How to solve results from a result source is showing default results after import of a search schema

If you like me use CSOM to import search configuration xml files between environments in site collections you might run into an issue where after an import, all web parts or API calls using a custom Result Source suddenly show results from the default Local SharePoint Results result source instead of the custom one.

The search-is-down developer solution is to restart Search Host Controller on the query servers to make sure they are up to speed on result sources in your system. The better production search-is-up solution require you to open up each result source, click Save, and wait for 10-20 seconds for settings to go live. Both ways ensures search results will appear as expected again.

Something went wrong–when deploying a new control template in search

This is a quick one. I created a new search result page control template for a client. The client deployed it and all was well after they tested it. However when I logged in I got the “something went wrong” message on the result page.

Using Fiddler I noticed an 302 error on the control template .js file, which pointed to _layouts/15/AccessDenied.aspx.

While the file was published and working fine for the person who deployed it in the Master Page Gallery, something had gone wrong. Republishing the file solved the problem and search results are displayed as expected.

Restarting your Search Host Controller will impact People Search

We’ve had issues with people search not working in two environments which was solved by adding the search service account to the WSS_ADMIN_WPG local group on all search servers. The issue is that if the search service account is not part of this group it cannot read the projection model files needed to perform fuzzy name search.

You can read more about this issue over at Ron Grzywacz’s blog.

Video Portal Troubleshooting

A new release without issues hard to achieve and Office 365 Video is no exception. I will explain a couple of typical scenarios which you might encounter.

• A channel with that name already exists
• I have renamed my channel, but the channel name is still listed with the old one on the channel listing page

How to fix search schema import with query rules which use dictionary lookups

Note: This post propose a solution which will render your farm in an unsupported state, and should only be done under Microsoft Support approved guidance. A bug for the issue has been filed, and I expect a fix will be provided with a CU later on. Another fix is to re-create your Service Application and get a fresh database.

I’m doing a search project where we have a bunch of query rules defined. Some are promoted results and some change what is displayed and the sort order. For some of the rules we use trigger terms from a term store, which works just fine.

The solution is created on a dev farm and then the search configuration from the search site is exported and moved to the production farm. So far so good.

Importing the search configuration in production works just fine, but when you try to access the query rule page (http://intranet/sites/search/_layouts/15/listqueryrules.aspx?level=sitecol) you get the following error: