Fix Configuration of the Document ID feature

With SP2010, Microsoft has tried to provide an excellent and helpful feature for uniquely identifying a document within a site collection called DocumentID.
Well, you might ask the rationale behind this tiny change from MS side..right?

Basically, with the previous version of SharePoint product i.e. MOSS 2007, if the user moved a document within a site collection, lets say from one document library to another or the folder containing the file has been renamed or your site URL has been modified in someway, then you would typically face a situation which in IT is called a Broken Link or simply put a bad url :(.

Hence, in the site collection features, you would typically get an option to activate/deactivate the Document ID Service


Document ID Service

Once you have this activated, you would expect the Document ID column to show up when you try to add a new document to a library, unfortunately there is another catch here. You might see this message, "Configuration of the Document ID feature is scheduled to be completed by an automated process." as highlighted in the image below:

This message is shown because the timer job called Document ID enable/disable job has been activated. Once the job completes at the scheduled time, the message will go away or else you may run the timer job and put it to completion forcibly by clicking "Run Now". However, I can assure you that even after the previous step, there is no certain time when the Document ID would show up if you go for a new document upload.


Document ID enable/disable Job

One v.important note that if your doc lib was already having some documents, you would need to explicitly perform some action for this new column of Document ID to show up..for example Check-in/Check-out of docs.

Do try this out and explore this cool stuff from SharePoint 2010!

SharePoint Timer Job stuck at Deploying

Dealing with SharePoint solution packages and solution deployment stuck at "Deploying" status!!

Well don’t panic, here is just what the doctor ordered:

1. Check the Timer Job Status for the solution deployment in Central Administration. There could be entries with “Failed” as the job status.
2. Lets try to set things right by running stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs command.
   Note that in a farm environment, you need to run the above command on all the servers.
3. As a next step, try restarting the OWSTIMER Service on all boxes in the farm.
4. If the above steps do not help the solution deployment. You may try retracting the solution using Retract solution command or through the Central Admin's Solution Management.
   stsadm.exe -o retractsolution -name
   For your knowledge, retracting a solution creates another “deployment job”.
   
   Now if retracting the solution does not work, do not try to Force Delete the solution as that would throw an exception, "The solution cannot be removed when job is scheduled or running"
5. Get a list of all the pending & active deployments on your MOSS Farm using
   stsadm -o enumdeployments command.
   Make a note of the GUID of the various solutions on the command window as this would be required in next step.
6. As a last nail in the coffin, we now need to simply cancel the solution deployment by passing the GUID of the solution as shown below
   stsadm -o canceldeployment -id "job id string here"

After performing the above steps, you would be able to either put the SharePoint Timer Job into completion or atleast remove the solution package being stuck in deployment.

If the problem still persists (esp. in the MOSS 2007 Farm environment), you might need to remove/detach a defective WFE from the farm and then retry deployment.

I have tried to put together the steps which have worked for me, hope this post helps you all too.