Create explicit managed path for host named site collection using PowerShell commands

In SharePoint 2013, host-named site collections (HNSC) are all the rage. Host-named site collections give you the ability to provide completely different URLs for a site collection regardless of the web application URL hosting it.  For example, you might have a web application URL named http://sharepoint.mycompany.com and under it you have a collaboration site with a URL of http://collaborate.mycompany.com and an Intranet site namedhttp://intranet.mycompany.com.  This allows you to host multiple types of SharePoint sites together on a single web application which ultimately reduces the amount of resources your server farm needs for application pools.

Just like any site collection, you have to create a managed path for the URL you want.  We do this using New-SPManagedPath.  We can add explicit or wildcard inclusions just like you can for path-based site collections.  Wildcard is the default, if you want explicit, include the –explicit parameter.  We also need to add the –HostHeader parameter to indicate this is used with host-named site collections.  Here’s an example, where I created the business-solutions explicit path from our example above.

New-SPManagedPath "managed path name" -HostHeader –Explicit

This technically makes this managed path available on any host-named site collection.  If you want to see what managed paths have been created for host-named site collections, use Get-SPManagedPath with the –HostHeader command.

Get-SPManagedPath –HostHeader

Now, we need to create the site collection using New-SPSite.  It takes a few parameters but the important ones for this scenario is the URL we want for the new site collection and then –HostHeaderWebApplication to specify which web application hosts the new site collection.

New-SPSite “Site collection URL” –HostHeaderWebApplication “host web app URL” -Name "Site collection name" -OwnerAlias domain\user  -Template STS#0

SharePoint 2013 error – The server was unable to save the form at this error

While working with SharePoint 2013 list, saving the data I got an error saying that “The server was unable to save at this time. Please try again.” As shown the image below.

By checking the logs I have found following error “Memory gates checking failed because the free memory is less than 5% of total memory. As a result, the service will not be available for incoming requests. To resolve this, either reduce the load on the machine or adjust the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element.

After verifying the details in event logs, Services and Task Manager Details, I have found that error causing low memory. To fix this error we have to restart “SharePoint Search Host Control” and “SharePoint Administration service”. By refreshing this error we can have a lot of memory will be freed. We have same error when custom application deployed without disposing object. In that case we need to reset the IIS. By resetting the IIS We can save the list data without error.

Hope this helps.

SharePoint OWA Power Point error - Sorry, PowerPoint Web App Ran into a problem opening this presentation.

In SharePoint 2013 environment I got an error PowerPoint while previewing the document. Error message states that “sorry PowerPoint web app ran into a problem opening this presentation to view this presentation please open it in Microsoft PowerPoint” as shown the image below.

I am seeing this only one Power Point documents only. Word apps and all the other office are working as expected. By double clicking on the document it is opening as expected.

I have verified ULS logs and IIS logs on trouble shooting this error. I didn’t any information on this error. Tried using fiddler to get any of the information. But no luck. Verified few posts and did following,

•  Tried to rebuild the Office Web App servers
•   By passed the host files targeting OWA server
•  Changed service accounts

All of the options are not worked. Finally one of the post suggested to clear the cache in “d” folder on “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OfficeWebApps\Working\d” location in Office Web App server as shown the image below (drive is dependent. In my case it is C:\ If you didn’t find ProgramData, you have set folder option to show the hidden files.)

Go the folder location and remove all the files in the folder (back up all the files instead of deleting). Wow…. It worked like a charm. Almost 3 days I worked on this issue but resolution is this much simple.

Hope this helps..!!!

Infopath Error: The Query cannot run, Infopath cannot run the specified query. Access denied.

 Creating a InfoPath form for a document library in one of my project, publish the infopath form I got an error saying that “InfoPath cannot run the specified query. Access is denied”.

I have verified few blog posts and verified following options,

• Permissions to document library and site – Yes iam having Full Control over site and Document library
• Domain – Yes iam in VPN with the same network

But User cannot submit a form to SharePoint if the security level is ‘Restricted’ . We need to have Domain Trust should be Full Control or more.

To grant Full control we have to follow the steps below,

In the InfoPath File Click on “Form Options” as shown the image below,

In Form Option popup, Security and Trust, Select “Full Trust” on security level as shown the image below.

Click on Ok to save the settings. Now we can publish the InfoPath form with out errors. 

SharePoint content type error “The content type is in use”

One of my project from recent times I was worked on content hub to manage the content types in SharePoint. While changing the content type name, I got an error saying that “The content type is in use” as shown the image below.

I have checked all the content types in current site, I haven’t seen any content type with the current name. By checking few blogs like mavention and sympmarc I got the reasons for this error.

There many reasons for this issue as listed below,

Content type still exists in Site: Even we can’t see the content type in SharePoint content type gallery, it may exists in Recycle Bin (Site Recycle Bin or Site collection Recycle Bin). We have to remove the content type from Recycle Bin too. To remove the content type from Site Collection Recycle Bin, we need to have Site Collection privileges on Site Collection.

Other users might have associated anywhere? There is another chance that other users might have associated with the content type that we can’t see. We can see this behavior in SharePoint document libraries. We can check this by navigating to SharePoint Library settings and click on Manage Check out files. We can see the list of items belongs to other users. If it ok, take the owner ship of the items and check-in them.

Minor Versions:  We have one more possibility that there are some items may checked-in with minor versions in the List/Library. We have to check the appropriate items and need to publish the items with major versions.

This may helps.

Check SharePoint service status using SharePoint object model

By using SharePoint object model we can retrieve the User Profile Service information like User Profiles and user group details from UserProfileManager class. Some times we can see “UserProfileApplicationNotAvailable” error. We can check service availability details using following code block.

public bool IsCurrentServiceisInStart(string serviceName)

{

    bool currentServiceisInStart = false;

    SPService currentService = SPFarm.Local.Services.FirstOrDefault(s => s.TypeName.Equals(serviceName));

    if (currentService!= null )

    {

        SPServiceInstance serviceInstance  = service.Instances.FirstOrDefault(i => i.Status == SPObjectStatus.Online);

        If(serviceInstance !=null)

                currentServiceisInStart=true;

    }

    return currentServiceisInStart;

}

We can check the current service from SharePoint local services by mentioning the service application details as “SPFarm.Local.Services.FirstOrDefault” command in Linq.

We can use this code block while calling SharePoint service application. Hope this will help.