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Showing posts from January, 2015

Query Refinement

* Query refinement enables you to refine a query result by using aggregated statistical data that is computed for the query result. This is typically used for metadata associated with the indexed items, such as creation date, author, and person names appearing in the item. * By using the refinement options, you can refine your query to only present items created throughout a certain time period, or only display items referencing a given person. * FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint supports two kinds of query refiners: Deep refiners  : The query refinement is based on the aggregation of managed property statistics for all of the results of a search query. The indexer creates aggregation data that is used in query matching process. The advantage of using this query refiner type is that the refinement options will reflect all the items matching a query. This is usually the recommended mode, but defining many deep refiners may have a significant effect on memory usage in the que

Rank Profile

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You use a rank profile to specify how to perform relevance ranking of query results. For more information about the rank profile concepts, see About the Rank Profile (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint) on Microsoft TechNet. The rank profile is configured to calculate the rank score with input from quality rank components (also known as static rank components) and dynamic rank components. The default rank profile is named default, which is also used as the default sort criteria (Sort by Relevance) on the search result page. Be aware that you tune rank components independently of one another. The value of two rank components with the same weight is not necessarily the same so that changing a weight from 50 to 100 on one component could lead to more effect on the final rank score than changing a weight from 50 to 100 on another component. A rank profile is associated with one or more full-text indexes for full-text query rank evaluation. You typically have a one-to-one rel

Full-Text Index

* You can group multiple managed properties into a full-text index . * This enables you to query across several managed properties at the same time. * Full-text indexes enable you to dynamically rank queries (results sorted by relevancy). A full-text index typically contains a set of managed properties that represents the content of the item that you are querying . This includes the body of the item, the title, the URL, and so on. You can define multiple full-text indexes for different kinds of queries or different applications. To achieve ranked queries, you associate the f ull-text index with one or more rank profiles . A default index schema configuration contains one full-text index named content . This is the default full-text index for queries without any property filter. Note: Do not delete and re-create a full-text index with the same name but a different configuration. The re-created full-text index will at first contain all items that were indexed in this full

Managed Properties

Managed properties are metadata that can be searched or used in other ways, such displaying data in search results. The default index schema provides a set of mappings from crawled properties to managed properties . The default mappings are adapted to common content formats when crawling using the Content SSA. Specific content sources or other indexing connectors can expose other crawled properties that have better quality for your content. You can associate a managed property with one or more full-text indexes . You must use a full-text index to achieve ranked results for queries. You can enable Query Refinement for a managed property so that you can add the data from this property as a drill-down option on the query result page. You can configure a hit highlighted summary for a managed property. This is a summary of a managed property that appears on the search results page for each query result. The summary displays an excerpt from the item that contains the query text

Crawled Properties

Crawled properties are metadata that is extracted from content sources to make the data available for searching. Crawled properties are typically reported by the Content SSA or other FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint connectors, but can also be created during item processing by an IFilter or a property extractor . A crawled property is uniquely defined by the parameters of Name , Propset , and VariantType . Two specific managed properties are populated with the crawled property names and values discovered for the given item, as follows: crawledpropertynames   Holds discovered crawled properties that have a value for a specified item. crawledpropertiescontent   Holds the value of every crawled property in crawledpropertynames . Some discovered crawled properties are not mapped into these managed properties. The disadvantage of automatically indexing the content of discovered crawled properties is that not all content is relevant for searching. There may be several reas

SharePoint 2013 – Create a Search Service Application and Search Topology with Powershell

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What needs to be done? 14 steps for a simple Search Topology – 1 powershell can do them all. 1.Create a Service Application Pool for the Search Service Application (15-22) 2.Create a Search Service Application (22-28) 3.Create a Search Service Application Proxy (30-36) 4.Get the current Search Instance (38) 5.Save the current Search Topology for later use (39) 6.Create a new Search Topology (40) 7.Create all the Search Components (Analytics- , Content Processing, Query Processing, Crawler-, Admin Component) (42-46) 8.Remove the Index-Folder and recreate it (50-51) 9.Create a new Index Component (53) 10.Activate the new Topology (56) 11.Call the method synchronize on the old topology – this errors but forces an update on the old topology object (59) 12.The “forced updated” Topology object becomes inactive and can be deleted. (62) 13.Everything  done – start a full crawl order set it to the new shiny continuous crawling. Enjoy! Here is my powershell script for creati

