Cumulative Update | SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

Project Server – "An unknown error has occurred"

April 17, 2012 Lester Lovelock 3 comments

I recently had an issue at a client where the Project Center was failing to load and returning “An unknown error has occurred” on the page. We have seen this behaviour before and it’s usually some corrupt Project data that causes it, but I’ve never had the time to get to the bottom of the problem. Fortunately, today I had a bit more free time to investigate.

This particular issue is caused by custom fields that are linked single value (read: not multi-select) lookup tables erroneously getting multiple values assigned to them. How this occurs is as-yet unclear, but it appears to be symptomatic only in the published database – the draft and reporting databases are unaffected.

So, what’s the fix?

There are a couple of things that can be done, depending on your level of access and technical capability. Firstly, we need to identify the plans that are causing the issue. The fastest way of doing this is with a little piece of SQL code (change <Published_DB_name> to your actual Project Server published database name):

USE <Published_DB_name>
SELECT
(SELECT proj.PROJ_NAME FROM dbo.MSP_PROJECTS proj WHERE pcf.PROJ_UID = proj.PROJ_UID) as ProjectName
,(SELECT pcfv.[MD_PROP_NAME] FROM [dbo].[MSP_CUSTOM_FIELDS] pcfv WHERE pcfv.[MD_PROP_UID] = pcf.MD_PROP_UID) as CustomFieldName
,count(*)
FROM [dbo].[MSP_PROJ_CUSTOM_FIELD_VALUES] pcf
GROUP BY PROJ_UID, MD_PROP_UID
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
ORBER BY ProjectName, CustomFieldName

(credit to Jan @ Piet Remen’s blog for the above query – http://pietremen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/project-centre-unknown-error-has.html)

This will return a list of projects, custom fields and the number of times that the custom field has been populated. If any project appears as an output of this script, you can view view the issue by taking a look at the Project Information through PWA. Affected custom fields will appear comma separated – e.g. Project Priority: Low, Low, Low, Low – where they should only appear as a single value.

The fix is quite a simple one – republish the project. This pushes the values from the draft database back to the published database and overwrites the broken custom field values. Check in PWA > Project Information, or re-run the above query to check that the plan is now fixed in the published database. I have seen a couple of instances where this did not fix the problem, and we had to delete the published version of the plan, and re-publish from the draft version.

It is still unclear how long the project will remain “fixed”, we have had a couple of plans reproduce the issue after being republished.

Microsoft have identified the issue, and released a fix, which can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2598251

This KB is also included in the roll-up package (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2597152) though it’s not documented.

These KB’s will prevent the issue occurring in the future, but will not fix existing problems – be sure to follow the above steps to ensure that the plans are fixed. As always – be sure you have database backups before applying updates!

Categories: Cumulative Update, EPM, Hotfix, Project Server, Project Server 2010, PS2010 Tags: Project Server, Project Server 2010

#SP2010 and #PS2010 versions and the associated KB articles #SharePoint #ProjectServer #in

March 9, 2012 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

Following on from my colleagues post on finding the SharePoint Build Version via PowerShell (Link), I would just like to draw your attention to a list of SharePoint / Project Server versions that I maintain.

Links to the KB articles are also available along with the build version and the Cumulative Update / Service Pack that they are associated with.

How to access:

In the top menu of the site:

Screenshot:

I know that other people maintain similar lists, this is just my way of keeping on top of the versions for SharePoint and in particular Project Server.

Hopefully this is useful for others also.

Enjoy!

Categories: Cumulative Update, Service Pack, Work Tags: Project Server 2010, SharePoint 2010

Office 2010 / #MSProject 2010 SP1 + June 2011 Cumulative Update links #ProjectServer #SharePoint #SP2010 #PS2010

August 8, 2011 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

As ever, now that my server environment is starting to stabilise after installing SP1 + June 2011 CU (Security Validation issues aside of course), we are now looking at updating the clients to reflect the update.

This is especially important in a Project Server / Microsoft Project 2010 environment.

