Visio Web Access Part not working

From a user’s point of view: I really like the Visio Services in SharePoint 2016
From an administrator’s view: finding the source of an error in Visio Services can be a real pain!

Failed to get raster diagram for Visio file: Default Page ID Exception

The error for the user is not very helpful:

Visio Services was unable to display the requested page because it does not exist within this Web Drawing. To resolve this issue, make sure to request a page that exists within this Web Drawing.

The error message in the ULS log – nah:

Failed to get raster diagram for visio file https:///.vsdx page default page ID Exception : System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.Office.Visio.Server.GraphicsServer.VisioGraphicsServiceFault]: The creator of this fault did not specify a Reason. (Fault Detail is equal to Microsoft.Office.Visio.Server.GraphicsServer.VisioGraphicsServiceFault).

I was able to open the document in Visio 2016 and everything looked fine. I compared this file to another, which rendered fine. The difference was very hard to spot: The heading of the tab displayed was italic and not regular as in the good file.

An italic tab name indicates, that this is a background page and not a regular page. After changing the page type, everything worked as expected.

SQL Server 2016 Power Pivot for SharePoint 2016 Health Rules – ADMOMD.net is not installed

In a SharePoint 2016 Farm with Power pivot health rules will fail with the following error:

Power Pivot: ADOMD.NET is not installed on a standalone WFE that is configured 
for central admin

Trevor Seward  wrote a great article on this topic focusing on SQL 2012. To verify that his article is still valid for SQL Server 2016 and SharePoint 2016 with Power Pivot, I followed his article:

I installed the latest SQL_AS_ADOMD.msi, which can be downloaded here. But nothing changed.

Here is the content of the Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient.dll (13.0.0.0) found under C:\windows\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient\v4.0_13.0.0.0. ….

[SharePointPermission(System.Security.Permissions.SecurityAction.LinkDemand, ObjectModel = true)]
public override SPHealthCheckStatus Check()
{
SPHealthCheckStatus result;
try
{
if (!HealthUtil.isCentralAdminConfiged())
{
result = SPHealthCheckStatus.Passed;
}
else
{
try
{
if (HealthUtil.IsADOMDInstalled("13.0.0.0"))
{
result = SPHealthCheckStatus.Passed;
}
else
{
result = SPHealthCheckStatus.Failed;
}…

A quick check via Power Shell reveals the following

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Adomdclient")
$connnection = new-object Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient.AdomdConnection
$connection.ClientVersion

The client version is: “13.0.1601.5 ((SQL16_RTM).160429-2226)” and that is why the rule fails.

Either you disable the rule or ignore it, if Adomd is installed properly.

Start all SharePoint Health Analyzer Jobs

“SharePoint Health Analyzer is a feature in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 that enables administrators to schedule regular, automatic checks for potential configuration, performance, and usage problems in the server farm. Any errors that SharePoint Health Analyzer finds are identified in status reports that are made available to farm administrators in Central Administration.” (MSDN)

In some scenarios SharePoint Health Analyzer helped me out a lot. The messages give a clear starting point to search for the error source. But, there is one thing that bothers me a lot. SharePoint Health Analyzer relies on Time jobs which are usually run on a hourly to weekly schedule. Therefore if you are trying to fix a reported issue there won’t be no immediate feedback.

SharePoint 2016 with SQL Server 2016 RBS – Installation Guide

In the last few weeks I tried to enable SQL Server 2016 Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) for SharePoint Server 2016. As mentioned in my earlier post I had no success installing the SQL Server 2016 RBS components on my SharePoint 2016 WFEs.

By now I was able to install and configure SQL Server 2016 RBS for SharePoint 2016 and I want to share my experience.

In the moment Microsoft is certifying SQL Server 2016 RBS for SharePoint Server 2016. By now be prepared to experience some minor issues. For SQL Server 2014 RBS there is additional information available here.