SharePoint 2010 - Search service is not able to connect to Administration component server

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In this blog post, I would write about most generic issue in SharePoint 2010 search service application and I am sure many of you have already come across this: In SharePoint 2010 - When you try to browse to a Search Service Application (SSA), it shows he below error: "System Status: Crawl: The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component c8519b74 status -<GUID> in search application Search Service Application is in a good state and try again." Additionally, you should see below errors in the Event logs: "Description: The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlReportJobDefinition (ID 6dd22d5b-45cb-4860-aa01-d7f7d227a2f6) threw an exception. More information is included below. The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component '9e

Unable to create a "Send to Connection"- verification failed -url is a not a valid routing destination

ISSUE : Unable to successfully create a send to connection. When creating the Send to connection from Sharepoint 2010 Central Administration and click on Test URL for the Destination URL , we get the following error "verification failed -url is a not a valid routing destination" we see the following entry in the ULS logs Url validation failed for http://gmallya.test.com/sites/testrecordcenter/_vti_bin/OfficialFile.asmx   during Record and document center connection configuration with exception The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized .:  at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall)     at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.OfficialFileSoap.GetServerInfo()     at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.OfficialFileAdminPage.<>c__DisplayClass2.&l

Unable to create a Search Service Application - "Errors were encountered during the configuration of the Search Application"

ISSUE Error when creating the search service application- Errors were encountered during the configuration of the Search Application" CAUSE * We see the following in the ULS logs When the search service application creation fails * The call to SearchServiceInstance.Provision (server 'GmallyaSP') failed. Setting back to previous status 'Disabled'. System.InvalidOperationException: Service is offline at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Provision() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchAdminUtils.DeployLocalServiceInstance[T](T localSearchServiceInstance) RESOLUTION * Use the PowerShell commandlets to bring the search service online. Following are the PowerShell commandlets I used to resolve to verify the status of the service and then bring the service instance online: $ssa= Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local $ssa RESULTS: TypeName : SharePoint Server Search Description : Index content and

Quick Fix For “There has been an error while loading the form”

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I’m testing a custom SharePoint Designer 2010 activity this fine Sunday afternoon and I was unexpectedly hitting a “Critical Error” when trying to launch the workflow: There has been an error while loading the form. Click Start Over to load a new copy of the form.  If this error persists, contact the support team for the Web Site. Click Close to exit this message. Show error details Of course, if you click the “Show error details” button all it does is show you a correlation ID: * In my case, this turned out to be an Alternate Access Mappings problem. * I looked at the log file in the 14 hive and saw that InfoPath was complaining about an AAM issue (since I was hitting Localhost instead of the server name).  I changed my URL and that solved it. Ex : * Here the problem in this case was with the URL. First I was giving the below URL: http://win-pfcp2dgt8di/_layouts/15/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation=http://win-pfcp2dgt8di/MyTestFormLib/Forms/template.xsn&SaveLocation=http

InfoPath 2010 – When creating a filename that breaks your submit

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When using a new product a day never goes by when you don’t learn something new and today was no exception.  I’ve been working on 3 new forms and today I was making tweaks to a couple of the forms and after publishing one of them I ran into the below errors when trying to submit a new form to a form library.  The error messages that I was receiving  were really vague to for the actual problem. InfoPath cannot submit the form. An error occurred while the form was being submitted. The form cannot be submitted to the following location: form library url The site may be offline, read-only, or otherwise unavailable. The thread is already in background processing mode. * Then reviewed the changes that were made before it broke and couldn’t find anything wrong.  Started to look at the error messages again and when I scrolled over to the right to view full URL a light bulb turned on because * I noticed something that a previous client had a problem with.  My filename ended with a . (

LinkReplaceTimerJob threw an exception after running Update-SPInfoPathUserFileUrl

