SharePoint Correlation ID in error messages: what it is and how to use it

Applies To: SharePoint Server 2013 Standard

If you're a user having problems with a public website or survey, email or call the company that owns the website and ask them for help.   You can usually find contact information for a website or survey at the bottom of a page or in the About section of their navigation menus.
If you're a user at a business and you're getting errors, contact the person who manages your business's internal website.   These types of problems can often only be fixed by the webmaster (SharePoint admin) or someone at your company.
If you're a SharePoint admin, webmaster, or site manager,   and your users are asking questions about correlation IDs, this can help you.

What a correlation ID is and isn't

The correlation ID is not an error number or code. Simply, it's a GUID (globally unique identifier) that's automatically generated for every request that the SharePoint server receives. It's unique to each request, not each error. However when an error occurs, the error message contains the correlation ID that was valid for the request at the time.
It is meant to be used to help a SharePoint Admin trace what was happening at the time of an error. It is only valuable as an interactive tool to help the Admin track down your error. An Admin uses the correlation ID as "breadcrumbs" to retrace a requests or processes in the SharePoint Unified Logging System (ULS) to find what leads up to and causes a problem. If SharePoint gets an error that it can't identify while working on that task, it posts an "Unexpected error has occurred" message, and includes the correlation ID. The correlation ID can help find out what happened but doesn't identify what happened.
Successful requests are tagged with a correlation ID as well as failed ones. The ID is unique and different for every new request, and only lasts the duration of the request. It is not like a Windows error which gives you an 80xxxxxx number that identifies the exact problem. It doesn't help to search for a specific correlation ID on the web, as every single one is different and unique to your server and that point in time.
Where a correlation ID is valuable is tracing through a process. SharePoint creates a log (ULS) of everything it does when processing requests, and the correlation ID is basically the thread that ties each step together. Since SharePoint does thousands of requests at the same time, the correlation ID can be used to filter out just the steps that SharePoint was doing for any given request.
For the Admin, a correlation ID can be used to trace errors, as well as performance problems and other issues. By using the correlation IDs for requests that are exhibiting the problematic behavior, they can investigate deeper.  If no failure is happening and no error message is being generated, the developer dashboard can be used to view the correlation ID generated by the processes.

How to add Web parts on Site pages in SharePoint 2016

How to add Web parts on Site pages in SharePoint 2016

Today we are writing about how to add web parts on Site pages in SharePoint 2016.

• Login to the site and click on gear box of the site in right side of the screen.
• Then click on site content option to open site contents page.
• Click on Site pages to open the same.

• In case if site pages Content Library is invisible, Kindly activate the features to show the Site pages on the Site contest.
• To activate the Site features> Site setting> Manage Site features under the Site collections> Activate Wiki Page Home Page.

• Now on the Site pages, click on the Files options and select New document, Here we need to select Web part page. See below.

• Once select Web Part Page, it will take us to create Web part web page. Here we need to assign Name and Layout from the template, Save Location from Document Library and click on create.

• On the create page we need to add a web part, in my case we are adding what’s happening from Community categories and click on add.

NOTE: for above web part we need to activate Community features from site features option see above we have given how to activate.

• Once added the web part, stop editing and go back to site pages. Here we can see our Web part has been added also many other features added after activating community site features.

SharePoint 2016 has come with many enhancements, encouraging organizations to migrate to this latest version. This post will take you through a step by step process on how you can upgrade your SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2016.
Note that you can upgrade your SharePoint instance from one server to another without any downtime. As this is a live migration, I would suggest you to take complete backup of the server and the database before continuing.
If you are running SharePoint 2010 and want to migrate, there is no method to migrate it directly to SharePoint 2016.

Here are the steps that you need to follow:

• Create SharePoint 2013 farm
• Attach SharePoint 2010 database to SharePoint 2013 farm
• Upgrade site collections to full SharePoint 2013 mode
• Create a new SharePoint 2016 farm  
• Attach SharePoint 2013 database to SharePoint 2016 database server  

Here I am assuming that you have done all the prerequisites before starting this migration process. That means you’ve already installed SharePoint 2016 server, but if you are finding difficulty to do so, you can follow my previous post here.

Also, before starting the process go to your old SharePoint 2013 database Server, copy the WSS_Content content database of your site collection (which you want to migrate to SharePoint 2016) to the new SharePoint 2016 database server.

1. Login to your old SQL Server Management Studio, select WSS_content ,go to task, and select copy database.



2. You will get a database copy wizard. Click on Next.



3. Verify source server properties.


4. Select the destination Server where you want to copy this WSS_contect DB.


5. In select the transfer method wizard, use SQL Management Object method if you want to do the migration without down time.


6. Select a database to copy. Select WSS_Content. Click on Next.


7. Configure the properties of a destination database.


8. Select Logins here.


9. Configure the package created.


10. Select Run immediately option. If you need to schedule them, select Schedule option.


11. Review the summary and click on Finish.


12. It will take a while to perform the operation.


13. Once the database is restored, go back to your SharePoint 2016 Central Administration and setup your SharePoint Web Application to use the copied WSS_Content database. Go to Application Management -> Manage Web Applications.


14. Create a new web application.


15. Set new web application properties.


16. Once the new application is created, open the SharePoint powershell as the administrator and run below commmands:

1. Test your content database using command
Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <database name> -Web Application <Web application name>



2. Dismount the new database which is created by detault when the site collection is created.
Dismount-SPContentDatabase "<Db Name>"



3. Run the cmdlet to attach SharePoint 2013 content database to new SharePoint 2016 site collection.
Mount-SPContentDatabase "WSS_Content_Home" -DatabaseServer “IN-SRV05” – WebApplication http://aspl-collab04/


4. The upgrade will take 10 to 15 minutes to complete, and sometimes even an hour. Once it is completed, you will get a message like below:


5. If your SharePoint site has a customized web solution, then run cmdlet to add SP solution
Add-SPSolution C:\Service.wsp ( Path of wsp solution)



6. After adding SP solution, we need to install this solution to our newly created web application use cmdlet:

Install-SPSolution –Identity Service.wsp –WebApplication   http://aspl-collab04/   –GACDeployment

And there you are! Now open your updated SharePoint site. Like you can see Advaiya’s updated SharePoint site as below: 

  

Application services

SharePoint Server 2013 includes several services for working with data in your SharePoint sites. New for SharePoint is the Machine Translation Service, which translates sites, documents, and streams for multilingual support. SharePoint Server 2013 also includes Access Services and a new data access model. For converting files and streams to other formats, SharePoint Server 2013 has Word Automation Services and PowerPoint Automation Services (a new feature for SharePoint). SharePoint also provides data analysis tools, like PerformancePoint Services and Visio Services, that enable business intelligence, and powerful new features in Excel Services.