SharePoint 2016 – Business Intelligence

Microsoft changed main parts of the BI capabilities with SharePoint 2016. SharePoint Server 2016 does no longer provide Excel Services. Excel Services are now part of the Office Online Server, which got released on May 4, 2016. With the November 2016 Release Microsoft supports even embedded Power Views in Excel Online.

So what’s new about it?

As Excel Services being no longer part of SharePoint 2016 and now part of the Office Online Server, there have to be other changes too. Not so well publicly announced, there are some hidden requirement for BI scenarios:

SharePoint 2016 requires SQL Server 2016 for BI scenarios

Ricardo Muti wrote a great article about “Integrate Reporting Services into SharePoint 2016” in which he addresses the upcoming changes to the reporting infrastructure of SP 2016.

If you want to get started right now, grab your copy of the white paper:  Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016.

If you plan the deployment in a multi server farm: Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in a Multi-Tier SharePoint 2016 Farm

SQL Server 2016 Remote Blob Storage (RBS) – Error 1723

Today I tried to install and configure my SharePoint Server 2016 Farm to use the SQL Server 2016 remote BLOB storage (RBS).

I started with the following environment. All servers are virtualized on hyper-v and are running Windows 2012 R2 as operating system.

• 1 Domain Controller
• 1 SQL Server 2016 Enterprise
• 1 SharePoint Server 2016 Custom Role
• 1 SharePoint Server 2016 Web Front-End role

The RBS setup for SharePoint Server consists of several parts. See my installation guide here. Which goes into the details for configuring the SQL Server 2016 and reflects the latest Update 4 (see below).

The RBS installation requires to run the RBS installer (part of the Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Feature Pack: RBS.msi) on each SharePoint Web Front-End Server.
The RBS installer can be found on the SQL 2016 ISO under: ..\x64\redist\RemoteBlobStore\RBS.msi or it can be downloaded from: Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Feature Pack

Sadly I ran into the following issue during the installation on my SharePoint 2016 Web Front-End:

Office Online Server – MSVCR120.dll missing

Today I installed a new Office Online Server Farm based on two Windows 2012 R2 Servers.

The installation went smooth, but I experienced an unhealthy farm status. Checking the ULS logs I found the following error:

LoadLibrary failed with error 2 on D:\Program Files\Office Web Apps\OneNoteMerge\bin\ONSrvU.DLL

After a bit of investigation, I tried to run the OneNoteMerge.exe. This resulted in the following error:

The program can't start because MSVCR120.dll is missing from your computer.
Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

What now?

Checking the c:\windows\system32\ folder I found the following file:

msvcr120_clr0400.dll

Following the Microsoft Deployment Guide for Office Online Server there are the following prerequisites:

• .NET Framework 4.5.2 (I wasn’t able to install it)
• Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015
• Microsoft.IdentityModel.Extention.dll

I install the remaining two prerequisites, but wasn’t able to get rid of the errors.

I found the following article: Determining Which DLLs to Redistribute pointing out, that msvcr120.dll is a part of Visual Studio 2013.

So I went for the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 package and downloaded both the x64 and x86 version and installed them. The msvcr120.dll comes with the x64 version.

This solved the error for me. I hope it works in your environment as well.

SharePoint Developer Dashbord

The Developer Dashboard is a part of the SharePoint On-Premise versions. I think this feature is one of the most forgotten and underrated. Especially in large farm deployments it offers a lot of functionality to identify bugs, errors, performance issues and bottlenecks.

SharePoint Server 2016 Developer Dashboard

How to enable the Developer Dashboard?

SharePoint 2016 and the language packs

The start of the SharePoint 2016 Installation

Last Wednesday Microsoft released SharePoint 2016. I was able to download it via MSDN during Microsoft’s FutureofSharePoint Event and installed my first SharePoint 2016 Server today.

If you are wondering, where you can find the latest language packs, just follow this link to Microsoft: Language Packs for SharePoint Server 2016

Though they were released in march and SharePoint 2016 got released last week, they do work with SharePoint 2016. I checked with Bill Bear: Are these language packs up to date?