Category: SharePoint

October 2015 CU for SharePoint Server 2013 :

The October 2015 CU for SharePoint Server 2013 has been released today .

Please find the link here :  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3085582

Do note that this has the fix for most of the issues that was introduced on the August 2015 CU.

Things to know about SharePoint Hybrid Search

Things to know about SharePoint Hybrid Search:

This post is mainly intended for those who want to understand about those services that can go Hybrid on SharePoint Server 2013 and I’ll be mainly discussing specifically about “SharePoint Server Hybrid search” here ….

The below mentioned SharePoint services can go hybrid:

  1. One drive for business
  2. SharePoint Search
  3. Business Connectivity service
  4. Duet for enterprises

 TechNet link for Hybrid SharePoint Services: _ https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn197168.aspx

Now as mentioned before I’ll be discussing about “SharePoint Hybrid search” alone in this post and will be discussing about other SharePoint services that can go hybrid in a different post.

I’m going to keep this post simple by discussing only about what “SharePoint Hybrid search” is all about and the different topologies it has. The configuration part will be discussed on an upcoming new post.

What is SharePoint Hybrid Search?

To put it in simple words the term “Hybrid “here refers to using both on-premises + office 365 (SharePoint online) in your SharePoint deployment .If you have an environment where both your SharePoint server and office 365 (i.e. SharePoint Online) is integrated then it’s likely to be called as a “Hybrid SharePoint environment “.

Different topologies available in SharePoint Hybrid search:

There are three different topologies to speak about that are available for configuring SharePoint Hybrid search and it’s up to you as a SharePoint administrator to choose the right topology that suits the business requirement .

The 3 different topologies are …..

  1. One-way outbound search
  2. One-way inbound search
  3. Two way (bidirectional) –> (I’m not sure if this is supported by Microsoft as of now .However I’ve discussed about this method also )

One-way outbound search:

   In this model the user executes a search query in the SharePoint on-premises search center site and the query component looks for the results from the SharePoint on-premises site as well as from Office 365 and displays it for the user in the search results .

out

Note: The users should SharePoint online license assigned to them to be able to get the search results from SharePoint Online.

One-way inbound search:

     In this model the user executes a search query in the SharePoint online search site and the query component looks for the results from the SharePoint online sites as well as from SharePoint on-premises site and displays it for the user in the search results.

inbound

Note: The users should SharePoint online license assigned to them to be able to get the search results from SharePoint Online.

Two-way (bidirectional) topology:

    The name speaks for itself. In this model the user will be able to execute a search query in the SharePoint on-premises search site and get results from SharePoint server as well as from Office 365 (i.e. SharePoint online). Similarly, a user who executes a search query in SharePoint online will be able to get search results from SharePoint online as well as from SharePoint Server.

bi

Note: The users should SharePoint online license assigned to them to be able to get the search results from SharePoint Online.

End user experience in the search center:

The below illustration shows how a user will see the results in the search center when his SharePoint environment is configured for Hybrid search ….

ue

Search model for a Hybrid-search environment:

qf

Also, if you haven’t gone through the video in the link below, I highly recommend you to take a look at this to understand about SharePoint server Hybrid search and how it works :

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC320

 

 

“The My site of user is scheduled for deletion” email message in SharePoint Server 2013 & SharePoint Online

Source: “The My site of user is scheduled for deletion” email message in SharePoint Server 2013 & SharePoint Online

“The My site of user is scheduled for deletion” email message in SharePoint Server 2013 & SharePoint Online

This article will discuss on the “My site deletion email message “which the users get when their subordinates “My site” is scheduled for deletion.

This mainly takes place because of the “My site cleanup timer job” and it takes care of deleting the user’s “My site “ that is scheduled for deletion .This article discusses about the how the timer job works and what it does .

clean up 1

What is the My Site Cleanup Timer Job?