* A .rsds file is a shared data source file published to SharePoint by users to allow SQL reports to run properly in SSRS integrated mode with SharePoint. Often, customers deploy the shared data source file to a Data Connection library since the file defines a data connection to a data source. Reference : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb326288.aspx * Publish a shared Data source file to a data connection library (or simply upload an existing .rsds file if you don't have SSRS running) - * Run the following PowerShell command: Get-SPWebApplication http://sp2010 | Update-SPInfoPathUserFileUrl -find " http://sp2007 " -replace " http://sp2010 " * From the event viewer on the server, you will see the following error: "The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.LinkReplaceTimerJob threw an exception. Object reference not set to an instance of an object." Below is what I have gathered from Reflector and ULS logs

Error in InfoPath web form while getting REST data from SharePoint lists

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Environment: SharePoint 2010, InfoPath 2010 web forms, REST data accessing data in SharePoint lists Only users with "Read" permission level see this error when the REST data connection is queried. "A Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service error occurred while processing your request. For more information, contact your server farm administrator. Click Start Over to load a new copy of the form. If this error persists, contact the support team for the Web site. Click Close to exit this message. " * After comparing the Permissions for "Read" and "Contribute" permission levels, the following permission is needed in order for "Read" users to access data via REST web service. * "Browse Directories  -  Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces. " Click Submit button on the page to save the change.

InfoPath 2010 browser-enabled forms cannot be opened - "The following document is not a valid InfoPath form"

Environment: SharePoint 2010, InfoPath 2010 browser-enabled forms Issue description: We have a lot of InfoPath forms in SharePoint 2010.  These forms were migrated from InfoPath 2003 client to InfoPath 2010 browser-enabled. Occasionally a few InfoPath forms cannot be opened in browser with the following error: There has been an error while loading the form. The following document is not a valid InfoPath form: {path of form}   Cause: After doing some research and comparision, I noticed that we have a rich text field in the form that users use to copy and past html content from the internet. The pasted content includes the following string that caused this issue: <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default]" http:="http:"  xmlns:http="urn:http"  ?> Resolution: • Download the form to local machine. Open the form in notepad. Find the above string and delete. • From SharePoint library, find the affected item. • Checkout the item (if checkout is

Web-enabled InfoPath form - There has been an error while loading the form

Created a new InfoPath 2013 form using instructions  SharePoint 2013 and InfoPath 2013 - Creating Web Enabled Forms Error details: "The following location is not accessible, because it is in a different site collection:http://spsites/FormServerTemplates/UserReg.xsn?SaveLocation=http://staff.hc.qld.edu.au/UserRegistration/&Source=http://staff.hc.qld.edu.au/UserRegistration/Forms/AllItems.aspx&ClientInstalled=false&OpenIn=Browser&NoRedirect=true&XsnLocation=http://SPSITES/FormServerTemplates/UserReg.xsn. Correlation ID:3c87129c-78e7-0058-eb53-89867759b7ac" Solution : * Do you have " Request Management "  turned on ? If so, try stopping the service and then access the InfoPath form. * Looks like this particular service is causing some problems with InfoPath forms if alternate access mappings are not completely correct. * If you look at your error message, the XSN is pointing to a different URL( http://spsites ). This is either name of

SharePoint 2013 and InfoPath 2013 - Creating Web Enabled Forms

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In this article, you will learn how to create web enabled InfoPath forms. InfoPath is an information gathering tool and is used to create XML forms. People have always been trying to come up with a standard for creating electronic forms. Before InfoPath, companies created electronic forms in different formats. InfoPath has helped companies to adhere to a standard. Coding XML manually may not be an interesting job but creating XML forms with InfoPath has really made this job quite easier. All clients must have InfoPath installed on their machines in order to open the forms. It could be a problem for smaller companies to provide InfoPath client to all the users. What can be the solution then? Solution is to create web enabled forms that can be opened in web browser without having to install InfoPath client on user machines. Following is a step-by-step guide that will show you how to create and deploy a web enabled form: 1.Open InfoPath (Start > All Programs > Microsoft Offic