Saturday, May 26, 2007

If you cannot compile an audience and get no error

Description:
Recently I was at a customer site where we were implementing a MOSS based solution. while moving to the production - after a backup and restore process we tried to create several audiences and when we tried compiling them they did not compile successfully but we got no indication for an error.

After a quick view at the server's event viewer – we found some SharePoint error message like: 'Failed to compile 'my audience' audience. Exception was: 'Failed to obtain crawl status.'

A quick search reveled that during the restore process our SSP (SharedServicesProvider for MOSS) did not have a search indexer defined.

In order to fix this problem what we had to do is:
1. make sure the office SharePoint services search service is active on our farm (in central administration->operations->services on server)
2. Go to central administration->application->configure the SSP we are using and select search indexer server from the drop down list (after step 1 this options should not be empty)
3. Done.

Now the compilation could be completed!

Hope this helps you guys,

Shai Ben Shooshan
SharePoint TechnologySpecialist
KWizCom Knowledge Worker Components
shai@kwizcom.com
http://www.kwizcom.com

6 comments:

Jussi Palo said...

How to do step 2, can you please provide exact steps?

Anonymous said...

I agree with Jussi - the description for step 2 isn't very clear. It would be great if you could clarify!

Thanks!

Shai Petel said...

Hi guys,

If you log on to the server you should find central administration site at the start-programs menu.

If you cannot find it still and need more help please feel free to contact me by email to shai at kwizcom.com

Vijay said...

This Solution is not clear.. In Central Administration there is no Application tab or Option. There is Application Management tab.

Even in Application Management tab(Page) There is configure the SSP. Please give me clear instructions. I am facing same issue..

Pandu said...

PLease give me clear instructions. There is no Application option in the Central Administration.

Even in Application Management there is no 'Configure SSp' option. Please give me clear instructions.

Shai Petel said...

Hi,

The SSP (SharedServicesProvider) is available in MOSS only, and not in WSS. Please make sure you have MOSS installed.

If you do, the SSP should also be in the context navigation (left side) of your central administration. You can create one and configure it through there, but remember you have to have MOSS for that to work.

Good luck