So you've build your farm, configured Manage Metadata, Search, User Profile Service and Mysites. The first thing you obviously want to check out are the cool new social features.
You login and fire off your first post, in anticipation of the reactions of your fellow social pioneers in your company.

A day goes by but, nothing happens… What is going on here?
You check your feed but it keeps saying "We're still collection the latest news. You may see more if you try again a little later."
There must be something wrong here. When you crank up the ULS logs to verbose on the Microfeeds and User Profiles categories in the ULS logs:

"Microfeeds", "User Profiles" | Set-SPLogLevel -TraceSeverity Verbose

you will find a strange message stating the User Profile Service Application Proxy is not available:

nasq    Medium     Entering monitored scope (SPMicrofeedFeedCacheService.GetPublishedFeed). Parent FeedCacheService.GetPublishedFeed    e554c59b-9365-2015-6119-380e065adfbb

d22b    High     Failure retrieving application ID for User Profile Application Proxy 'User Profile Service Application 2': Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException: UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException_Logging :: UserProfileApplicationProxy.ApplicationProperties ProfilePropertyCache does not have 5c3e254a-4ab9-4736-a5f1-58d582d1d6d0 at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_ApplicationProperties() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_AppID()    e554c59b-9365-2015-6119-380e065adfbb

ahv64    High     SPMicrofeedFeedCacheService.GetUserProfile() - UserProfileApplicationProxy not available    e554c59b-9365-2015-6119-380e065adfbb

b4ly    Medium     Leaving Monitored Scope (SPMicrofeedFeedCacheService.GetPublishedFeed). Execution Time=2.064    e554c59b-9365-2015-6119-380e065adfbb

At first it did not hit home for me, but then I remembered similar issues when using powershell to manage the UPA back in SharePoint 2010. This was basically solved by granted (sharing) permissions to the UPA proxy.

The problem in this case is that my MySites are hosted in a different application pool from my UPA service application. Although the MySites application pool account is added, the service app application pool account is not.

Either grant the application pool account hosting the UPA Sharing Permissions through Central Admin:

Or use the following powershell script:

$account = New-SPClaimsPrincipal <domain\user> -IdentityType WindowsSamAccountName

$UPA = Get-SPServiceApplication <ID>

$sec = Get-SPServiceApplicationSecurity $UPA

Grant-SPObjectSecurity $sec2 -Principal $account -Rights "Full Control"

Set-SPServiceApplicationSecurity -Identity $UPA -ObjectSecurity $sec

The magic happens, and voila; the feeds start showing!

I actually feel a bit embarrassed about this one, but then I thought... OK, maybe if I'm struggling with this, there must be other fools out there that are as well.

So picture this… I'm building my SharePoint farm and creating my Contoso Intranet portal, and one of the first things you do when you have created your publication portal, is add Authenticated Users to the visitors group…

Hey, what's a portal without users right?

But then it hits… WTF is this screen? Where is my people picker? Well.. it's no longer there in lots of places where we add permissions.

So I start typing but No Results. I try all sorts of combinations, but no joy.
I end up searching the web, but I seem to be the only poor soul not being able to crack this nut.

Then it hits me. I'm better than that stinking dialog. I just type 'NT AUTHORITY\AUTHENTICATED USERS' and press Share.

Voila! SPUser added, and after having signed in as another user, it even works.

TAKE THAT YOU EVIL DIALOG!!!

When you start to play with SharePoint 2013 preview you will soon find that our good ol' 'Sign in as a different user' is gone:

Not sure why they have removed it. As there are some issues with this (even in 2010), I think it might be done because of that, but for most people this will be missed.
Luckily this is only a cosmetic change, as the plumbing is still there.

There are three ways of doing this:

1. Just add the following to the url: /_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true
2. Start your browser as another user
3. Hack welcome.ascx by adding the code below before the SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate tag with id ID_RequestAccess
   (http://nickgrattan.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/sign-in-as-different-user-and-sharepoint-2013/ )
   
   <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate runat="server" ID="ID_LoginAsDifferentUser"
   Text="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_loginasdifferentuser%>"
   Description="<%$Resources:wss,personalactions_loginasdifferentuserdescription%>"
   MenuGroupId="100"
   Sequence="100"
   UseShortId="true"
   />

Obviously modifying control templates is not something we should be doing once the product goes RTM. Lets hope product group decides to put everything back where it belongs J

Anyone doing SharePoint and hasn't been living under a rock for the last months, has heard the buzz around SharePoint 2013.
The Preview has been released, so the release is coming closer!

This means its time for me as well to get acquainted with the product. Given my busy schedule I haven't had much time to do so.

The coming weeks I will spend time writing some posts about the things I see and find in this new product.

Enjoy!

My blog contains only Dutch articles, but on several occasions I have been asked if I wouldn't start writing in English (Google translate sucks balls J).
I therefore decided to continue this blog with only English content, as all Dutch people speak and read English anyways.

Enjoy!