing up in SharePoint

shehan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:38:00 GMT

This post is common knowledge to all SharePoint professionals out there, but for newbie's it can save hours of hair pulling (as I’ve got to learn from a bunch of people I’ve helped out) ;)

Scenario: There is a distribution list you can see and use in outlook, but when you search for the same list in SharePoint it doesn’t show up in the people picker. What gives?

Chances are that the distribution list is not security enabled. This would need to be done by your domain administrator. He would need to change the ‘Group Type’ of the list from ‘distribution’ to ‘security’. Once this is done your SharePoint administrator would need to run a profile import so SharePoint can pick up the change immediately (alternatively you can let SharePoint automatically pick it up during its scheduled AD crawl).

Technorati Tags: Groups,Outlook,SharePoint

SharePoint not crawling links

shehan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:30:46 GMT

We have a document library which makes use of the 'Link to a Document' content type which lets users add links to a document library. We noticed that users were using this feature to add links to documents hosted on sites outside of the SharePoint farm. This is all good as far as they are concerned because the content type does its job and end-user can access the external documents by clicking the link.

However, we noticed that none of these links were showing up in the search results. When we looked into the crawl log (/ssp/admin/_layouts/LogSummary.aspx) we found that all these links had an Error status type. The error text was:

This item could not be crawled because the crawler could not connect to the repository. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)

It took some digging, but the issue was because the index server was behind a firewall that was preventing traffic to external sites. Once we made exclusions to the firewall rules (by adding exceptions to the IP address and ports of the external site) and performed a full crawl the links were indexed and started showing up in the search results.

Technorati Tags: Search,Link to a Document,Crawl,Firewall

A little 'gotcha' when restarting the search service

shehan — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:15:34 GMT

If you were to restart (i.e stop and then start) the search service, in a SharePoint farm, from the 'Services on server' page in Central Administration chances are that you might encounter both or either of the following errors when yo do a search on your web application:

Your search cannot be completed because of a service error. Try your search again or contact your administrator for more information.

The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service.

This happens because after restarting the service on the index server you need to assign an index server to the SSP. Here are the steps:

1. Start the search services on all the servers that you stopped.

2. Navigate to the Manage SSP page (_admin/managessp.aspx).

3. Place you mouse over the SSP name and select 'Edit Properties' from the drop down menu.

4. In page that opens up, scroll to the end and select the index server from the drop down list box.

5. Hit the OK button to save.

6. Give around 5 to 10 minutes for index propagation and initialization to take place and Search would start working again.

Another 'gotcha' to keep note of is that whenever you restart services or assign an index server to the SSP it should be done at a time when the crawler is 'Idle'. Else there is a high probability of the crawler performing an endless crawl.

Technorati Tags: Search,SSP,Index Server,Error,Crawl

Invalid host file on index server when using a dedicated crawler

shehan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:07:25 GMT

Incase you didn't know- when you set your index server to use a dedicated server for crawling, SharePoint updates the host file on the index server with the IP address of the WFE. However, there are times where SharePoint adds an invalid host entry when there are 2 or more WFE's.

Example - Say there have 2 WFE's - MOSSWFE01 & MOSSWFE02. Setting MOSSWFE02 as the dedicated crawler will cause SharePoint to update the host file in the index server. It adds an entry for MOSSWFE01 with the IP address of MOSSWFE02. Hence, the index server cannot access the index file location on MOSSWFE01. No use trying to update the host file manually since SharePoint reverts your change every few minutes.

With the invalid host file entry you'll start seeing errors on both the index server and the WFE (see below). The errors are due to the index servers inability to propagate the index file to the WFE. If you modify the index server to use all WFE's for crawling then no entries are added to the index file.

I couldn't find a supported resolution for this, but there is a 'hack' to overcome this! Instead of setting a dedicated crawler, select the option to use all WFE's for crawling. Next open the host file on the index server and add the host names of the web apps along with the IP address of the WFE you want to act as the crawler.

Here is the TechNet article on this:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261810.aspx

Error on WFE:

Description:
Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (4d1c24af-411b-42b0-9f05-f657644e7d4b).

Reason: Object 0ad5f391-9f4b-4f49-8f85-3550343690e1 not found.

Techinal Support Details:
System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: Object 0ad5f391-9f4b-4f49-8f85-3550343690e1 not found.
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.get_App()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Error in Index Server:
Description:
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.AddQueryServerJob (ID bcd3ce3e-b058-46ef-81a9-1bda53fa6c45) threw an exception. More information is included below.

Index location '\\MOSSWFE01\searchindexpropagation' not found on indexer 'M0SSWFE1'. Aborting query server deployment for application SharedServices1.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Technorati Tags: Search,Host File,Index

Deploying Web Parts to farms with more than 1 WFE

shehan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:50:47 GMT

If you're developing webparts using VSeWSS and going to run the setup.bat that that VSeWSS creates, you might need to modify the deploy solution line before running it.