The My Site Cleanup Job is responsible for deleting user profiles and My Sites of those users.  This includes the following activities:

  1. Remove user profiles that are queued for deletion.
  2. If those users have a My Site, assign the user’s manager as the secondary site owner. Email the manager letting them know that the user’s My Site will be deleted in 14 days.
  3. Exactly 11 days after the first notification, email the manager again letting them know that the My Site will be deleted in 3 days.
  4. After a period of 14 days, delete the My Site.

The first thing which we need to understand is how a user profile is actually deleted.

clean up 2

How is a user profile deleted in SharePoint?

Now, there are couple of ways on how a user’s profile is deleted with regards to SharePoint.

  1. A user profile is deleted when we delete it from the “Manage user profile” section in Central Administration.
  2. When a user account which was included in a previous profile import is no longer included in the next import.

Suppose you delete a user account in Active Directory and then run an incremental or full user profile synchronization.  You would expect that this means the user profile is deleted, and in fact this is picked up as a delete from Active Directory and processed in the FIM, where SharePoint picks up the fact the user profile is deleted and deletes it.

What happens when the “My site Cleanup Timer job “runs?

Listed below are the detailed steps about what happens when the “My site” cleanup timer job runs ….

  1. A user’s account gets disabled/deleted in Active Directory when the user leaves the firm or if the user is terminated.
  2. Once the user’s account is deleted/disabled and when SharePoint gets to know about this, the “My site “deletion timer job will be triggered in that user’s account.
  3. It first removes the user’s profile from SharePoint and once the profile is removed the user will no longer have access to the SharePoint sites. Well, it’s quite obvious that the user won’t be able to access any resource in the domain as his AD account itself is disabled.
  4. Once that’s done the access delegation part of the user’s “My site” takes place. What happens here is that the timer job looks for the user’s manager and will assign the manager’s account as the secondary owner for the user’s “ My site “ .Now this process will send an email to the user’s manager letting him/her know about his/her subordinate’s “ My site “ and will also have a link to the user’s “ My site “
  5. This would give the manager complete access to the user’s “My site” including the “My documents “folder.
  6. Suppose if the user doesn’t have a “manager” mentioned in his/her SharePoint profile then the timer job will look for the secondary owner of the user’s “My site “.If it finds a secondary contact it will then make the secondary contact as the secondary owner of the “My site “and will send an email to the secondary owner letting him/her know about the “My site”.
  7. The email will be sent in 3 parts , the first one will be a notification of the user’s “My site” with a link to the user’s “My site “ .The second one will be sent exactly 11 days after that and this will give a reminder to manager about his/her subordinate’s “ My site”. Finally, the last one will be sent on the 14th day stating that the user’s “My site “is deleted.

Note: It doesn’t necessarily mean that the clean job will run on a user’s account only when the user’s account is deleted/disabled in AD. Even if the user’s account is moved to different OU SharePoint will consider the fact that this account is no longer existing in the same OU as the profile synchronization connection is broken and will run the “ My site “ deletion timer job in the user’s account .

What happens when the user doesn’t have a manager?

Manager Profile Property Populated Secondary Contact Configured Email Sent Site Queued for Deletion
Yes Yes Yes, to manager Yes
Yes No Yes, to manager Yes
No Yes Yes, to secondary contact Yes
No No No No

Is it possible to customize the timer job?  

Indeed it’s possible to customize the timer job .You can change the job schedule and you can also plan your own cleanup process.

Issue with the “My site “deletion email message in SharePoint Server 2013:

When a user profile is deleted from My Site, an email is sent to the user’s manager. However, this email contains a link to the user’s root My Site which no longer exists. In addition, you receive the following error message:

clean up 3

This issue has been addressed in the September 8, 2015 update: _ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3085481

My site deletion email message in SharePoint Online:

When an OneDrive for Business site collection is scheduled for deletion, the default action is to transfer ownership of the site to the manager of the original work account or school account that is being deleted. For this to occur, the user profile Manager Property must be set for the original owner of the OneDrive for Business site.