As a result, here are some useful links that took me a while to dig out for the Office / Project 2010 client updates:

Project 2010

Project 2010 Service Pack 1 x86:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C72141FE-D264-4F6E-AE09-D0FBD32DE5D5

Project 2010 Service Pack 1 x64:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CE1FD136-A1F4-4FF5-909B-50808D6F39CB

Project 2010 – June Cumulative Update 2011 x86 & x64:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2536590&kbln=en-us

NB: only update binary available for Project 2010 in the June 2011 CU

Office 2010

Office 2010 Service Pack 1 x86:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9D2E1282-8B69-418B-AFA0-9F61239EC8BE

Office 2010 Service Pack 1 x64:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E9F3C2D0-C321-4910-A4CE-B2F294B42D65

Office 2010 – June Cumulative Update 2011 x86 & x64:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553023
NB: no single update binary available, update client applications as required.

Other Useful Links:

On my travels I also found this other link which lists all the updates for the SharePoint and Office Systems:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee748587.aspx

Categories: Cumulative Update, Hotfix, Service Pack, Work Tags: Office 2010, Project 2010, Project Server 2010

Auto height plain text box issue fixed in InfoPath / Form Services 2010 #in #SharePoint #SP2010

May 10, 2011 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

A quick post to say that the InfoPath / Form Service 2010 issue I was having at one of my clients has now been fixed and is included as part of the SharePoint 2010 – April 2011 Cumulative Update.

My description of the issue can be found here: https://ghamson.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/form-services-infopath-2010-bug-found-in-multi-line-plain-text-boxes/

Microsoft KB Articles

InfoPath Hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2516485
Project Server 2010 – April 2011 CU: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2512801
SharePoint Server 2010 – April 2011 CU: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2516485
SharePoint Foundation 2010 – April 2011 CU: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2512804

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Microsoft support and product teams in working with us to detail the issue and come to a resolution. We are testing the go live environment with April CU 2011 as I write this and the fix will dramatically improve the UI for the custom forms that we have developed.

Categories: Cumulative Update, Hotfix, Work Tags: Form Services 2010, InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010

October CU #SP2010 #PS2010 Updated information… #in

November 8, 2010 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

The SharePoint Team have updated the information about the October Cumulative Update.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/11/06/details-and-workaround.aspx

Details Below:

Below are further details and a workaround for the SharePoint 2010 October Cumulative Update issue discovered yesterday.

Packages Impacted

The Cumulative Update packages affected are the Server Packages for SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server and Project Server 2010, specifically;

SharePoint Server Package 2394320
Project Server Package 2394322

The downloads for both of these packages have been removed from our servers. If you have already downloaded them you SHOULD NOT install them. They will be republished.

Issue Details

The October Cumulative Update for the packages listed above makes some changes and updates to the user profile database. Unfortunately there are certain situations where this update does not complete as expected and leaves the update in an inconsistent state. This causes issues with several SharePoint features that use the User Profile Application such as MySites, People and Expertise Search & Ratings.

Workaround

If you have already applied the October Cumulative Updates mentioned above, you should perform the following steps;

If you encounter any issues following these steps or have questions specific to your environment/deployment please call Microsoft Product Support for assistance.

Check the following locations for the Microsoft.Office.Server.dll to determine the version. If the version is 14.0.5128.5000 or greater, the October CU is applied.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.Office.Server.dll
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Office.Server

\14.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Microsoft.Office.Server.dll

Using Central Administration perform the following steps

Click on Manage Service Applications
Select User Profile Service Application by clicking on it
At the top of the screen on the Service Applications tab, click on Manage
On the Manage Profile Service: User Profile Service Application page, click Manage User Permissions
On the Permissions for User Profile Service Application dialog, you will need to
1. Specify the desired user accounts and click the Add button to add them to the list
2. By default SharePoint 2010 RTM has these accounts
  1. NT Authority\authenticated users
  2. All Authenticated Users
3. Once the user accounts are in the list, you will need to set the permissions appropriately for your environment and click OK.