The option to create a forms library was not available on a sites created with the Business Intelligence Center template. The option was available on other sites.

Make sure SharePoint Enterprise, Performance Point, and Publishing features are all activated at the site collection level

At the Site level make sure all of the above features area activated. If option to create forms library is still not available check to see if the Team Collaboration Lists at the site level is activated. If not, activate it and the option to create a forms library should then be available from Create>Library

This error is received when the user does not have permission to create or edit responses. To resolve, click on Settings > Survey Settings > Advanced Settings, then under Create and Edit Access select Create responses and edit responses that were created by the user. The user should now be able to complete the survey without receiving the Access Denied error.

I received this error when I tried to browse to a newly created SharePoint 2010 site. Other newly created sites were responding as expected – only one was throwing this error. Searching the error returned several hits that were related to detaching and reattaching a database and a few other more complicated situations, but none that I could find were about the error on a newly created site.

After taking a looking in Central Admin, I realized that I had not created a top level site for this particular web app. That was the problem. After creating the top level web app, the site responded as expected.

I realize this was a simple issue to resolve, but the lack of any hits regarding the error with a new site prompted me to do a blog entry to possibly save someone else some time. So, if your site is a newly created one and you get this error, make sure your top level site exists. If it does and you’re getting the error, you can continue on with the other recommendations for the more complicated issues.

By definition from Microsoft the unattended service account is:

A single shared user account that is used to access all data sources. This is a low privileged domain account stored in the Secure Store Service. In establishing your unattended service account, first determine if this account has the proper access to the data sources that will be required in the Dashboard.

It is used by the Secure Store to provide credentials for the Business Intelligence service applications – Performance Point, Excel Services, and Visio Services.

The Secure Store provides access to data outside SharePoint Server 2010 (for example, SQL Server data) by impersonating the credentials of the user attempting to access the data. The unattended service account credentials are not cached globally. They are retrieved from the Secure Store only when needed.

More specific information on the unattended service account and the various BI service applications can be found at the links below.

Secure Store for Business Intelligence service applications

Performance Point security

Excel Services

Visio Services Security

“Visual Upgrade failed. The default master page for this user interface could not be found at “/teams/xxxxx/_catalogs/masterpage/v4.master”. Add the requested master page at this path and try again.”

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.

Correlation ID: a4ead41e-8c93-4d9d-ae0e-580902b71714

The problem is that SharePoint is looking for a masterpage that isn’t in the master page library. This missing masterpage is usually the v4.master page.

To add the v4.master page to the library:

1. Go to the upgraded 2010 site, and create a subsite

2. Download a copy of the v4.master page. (Site Settings > Galleries > Master Pages)

3. Go to the top level site (or any site where the error is) and upload the copy of the v4.master into the master page gallery. (Site Settings > Galleries > Master Pages)

4. Try the visual upgrade again.

Once the v4.master page is added to the master page library, the visual upgrade to the SharePoint 2010 look and feel should work.

When clicking on New External Content Type the error “There is no Business Data Connectivity Service associated with the current web context” was display.

The BDC service was started in Central Admin. The service application was also showing as selected in Central Admin >Manage Web Applications > Service Applications.

Since the web app was using the default associations, I tried creating a custom group from the dropdown and selected all the service applications.

Returned to SharePoint Designer 2010 and the External Content Types displayed.

Clicking on New External Content Type no longer gave an error and page to manage external content types displayed.

Most answers that I found online to this problem indicated a hotfix was needed for the server. This may be true if you are getting the “No items to display” message on all of your sites, regardless of whether they were upgraded or created in SharePoint 2010. My servers already had the hotfix and I was only getting the message on one upgraded site. Other site’s Lists and Libraries opened fine in SharePoint Designer 2010.

I consulted my friend Woody Windischman (co-author of Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010) and he suggested checking the Site Collection Administrators on the upgraded site collection since it was upgraded from MOSS 2007. I checked and the Site Collection Admins were different than the empty top level site and other sites that I was not having problems with. I changed the Site Collection Admin to the SP2010 accounts and still got the error when trying to access Lists and Libraries in SPD2010.

Woody also suggested that the original root collection of the site might by blocked by the default one in the new web application, so I tried deleting and recreating the top level root site – everything started working!

Thanks for all your help Woody! Woody has a lot of great info on his SharePoint blog, The Sanity Point. You can also follow him on Twitter, @woodywindy, and on FaceBook, for lots of helpful SharePoint info.

Numerous blogs recommended running a repair through Office diagnostics (Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Diagnostics ). We did this on one of the user’s new Windows 7 laptops and they still could not open SharePoint libraries in explorer view or upload multiple documents.

The problem ended up being the version of Internet Explorer. The new 64-bit Windows 7 laptop had both a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version of Internet Explorer as seen in the screen shot of the Start menu below. The default had been set as the 64-bit version. When the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer was selected, SharePoint performed as expected. The libraries could be opened in explorer view without error and the option to upload multiple documents was available.

I found lots of blog entries about different things that could cause this issue, but none that stated it might be the 64-bit version of IE.

The ULS logs did show errors indicating two of the three servers in the farm were trying to update the SSP and were causing conflict. There was nothing else to indicate what was causing the error.

I searched the internet and found nothing that applied to our situation. As a matter of fact, there was very little on the error at all. There were a couple of posts about the binaries not being installed on the server that housed Project Server, but that was about it. MOSS 2007 was installed on the same server and I had successfully created PWA instances in the past.

After reviewing everything on the server to make sure there weren’t any problems, I got Microsoft involved. They told me that to prevent each server from having to make SQL calls to pull information from the configuration database, data is cached on the servers. Sometimes this data will become corrupt and have to be cleared out and rebuilt. The process for clearing the cache can be found here.

Although the article states it resolves issues with timer jobs failing and does not state this will resolve the issue of PWA instance creations failing, it did do the trick. After the steps were followed new PWA instances could be created without errors.

I did a little more research on timer jobs and found the PWASSPSubmitSiteCreationTimerJob is responsible for creating new PWA instances. Apparently this was the timer job the corrupted cache was interfering with.

Now there is an article that ties the failing of PWA instance creation to timer job failures and clearing the cache. Maybe it will save someone else some time.

One of the highlights of the week was being invited to Jeff Jones (@spjeff) and his lovely bride Emily’s wedding. It was held at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel and officiated by Elvis. Jeff and Emily are an adorable couple and I was thrilled to be part of their special day.

And talk about SharePoint 2010 information overload!!…I attended as many sessions as I could. They were so many great offerings but no way to go to them all. Thankfully Microsoft will be making all of the sessions available on line for conference attendees.

Many people sent Twitter updates during the sessions. This gave others a glimpse of what was going on in the sessions they couldn’t make. There were almost 20,000 tweets sent during the conference that tagged #SPC09. I’m sure post conference tweeting  will put the number over 20k. That is amazing! There were also live blog streams and video streams.

Right now I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my plane. I’ve had a great time, but ready to get home. Viva Las Vegas!