The Access Delegation setting is configured in the SharePoint admin center. This setting is located in Setup My Sites under the User Profiles section. By default, Access Delegation is enabled. We recommend that you also configure a secondary owner account in this section. This account will be the appointed owner of the site collection if the user profile Manager Property isn’t set for the original site owner. Email notifications will also be sent to the secondary owner account when the value is populated.

When a manager or secondary owner isn’t set for the user profile, or if the Access Delegation setting is disabled, the profile and OneDrive for Business site collection will follow the same deletion process that’s described in the next section. However, no email messages will be sent.

The profile and OneDrive cleanup process in SharePoint Online:

  1. A work or school account is deleted from the Microsoft Office 365 admin center or is removed through Active Directory synchronization.
  2. The account deletion is synchronized to SharePoint Online.
  3. The My Site Clean Up timer job runs, and the user profile is marked for deletion. The profile will be preserved in the database in a deleted state for 30 days. This coincides with the time that’s allocated to restore a deleted user account from the Azure Active Directory recycle bin.
  4. If the Manager Field is populated for the deleted account, the manager will receive an email message that states that the site will be removed in 30 days and that access to the site is granted to the manager.
  5. If the Manager field isn’t populated for the user account and a secondary owner was configured in Setup My Sites under the User Profile section of the SharePoint admin center, the secondary owner contact will receive an email message that states that the site will be removed in 30 days and that access to the site is granted to the user.
  6. After 27 days, a second email message will be sent to the manager or secondary owner that states that the site will be deleted in three days.
  7. After three days, the profile for the deleted account is deleted from the user profile service.

The personal site (that is, the OneDrive for Business site) for the deleted account is sent to the site collection recycle bin. The site is deleted from the recycle bin according to the site collection recycle bin retention policy, which is 30 days.

Step-by-Step Installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2014:

Alright, for those who are already working as SQL DBA’s this is nothing new and this should  just be a piece of cake for you guys. For those who are new to SQL, please consider this article as a primer for SQL Server 2014 installation.

Prerequisites for installing SQL Server 2014:

  1. 32- bit computers not allowed
  1. The minimum operating system requirements for the SQL Server 2014 are one of the following:

–>Windows Server 2012

–> Windows 8 RTM

–> Windows Vista SP2

–> Windows Server 2008 SP2

–> Windows 7 SP1

–> Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

  1. .NET Framework 3.5 is required.

Listed below are the steps to be followed to install SQL Server 2014:

  1. Download SQL Server 2014 SP1 from the below mentioned link

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/evalcenter/dn205290.aspx

  1. Once you’re done downloading the ISO file, please extract it to your preferred drive location and keep it ready for installation.
  2. Run the SQL Server 2014 setup as shown below .Make sure that you’re running it with elevated permissions as shown in the image below.

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4. Please select “installation” from the list of options given in this screen.

3

5. This screen shows the types of installation available. Let’s select the first type i.e.  “New SQL Server stand-alone installation” as shown in the image below.

4

  1. Click on “Run” in the next screen.

5

7. Since I’m running an evaluation version, I’m going to keep the option as evaluation in this screen.

6

8. If you want to participate in the CEIP program, then put a checkmark in the box highlighted in the image below .If not just accept the license agreement and click next.

7

9. The “rule check”  is in progress as shown in the screen below.

8

10. Now if you want you’re SQL server installation wizard to look for any new updates, please put a checkmark in the box shown in the image below. The most preferred and suggested practice is to not check that box as it’s good to have a look at those updates in the Microsoft website and then run them manually . Hence I’m not checking that checkbox here.

9

11 . You might get an error as shown below . That’s a common error which you would get since I didn’t check the “Check for updates” checkbox .I’m just going to ignore it and proceed further with the installation by clicking next.

