SharePoint

Recently I’ve stumbled on a strange error in SharePoint. In the entire site collection I couldn’t start any workflow (nobody could). If workflows were set to start automatically, they would fail immediately with the message Failed on Start (Retrying)

If they were set to manual start after clicking the Start button on the workflow initiation form, nothing would happen.

In SharePoint logs I’d find the following message:

System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary.     at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowKeyNotFoundException()     at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.IsConfigForSite(SPSite site)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.GetWorkflowConfurationSection(SPSite site, String section)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices.EnsurePluggableServices(SPSite site, SPWorkflowExternalDataExchangeServiceCollection services, ExternalDataExchangeService existingServices)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOeHostServices..ctor(SPSite site, SPWeb web, SPWorkflowManager manager, SPWorkflowEngine engine)     --- End of inner exception stack trace ---     at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeConstructor(Object[] args, SignatureStruct& signature, IntPtr declaringType)     at System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.Invoke(BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)     at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.LoadPluggableClass(String classname, String assembly, Object[] parameters)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWorkflowManager.GetService(SPWorkflowAssociation association, SPWorkflowEngine engine)     at Microsoft.SharePointWorkflow.SPWorkflowManager.RunWorkflowElev(SPWorkflow workflow, Collection`1 events, SPWorkflowRunOptionsInternal runOptions)

On another site collection on the same server workflows were working normally.

I’ve tried to resolve the problem with the solution described here but unfortunately it didn’t work.

At the end what worked for me was to re-enable workflows on site.

In Central Administration select Application Management and Manage web applications

Next select the failing Web application

Now click arrow under General Settings in the ribbon and select Workflow

Select No for "Enable user-defined workflows…" and click OK.

Now reopen the Workflow settings dialog by clicking on General Settings –> Workflow again

and select Yes, to re-enable user defined workflows.

Confirm your selection by clicking on the OK button.

This got my workflows up and running again.

A while ago I prepared a simple solution on CodePlex that helps to reattach broken lookup columns (due to restore, migration,…).

There is an update available – on the same place – CodePlex. The project is still a small console application.

How to use it? Run it and follow instructions.

Click here to download the latest release.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve followed recommended practice to use also AD groups? Perfect. So you create an AD group, add some users to that group and next you add that group into a SharePoint security group. Good. Now three months from now if somebody asks you to list all members of that group, what do you do? Remote to your Active directory and list (or printscreen) the group’s members.

Now thanks to my friend’s solution, you can tell them to go see for themselves. Robi Vončina has prepared a solution to list AD group members directly on your SharePoint site. It’s a nice solution to see who’s messing around your site.

The solution can be found on CodePlex.

If you find a lot of DCOM errors with event ID 10016 in your application server role, this may be due to Windows Server 2008 R2. Here’s how to resolve these isuses

On the failing server open Server Manager, and under Roles select Application server. You will most probably find quite a lot of DCOM errors. Open one of those errors to see for which user and for which service the authentication is failing. In the open window copy the GUID of the failing service. It will help you identify the service.

Next open registry editor and select the root node. In Edit menu select Find, paste the GUID and click Find next.

You can find the service name in one of the registry’s values (as seen on the screenshot below, in my case it was IIS WAMREG).

Leave the registry editor open (you might still need it).

Next in Start menu under Administrative tools click Component Services. Expand the Computers node and My Computer. Select DCOM Confing. Now locate the service you identified in your registry, right click it and select Properties.

In the open dialog select Security tab and in the Launch and activation permissions group click the Edit button.

If you have this entire tab grayed out, you need to do the following (outlined in the gray, otherwise skip the gray part below):

In the permissions dialog for the service grant the failing user (or group the account is in) Local Launch and Local Activation permissions. And in case the event log says it is failing remote launch, grant the user remote launch and service also.

Confirm all the changes and close registry editor and Component services window.

If you run into this problem and you’ve checked that your Webclient service is running on your computer, there may be chance that the server running SharePoint has basic authentication enabled. There is a fix for this that needs to be installed locally. You can find the explanation and fix here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841215

Update: If you use Microsoft Office 2010, you have to use other fix:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841215

If you run into this problem and you’ve checked that your Webclient service is running on your computer, there may be chance that the server running SharePoint has basic authentication enabled. There is a fix for this that needs to be installed locally. You can find the explanation and fix here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841215

Hey, hey! That great time of the year is comming (no, not Christmas). It even got me blogging again . It’s SharePoint Conference time in Slovenija. Kompas xnet has put together a great program for this year. In fact so many interesting topics are going to take place that this year the event was extended to 2 days. This year they’re introducing also Business track along with the IT Pro track and Developer track.

There are going to be a lot of MVPs and very good presenters under the same roof, so lectures will be very good. Trust me, I have the privilege of knowing lots of them and I have been to their presentations.

This year I’m also attending as a presenter. I believe with a very interesting topic – SharePoint and Silverlight, which are a very powerful combination.

I will also take the opportunity to launch my new open source project on Codeplex.

Not convinced? You will miss out an opportunity for attending great lectures from great presenters in an absolutely beautiful surroundings – Bled, Slovenija.

When? 24th and 25th October 2011.

Being on the other side of the globe is not an excuse. Some guys, like Joel Oleson and Michael Noel are flying in to present.

If you had installed Microsoft Project Server 2010 on a SharePoint server that had running SharePoint 2010 and afterwards you have uninstalled it you may have came in for a great shock. I know I was. After uninstalling Project 2010 I discovered that

• My Central Admin was gone
• All SharePoint sites were gone (also checking in IIS)

That may be a real shocker. One option is to simply rerun config wizard to have the Central admin site and restore entire farm from backup (you DO have backup, do you?). Otherwise here’s the process on how I recovered all the sites:

Re-run SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard

1. Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard
2. Rejoin the existing farm (entering database server and configuration database and farm passphrase of your lost SharePoint farm) – thank God these aren’t deleted
3. Central admin site has to be recreated

After the configuration wizard has finished you should see all your web applications back in IIS

Remake manual changes to web.config files

If you were making manual changes (not through SharePoint Object Model) to web.config files of your web applications, these are lost, so you better keep track and remake those changes.

Restart services

Event though you may have your sites back there is still work to do. If you have custom solutions deployed to SharePoint, you have to re-deploy them. Fortunately these are still stored in SharePoint.

SharePoint service applications are not started and you may receive an error like "There are no addresses available for this application" (in logs, event viewer and of course in the web application.

1. In SharePoint central administration open Application Management
2. Under Service Applications select Services on Server
3. Click Start next to service applications that you wish to restart.

You will also notice virtual applications reappearing in your IIS under your SharePoint Services IIS site.

Redeploy solutions

OMG, also solutions are gone from web applications. Yes you need to re-deploy these as well.

1. In SharePoint Central Administration select System Settings
2. Select Manage Farm solutions
3. You will see that all solutions are (probably) there but none of them is deployed.
4. Deploy each solution as needed by selecting the solution and clicking “Deploy solution” and following steps.

Review

After redeploying check your web applications if everything is working correctly. I noticed even though solutions were not deployed, the data, configuration and permissions remained.

If you try to delete a subweb in SharePoint (and you’re sure it doesn’t have any subwebs) you receive an error instead. Errors like “Operation not found”, or “Invalid operation”.

Re-running the SharePoint Products and technologies Configuration Wizard repaired the issue for me.

After you have installed SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1, you may have noticed that Expand/Collapse in SharePoint Lists is not working. Instead you may receive an error

g_ExpGroupXSLTQueue is undefined

Microsoft has issued a hotfix for this bug. You can request it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553117/en-us