The deploysolution instruction that VSeWSS adds contains the -local argument. This is all good if you're going to run it on an implementation with only 1 WFE, but for farms with 2 or more WFE's then you will need to change -local to -immediate.

I also make it a habit to call the execadmsvcjobs command before and after adding and deploying.

Technorati Tags: WSS,MOSS,VSeWSS

Manually uninstalling WSS

shehan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:04:33 GMT

Had a situation the other day where, after playing with the different installing options, WSS would not uninstall. Even running the repair option was of no help.

Searching the net for solutions I came across this.

Here are the steps I did:

Disable and Stop the following services (If any):

Windows SharePoint Services Administration
Windows SharePoint Services Search
Windows SharePoint Services Timer
Windows SharePoint Services Tracing
Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer

Backup and then delete the following registry hives:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\WSS

Delete the following folders:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12

Reinstall IIS

Drop the Config and any Content DB's created

After following the steps above you will notice that the entry for WSS in Add & Removed Programs is no longer there. Now you can go-ahead and run the installation again.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,WSS,uninstall

Search only items of a custom list

shehan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:27:33 GMT

Had a requirement where search results should be limited to only items of a list. Naturally, I created a new Search Scope and set a rule of type Web Address to include the particular site holding the lists.

Well...it did work, but not to my expectations. What was happening was that in addition to displaying the list items, the list views were also being displayed and so were other pages in the site....DOH!

Doing a search on the net led me to this site. It was very informative, but it didn't provided the contentclass value I should use for a list created using the Custom List template....

Took me a while, but eventually tracked down the contentclass value - "STS_ListItem_GenericList"

So, long story short; here are the two rules I used for the scope:

Rule1:
Scope Rule Type: Web Address
Folder: <the site I need to search>
Behavior: Include

Rule 2:
Scope Rule Type: Property Query
Property Query: contentclass = STS_ListItem_GenericList
Behavior: Require

Technorati Tags: moss,search,scope

Display Search Scopes in the Search DoropDown and Advanced Search page

shehan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:15:27 GMT

Most of you all would probably be knowing this, but for the newbie out there who is just getting into MOSS's Enterprise Search features this would probably prove useful...

Lets say that through the SSP Search Configurations page you've gone and created a couple of Scopes. But when you get back to your site collection you notice that none of the scopes appear in the search scope dropdown (normally located on the top right hand corner of the page), you only see the default scopes.

What you need to do is navigate to Site Settings page (_layouts/settings.aspx) of the top most level site and once there click on the ‘Search keywords’ link under the ‘Site Collection Administration’ section.

In the Scopes page you will notice that all the custom scopes created are contained in the ‘Unused Scopes’ section while the ‘Display Group: Search Dropdown’ contains ‘All Sites’ and ‘People’ while the ‘Display Group: Advanced Search’ contains only ‘All Sites’.

Click the ‘Search Dropdown’ link and add the Scopes by checking the appropriate ones. Do the same for the ‘Advanced Search’ link.

Once done, the custom scopes will appear on all search dropdowns in the site, however they will not appear on the default Advance Search page.

To get the scopes to appear on the Advanced Search page, navigate to that page (SearchCenter/Pages/advanced.aspx) and from the 'Site Actions' menu select 'Edit Page'. The page will now be checked out to you and be in the edit mode.

In the 'Advanced Search Box' web part click the 'edit' menu and then select 'Modify Shared Web Part'. The properties box for the web part appears. Expand the 'Scopes' section and check the 'Show the scope picker' option. Hit OK and the web part should update showing the scopes.

Remember to check in and publish the page so your changes will be seen by everyone who access the page.

Highlight Search Results

shehan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:38:47 GMT

OOTB the Search Core Results webpart simply emphasizes the search string you entered in the Search Box by wrapping it within the tags. But let’s say you need to highlight the search terms in different colors; what do you do? Write a new results webpart? No! you only need to adjust the Search Core Results XLS.

This is how it’s done:

Open up the XLS editor and copy the contents to notepad or some other editor (if your fine with editing it in the MOSS’s default editor, go right ahead)
Search for the term <xsl:template match="ddd">
Just below that you will see :

<xsl:template match="c0">

<xsl:value-of select="."/>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="c1">

<xsl:value-of select="."/>

</xsl:template>

And this goes on till “c9”. The values “c0” to “c9” correspond to the search terms you entered, where “c0” is the first, “c1” is the second and so on…

Replace this with something like:

<xsl:template match="c0">

 

 <xsl:value-of select="."/>

 

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="c1">

 

 <xsl:value-of select="."/>

As you can see I’ve used the style “background-color” to give each search term its own color.

Once done copy the updated XLS file back to the webpart and save

Searching for "microsoft sharepoint server"

with the default XLS:

with the modified XLS:

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