10

12. The set-up files are getting installed as shown in the image below.

11

13. Now you can see the below mentioned screen displaying warnings about the domain controller, .NET Application Security & Windows Firewall .Now if you’re performing this installation in a test lab its ok to ignore these errors and proceed further.However,if you’re performing this installation in a production server its mandatory that you fix these issues . Since I’m performing this installation in a test lab I’m just going to ignore this error and proceed further with this installation by clicking next.

12

14. The next screen gives you an option to choose which feature components to install, please click on “SQL Server Feature Installation” and click next.

13

15. Please select the evaluation features for this instance by checking the appropriate check box. Now how this works is if you want this instance to just have the “Database Engine Services” running, then please check the check box for “Database engine services” alone . Similarly if you want “Analysis Services” as well as “Reporting Services” running in the same instance, then check those check boxes as well.

14

16. Once you’re done choosing the required features for this instance the installation wizard will calculate the required disk space and will display it and shown in the above image.

15

17. Once you’re done choosing all the necessary features make sure that you  check the “client connectivity tools”  and “management tools”  (SSMS) check box and click on next. These tools are mandatory to manage SQL Server.

18. You will see the next window where the operation proceeds further as shown in the image below.

16

19. Now once that’s complete and the operation is successful you will be taken to a window where you’re supposed to make the “Instance Configuration” . Now in SQL Server its very important that you understand the two different types of instances

a) Default Instance –>Choosing the “default instance” will pick up the server name/PC name in which you’re performing the installation and will proceed further with the installation.

b) Named instance–>Choosing the “Named instance” option will ask you to name the instance and the same name will be assigned to the “Instance ID” as well.

To access a default instance once it is installed  using SQL Server Management Studio or any other program, you just need provide the computer name. To access a named instance, you will need to provide the name of the instance in the form of “Computername\nameoftheinstance”

It’s always preferable to go with “Named instance “option so that you would be able to differentiate between instances if many instances are installed in the same SQL server.

11

  1. Once that’s done the next screen (shown below) will ask you to specify the service account details for all the features that has been chosen , please specify the appropriate username and password as required . Now ,since this is my test lab, I’m going to stick to the defaults. It also gives you the option to choose the “startup type” .It can be either “Automatic” or “Manual”.

12

However there are couple of things to notice here, if the computer is not part of a domain, use a local user account without Windows administrator permissions. You can create this account using Control Panel -> User Accounts. Please provide a strong password to this account since SQL Server setup will required it on this “Server Configuration” page.

Use a Domain User Account if the service must interact with network service or access domain resources. This account should be pre-created by a domain administrator in AD.

  1. Make sure that you’re providing the credentials correctly or else you would end up getting a “validation error” as shown below.
  2. Once that’s done the next screen will ask you to specify your “authentication mode”. You have two authentication modes in SQL Server namely 1. Windows Authentication and 2. Mixed mode (Windows + SQL) authentication. If you choose Windows Authentication then users who are created within SQL server won’t be able to access SQL, so the best and recommended practice is to go with “mixed mode authentication”.

14

23) Once you’re done specifying the “authentication mode” please click on “Add current user” button as shown in the image below and this will make the current user who is running this wizard as the SA (i.e SQL Server Admin).

15

24) You can also add few more users to the “SQL Server Administrators” group by clicking on the “Add” button next to “Add current user” as shown in the above image.

25) Once that’s done , please click next and this will take you to the ‘Analysis Services Configuration “ wizard , please specify the “ Analysis Services administrator “ detail as shown in the image below and click next .

16

26) The next screen would give you the path for the “Data Directories”, you can change this path if required.

17

27) The next screen would be for “Reporting Services Configuration”, I strongly recommend to go with the second option (i.e. Install Only) as once the installation is complete you can configure “Reporting services” later using the “Reporting Services Configuration Wizard”.

19

28) Finally, On the Ready to Install page, review the summary of features and components for your SQL Server installation. To proceed, click Install…

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You would also notice  the “Configuration file path” which has the “configurationfile.ini” and this file can be used later if you want to create a different instance of SQL Server with the same configuration.This file basically holds all the configuration information for this instance of SQL installation.

