Category: SharePoint 2013
Cannot complete this action as the Secure Store Shared Service is not responding. Please contact your administrator.
After creating a Secure Store Service Application through the Central Administration interface in SharePoint Server 2013 and trying to access the new Service Application, I receive the following error message from the system:
Cannot complete this action as the Secure Store Shared Service is not responding. Please contact your administrator.
In order to solve this, you can use the following Windows Powershell:
$service = Get-SPServiceInstance | Where-Object {$_.TypeName -eq "Secure Store Service"}
$service.Provision()
IISRESET
The Windows Powershell worked for me, and you should now be able to continue configuring the Secure Store Service Application.
Understanding device channels in SharePoint 2013
Public facing websites today requires different rendering on different devices (laptops, smartphones and tablets).
SharePoint 2013 Publishing Sites has introduced a concept called Device Channels which renders publishing sites in different ways by using different designs. This is controlled by a substring of the User-Agent string which comes when the user requests a specific site. Based on this particular substring, SharePoint 2013 is able to use the defined device channels and redirect the user to the correct masterpage view.
Keep in mind that this is a feature only available for SharePoint 2013 Publishing Sites.
You are able to add a new device channel by going to Site Settings and in the Look and Feel section click the link Device Channels. If you enter this device channels page for the first time, you will see a default entry in there already. If you want to add a new device channel, you simply add a new list item to the list.
You are asked to provide the following information:
| Field | Mandatory? | Description |
| Name | True | Specify the name of the device channel |
| Alias | True | Alias of the device channel to reference it using code/markup. |
| Description | False | Specify a description of the device channel. |
| Device Inclusion Rules | True | This is the most important part of the device channel |
| Active | False | Checking this checkbox will activate the channel. |
Once the information above has been specified for a new device channel, you will have to associate a master page to the newly created device channel. Specifying the master page can be accomplished by going to Site Settings and in the Look and Feel section click the link Master page. All the device channel that you have created and specified as active, will show up on this Master page settings page, and you are able to choose what master page to use for each device channels.
SPManagedAccount could not be deleted because other objects depend on it.
After removing a Service Application from SharePoint 2013, I wanted to clean up the corresponding Service Accounts. Normally I would do this using the following Windows Powershell commands. In this example I am trying to delete an account called KJAERULFF\UPAAppPool:
Get-SPManagedAccount | Where-Object {$_.UserName -eq "KJAERULFF\UPAAppPool"} | Remove-SPManagedAccount
But this time I receive the following error:
Remove-SPManagedAccount : An object in the SharePoint administrative framework, “SPManagedAccount Name=managed-account-S-1-5-21-1832481381-4025055587-3373917466-1113”, could not be deleted because other objects depend on it. Update all of these dependants to point to null or different objects and retry this operation. The dependant objects are as follows:
SPIisWebServiceApplicationPool Name=Contoso User Profile Service
SPIisWebServiceApplicationPool Name=SharePoint – UPA
At line:1 char:1
+ Remove-SPManagedAccount -Identity $account
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share…eManagedAccount: SPCmdletRemoveManagedAccount) [Remove-SPManagedAccount], InvalidOperationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletRemoveManagedAccount
The error occurs because one or more service application pools has a dependency to the account you are trying to delete. In this case the two dependencies are:
- Contoso User Profile Service
- SharePoint – UPA
In order to solve this problem we will first need to delete the dependencies using Windows Powershell. This can be done using the following commands in Windows Powershell:
Get-SPServiceApplicationPool | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "Contoso User Profile Service"} | Remove-SPServiceApplicationPool
Get-SPServiceApplicationPool | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "SharePoint - UPA"} | Remove-SPServiceApplicationPool
After performing the steps above, you are now able to delete the account using the following command:
Get-SPManagedAccount | Where-Object {$_.UserName -eq "KJAERULFF\UPAAppPool"} | Remove-SPManagedAccount
Defining managed paths in SharePoint 2013
A huge part of structuring a SharePoint web application involves creating site collections with sites and having them in a logical structure that reflects different parts of your organisation. Managed paths can help you with just that. Managed paths are a mechanism that enables the user to create uniform navigational structure related to multiple site collections in a farm.
There are two types of managed paths. Wildcard and explicit:
- Wildcard managed paths enables one site collection to be the “implied” parent of several site collections using a wildcard path value. Ex. (http://organisation.com/departments/sales, http://organisation.com/departments/hr etc.)
- Explicit managed paths enable one and only one site collection to be nested directly beneath another within a navigational structure. Ex. (http://organisation.com/main).
As you can see from the examples above, managed paths are defined per web application and can be created from the Central Administration interface or from Windows Powershell. In this blogpost I will show you both methods from a SharePoint 2013 farm. It is important to point out that neither of these methods are prefered from another. It really depends on the situation.
Using Central Administration
To create a managed path using the Central Administration Interface, do the following.
- Open Central Administration and go to Application Management.
- In the Web Applications section, click the link Manage web applications.
- Select the web application in the list that you want to create a managed path for, and click the button Managed Paths in the ribbon.
- This opens up a page where you are able to specify a name for the new managed path and the type.
- Click OK to create a new managed path for the web application you selected in step 3.
Using Windows Powershell
To create a managed path using Windows Powershell, you can use the cmdlet called New-SPManagedPath (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607693.aspx).
- Open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell.
- Execute the following: $wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity “http://portal“
- When the web application has been assigned to the variable, execute the following: New-SPManagedPath “departments” -WebApplication $wa
I hope the information I have described in this blogpost about managed paths helps you understand this important concept in SharePoint.
Thomas Kjærulff 