SharePoint 2010 - Fast Search Center site template not available (bug?!)

Bas — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:08:00 GMT

Recently I found out that, my Fast Search Center was not available from the “New Site” menu. Both the english as well the dutch fast search template was not available.

As I saw this happen before, I checked out the site collection features overview, to enable the “SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features”. I had to scratch my head twice when I saw that that feature was already activated: that feature should add fast search center templates to the available templates. Next thing I did was navigate to the “Page Layout and Site Template settings”, to make sure that the Fast Search Center template was available for creating sub-sites. To my surprise, the template was available! Still, I couldn’t select that template when creating a new site.

I remembered that there is a hidden sitecollection feature (search extensions) that needs to be enabled to make use of the Fast specific features like visual best bets and that enables the administration links to visual best bets, user contexts and site promotion/demotion. After activating that feature, the Fast Search center template became available.

This is strange, because when checking that feature.xml, we learn the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!-- Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. -->
<Feature  Id="5EAC763D-FBF5-4d6f-A76B-EDED7DD7B0A5"
          Title="$Resources:SearchExtensionsFeatureTitle;"
          Description="$Resources:SearchExtensionsFeatureDescription;"
          DefaultResourceFile="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search"
          SolutionId="7ED6CD55-B479-4EB7-A529-E99A24C10BD3"
          Version="14.0.0.0"
          Scope="Site"
          Hidden="TRUE"
          xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <ElementManifests>
    <ElementManifest Location="webPartDWPFiles.xml"/>
    <ElementManifest Location="ExtendedSearchAdminLinks.xml"/>
  </ElementManifests>
</Feature>

There is no feature receiver
There is no feature dependency
The feature only
- Adds a webpart (webpartdwpfiles.xml)
- Adds Search admin links (ExtendedSearchAdminLinks.xml)

For some reason this only happened for existing site collections. That made me think about some recent changes to the platform:

SP1 was installed
SP1 for language packs was installed
CU June was installed.

When deactivating the hidden feature (Search Extensions), the english template was gone again, whereas the dutch search template still existed. I definately this needs some further investigation.

As it only happened for the sites that existed before that change, my guess it has to do with a combination of those updates. For new sites, everything works as intended. My guess is that it has to do with the combination of installed/registred language packs and the activation/deactivation of the search extension feature, which provides a default language resource named "Microsoft.Office.Server.Search".

SharePoint 2010, I am impressed!

Bas — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:34:00 GMT

Today we finally got acces to the SharePoint 2010(twenty - ten) sneak peak site, with 3 video's included which gives us a sneak peak to SharePoint 2010. And i must say, I amself really impressed! It's better for the business, who thought we could update items acquired via a webservice as it was a SharePoint List?, the Ribbon is introduced, it's better working for admins, with the new logging and admin options, visual upgrades to SP2010 and for myself, i think it's a heaven for developers!

The integration with Visual Studio 2010 is just amazing! Debugging is easier (just deploy and enter a site), Creating a BDC connection is much much easier, it can easily be done in code, LINQ to SharePoint integration, package creation, creating webparts.
The only downside: there is just an upgrade mechanism for people who used to work with VSeWSS 1.3, and I only work with WSPBuilder.

In addition to that, the developer's will get the so called "developer dashboard" which contains developer information: number of SPRequests, calls to stored procedures, execution times of them and of webpart events.
For SilverLight: there will be be a SharePoint Client object model that, for example, allows us to query SharePoint via Caml

And last but not least: we have to switch our beloved 12-hive to the new 14-hive. Doesn't sound too good, "fourteen-hive", do you think ?

Check out the videos at: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx

Search results matching tag '2010'

SharePoint 2010 - Fast Search Center site template not available (bug?!)

SharePoint 2010, I am impressed!