29)  Once you’re done reviewing the summary of features, please click on Install as shown below and you would notice the installation proceeding further.

21

30) Finally you would get a window as shown below which displays the status of our installation and if everything ran well you would notice a bunch of green tick marks. You can view the “summary log “ file if you want which will give you the complete information of the installation.

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31) Now that brings us to the end of the SQ Server 2014 installation and you can open “SQL Server Management Studio” to access it.

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If you’re also looking for the new features in SQL Server 2014 , please check this site : _ http://windowsitpro.com/sql-server-2014/top-ten-new-features-sql-server-2014

SharePoint Online: Features & Limitations

  1. Number of items that can be synced: You can sync up to 20,000 items total across all synchronized libraries. This includes One Drive for Business libraries, Team Site libraries, or both. This includes folders and files. Separately from the overall sync limit, there are limits to the number of items that can be synchronized for each library type.You can sync up to 20,000 items in an One Drive for Business library. This includes folders and files.You can sync up to 5,000 items in a SharePoint library. This includes folders and files. These are libraries that you find on various SharePoint sites, such as team sites and community sites, libraries that other people created, or that you created from your Sites page. You can sync multiple SharePoint libraries. Any team sites that you sync will also count against the overall 20,000 item limit across all synchronized libraries.
  1. Size limit for syncing files: In any SharePoint library, you can sync files of up to 2 gigabytes (GB).

 

  1. Character limit for files and folders:  These limits apply to files and folders that you add to a synced library folder for uploading to SharePoint. In SharePoint Server 2013, file names can have up to 128 characters. In SharePoint On line, file names can have up to 256 characters. Folder names can have up to 250 characters. Folder name and file name combinations can have up to 250 characters.
  1. Invalid characters : 

The following characters in file or folder names aren’t supported when you sync OneDrive for Business with SharePoint On line:

\

/

:

*

?

”

<

>

|

#

%

Additionally, a file or folder name that begins with a tilde (~) isn’t supported.

5. Unsupported folder names: When you sync One Drive for Business with SharePoint Online or SharePoint 2013, a folder named “forms” isn’t supported at the root level for a list or library. This occurs because “forms” is a hidden default folder that’s used to store templates and forms for the library. Additionally, a folder that contains the string _vti_ is reserved by SharePoint, and isn’t supported.

The following folder names can be synchronized in One Drive for Business and SharePoint On-line. However, if they’re synchronized, they won’t appear when you view the library on the SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business webpage. With some of these restrictions, you may be unable to add files or folders that have these characters while in the OneDrive for Business folder. However, if you create the files or folders outside OneDrive for Business and then drag those files or folders into the OneDrive for Business folder, the files and folders will sync but the files won’t appear on the webpage.

*_files:

*_Dateien

*_fichiers

*_bestanden

*_file

*_archivos

*_tiedostot

*_pliki

*_soubory

*_elemei

*_ficheiros

*_arquivos

*_dosyalar

*_datoteke

*_fitxers

*_failid

*_fails

*_bylos

*_fajlovi

*_fitxategiak

*_private

6. GUID strings as file names

The GUID string structure is supported in SharePoint Online.

The following GUID string structure isn’t supported for file names in SharePoint 2013:

‘{‘ + 8 hexadecimal + ‘-‘ + 4 hexadecimal + ‘-‘ + 4 hexadecimal + ‘-‘ + 4 hexadecimal + ‘-‘ + 12 hexadecimal +’}’

For example, a GUID that matches this structure resembles the following:

{9b6634a7-26b7-40a2-a48e-6f967d89c29e}

7. You can’t upload files that have a *.tmp or *.ds_store extension, and you can’t upload desktop.ini, thumbs.db, or ehthumbs.db files.

8. Additionally, you can’t upload files whose file types are blocked on the SharePoint site. If your organization is running SharePoint Server, the list of blocked files may vary, depending on what your administrator sets up. If your organization is running SharePoint Online, the default list of blocked files is fixed and can’t be changed. To see a list of the default blocked files, go to the following Microsoft website: _ File types that cannot be added to a list or library

9.Outlook PST files

Whereas PST files aren’t actively blocked by OneDrive for Business, syncing PST files that are in an open state isn’t supported. If you decide to sync PST files (for example, an archive PST file that you don’t load or view in Outlook), they can’t be in an open state at any time by any application while they’re in the OneDrive for Business sync folder. A PST file that’s connected to Outlook will be updated regularly and therefore if synchronized, can result in too much network traffic and growth of the Office File Cache on your local drive.

 10.OneNote notebooks

Because OneNote notebooks have their own sync mechanism, they aren’t synced by the OneDrive for Business sync client. You can upload OneNote notebooks to a SharePoint Online page. However, they won’t sync with through the OneDrive for Business sync client application. Additionally, if you add a OneNote notebook to a local folder that syncs with SharePoint Online, the notebook won’t sync with the SharePoint site and may cause other sync errors within the local folder.

Open files can’t be synced. Any file that’s currently open by an application (for example, an Excel .xlsx file) can’t be synced by OneDrive for Business. To sync the file, close any application where the file is currently being used, and then sync the file.

12. Lookup columns in a library:

.The SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business library can’t exceed the lookup column threshold. For more information, go to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

2927386   “We couldn’t sync this library” error when you use the OneDrive for Business sync client

“Fix it” tool to help in renaming files and folders to prepare or fix the naming of items in a local folder or OneDrive for Business folder

13. To get files to sync successfully, you may have to rename a wide range and large number of files if their names contain unsupported characters. This Fix it tool for Windows automatically renames files and folders whose current names contain any unsupported characters. The tool also generates a report of those changes and of any files that are violating other restrictions that are called out in this article, and shows which folders were scanned by the tool.

14. Supported changes by this tool apply only to SharePoint Online. SharePoint Server 2013 may have a separate set of restrictions that were set by your administrator.

15.The Fix it tool currently performs the following tasks on the OneDrive for Business folder or local folder that you specify:

Removes unsupported characters from file or folder names. For example, a file that’s named This%is%a%test.doc will be renamed Thisisatest.doc.

If an item has only invalid characters, it will be renamed Invalid Renamed File. If the item is a folder, it will be renamed Invalid Renamed Folder.

If a file or a folder is renamed, and the renamed file or folder conflicts with an existing item on the same directory path, the item will be renamed by appending an <x> to the name. The <x> placeholder represents is an integer, starting with the number 1, until all rename actions are completed for that folder.

For example, assume that a folder has two files that are named HelloWorld.doc and Hello%World.doc. Because % is an unsupported character, the second file is renamed HelloWorld.doc. To avoid duplication in the same folder, the name of the renamed file will be changed to HelloWorld1.doc.

In addition to file names being changed by this Fix it tool, several other rules are run to check for any additional limitations that you may encounter when it’s syncing. A report that documents the issues that were found is generated and put on your desktop for you to review. A new log file will be generated every time that you run the Fix it tool.

16. The Fix it tool won’t change file and folder names that have unsupported characters or generate warnings in the log file for the following items:

OneNote notebook names

Open files

Lookup columns

Maximum path character count for an uploaded file

(The character count is not validated.)

17. External Users

Per MS: “An external user is a person who has been granted access to your SharePoint Online site, but who is not a licensed user within your organization. External users are users who are not employees, contractors, or onsite agents for either you or your affiliates.”

Maximum number of external users: 10,000

External users cannot create their own My Sites or OneDrive Pro

Cannot change their profile, edit picture or see tasks

Cannot be an administrator for a site collection

Cannot access search center or execute searches against “everything”

18. Missing: Search Control and Index

Unable to set crawl schedules

Unable to initiate crawl (default is ~5 minutes)

Unable to create custom solutions against Search Index

Unable to add entity extraction (custom refiners)

Unable to enhance relevancy (custom ranking models)

No federated search

19. Missing: Cross site publishing

Per MS: “Cross-site publishing is a new publishing method that lets you create and maintain content in one or more authoring site collections and publish this content in one or more publishing site collections by using Search Web Parts. Cross-site publishing complements the already existing publishing method, author-in-place, where you use a single site collection to author content and make it available to readers of your site.”

20.Missing: Content by search

(Content by search allows content to be displayed in a web part via search.  One of the top features of SP13.)

21. Unavailable SharePoint Services

Access Services 2010

PerformancePoint Service

PowerPoint Automation Service

State Service

User and Health Data Collection Service*

*(Office 365 provides separate health info in admin center)

Word Automation Service

Work Management Service

Microsoft Foundation Subscription Settings Service

22. Branding Limitations

Adding a custom design to the internal site “Team Site” is a bit counter intuitive.  The option to select a “MasterPage” is not available under “Site Settings.”  You must upload the MasterPage to the MasterPage gallery, along with a “Preview” file.  Then, you must create a “Composed” look.  From there it will be available under the “Change the Look” feature.

Fix for the “search issue” in August 2015 CU for SharePoint 2013 :

As mentioned in my previous post about the “search issue” which is caused by the August 2015 CU for SharePoint 2013, we were finally able to find the fix for that. We tried the steps as mentioned in Stefan’s Blog and we were finally able to get rid of the search issue which was a great relief.

Please try the below mentioned steps, 

Once done running the August 2015 CU for SharePoint 2013, please run the below mentioned command on all the servers in the farm to get rid of this issue.

IISRESET

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources

Running this command should help you to get rid of the below mentioned error which you would get when you try to execute a search query in the SharePoint Search center.

Field or property “TimeZoneId” does not exist 

Reason for August 2015 CU to fail silently while you’re trying to run the package file: _ http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2015/09/08/important-august-2015-cu-for-sp-2013-might-have-failed-silently-when-using-specific-installation-methods.aspx


 

Managing “User property fields” in SharePoint 2013

Managing “User property fields” in SharePoint 2013:

We happened to work on a project where we were supposed to fix the FIM sync errors related to “User property fields” in our SharePoint Farms. The user property fields in the SharePoint user profile were not displaying the values properly and as a result of that we were not able to see the details (i.e. City, Address, Location etc.…) in the user property fields. It was just blank and it failed to write the information from FIM to the SharePoint user profile .This article describes the steps which we performed in our Q & A environment to overcome this issue.

Issue Description:

SharePoint user profiles were not displaying the user’s details such as City, Address, Location,company etc.. … in their profile and it just remained blank as show in the image below.

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 Root cause:

The root cause of this was nothing else but the default character limit which was specified for these “User property fields” was not adequate enough and hence FIM failed to write these information to the SharePoint user profile. Basically, in our environment FIM does the job of creating user profiles by retrieving the user’s information from Active Directory and it pushes the user profile to SharePoint. Since the supported character length of these user properties was less in length it didn’t display the values in the user property fields.

 “User property field” character length comparison :

Before Increasing the Character length   After increasing the character length
Address–> 25 characters Address–> 100 characters
City–> 25 characters City–> 100 characters
Company–>100 Company–>100
Department–>250 Department–>250
Office–>250 Office–>250
Title–>150 Title–>150
First Name–>250 First Name–>250
Last Name–>250 Last Name–>250
SPS-Location–>25 SPS-Location–>25

 

*We changed the character length of the all the user properties less than 100 to 100.

 

Resolution:

We went ahead and increased the character length of these user properties in the SharePoint User Profile Service application so that FIM starts to write the values to the SharePoint user profile. Now the catch here is, we can’t edit the property in the user profile as the length setting is greyed out and it cannot be changed. So the only way to change the length is to go ahead and delete the property completely and recreate it by increasing the character length to suit your needs.

Steps performed to implement this change:

  1. Open the Central admin with your farm admin account.
  2. Navigate to the Manage service applications option and click on User Profile sync service.
  3. Once you click on the “User profile sync service “click on the “Manage” button in the top ribbon.
  4. This should take you to the “Manage Profile service” UI and then click on ‘Manage User properties” under “People” section.
  5. This would display the list all the user properties in your SharePoint farm.
  6. Click on the drop down arrow on the property which you want to delete and click on “delete”

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  1. This would delete the user property and now you can go ahead and create a new property by clicking on “Create new property” option.
  2. Specify the “Name”, “display name” and length for the new property as shown below.

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9. Specify the privacy settings for this property here.

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10. Specify the display settings for this property here.

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  1. Once done, click on “Ok” and this will create the new user property for you.
  2. Once the next sync job completes it will start displaying the values in these fields as shown in the image below.

Observations:

       After completing this activity the SharePoint user profile started to display the values correctly in the User property fields and after making this change we were able to notice some change in the ordering of the user properties in the SharePoint profile page UI .So basically what happened was, it changed the order of these properties in the profile page UI so that the recently created new user properties got added to the last.

However, this change didn’t have any impact on the “Contact” section which is displayed on the user’s “My site” .The user property fields ordering didn’t change there as that’s a BR custom code which is taking  care of the ordering .

On the other hand the other lesson learnt was, we can’t delete the “SPS-Location” user property to recreate it. The reason for this is, it’s a default property and is checked on rendering the “My Profile” page .If this property does not exist, the page will fail and throw an error stating that the property is missing. To know more about this, check this article.

Updating the user property fields in Danaher Connect:

As shown in the following illustration, user profiles can be composed of properties that are imported from a directory service, imported from business systems, and supplied by users.

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For example, a directory service could supply important information that is needed across the organization, such as users’ account names, work telephone numbers, titles, and work e-mail addresses. Business systems could supply business-related information, such as the customer accounts or product lines managed by each team member. Users could supply supplemental information about themselves, such as their areas of expertise or hobbies.

Conclusion:

We were finally able to get this issue fixed in our DEV farm by deleting and recreating the “user property fields” as that’s the only option to increase the character length.

September 8, 2015, update for SharePoint Server 2013 (KB3085481)

Finally is good to see Microsoft addressing most of the known issues in the Sept 8 ,2015 update .

September 8, 2015, update for SharePoint Server 2013 (KB3085481)

Improvements and fixes

  • Improves the hybrid user experience to let hybrid user profiles be redirected to their profiles in Office 365. Learn more.
  • Improves the translations of some terms in multiple languages to make sure the accuracy of the meaning.
  • Updates English proofing tools.
  • Fixes performance and correctness issues in Windows Azure plugin.
  • Fixes the following issues:
    • After you go to the Per-Location view settings page, some custom views aren’t displayed on the ellipsis menu for the list view web part.
    • When you attach a picture to your reply post for a trending tag in My Site, you experience an error if you have not followed the trending tag.
    • The Show more posts link does not work as expected on the Everyone page of Newsfeed in My Site.
    • When a user profile is deleted from My Site, an email is sent to the user’s manager. However, this email contains a link to the user’s root My Site which no longer exists. In addition, you receive the following error message:

User not found.

    • When you try to search something in a SharePoint Server 2013 list that has a rich text column, HTML tags instead of the content of the column are displayed in the search result if the column name contains special characters.
    • After you type multiline text in a rich text field of a list, the text is unsearchable separately.
    • If the number of items in a document library exceeds the list view threshold, you can’t update or delete a document set in the document library.
    • Some text in pdf files is extracted incorrectly (for example, trim line endings in encrypted documents).
    • Some text in pdf files is extracted and indexed incorrectly.
    • Unicode text in pdf files that contains some special characters may be interpreted incorrectly.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3085481