Content databases contain orphaned Apps SharePoint 2013

Content databases contain orphaned Apps

SharePoint Health Analyzer rule “Content databases contain orphaned Apps.”

Some situation content database may become corrupted. The corrupted database may contain orphaned apps. Orphaned apps are not accessible, which causes unnecessary resource and license consumption and may result in failures in SharePoint upgrade.

Solution

Remove app for SharePoint instances from a SharePoint 2013 site.

A user must have the Manage Web site permission to remove an app for SharePoint. By default, this permission is only available to users with the Full Control permission level or who are in the site Owners group.

To remove an app from a SharePoint site

  • Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Site owners group.
  • On the site, on the Settings menu, click View Site Contents.
  • In the Apps section, point to the app that you want to remove, click “…”, and then click Remove.
  • Click OK to confirm that you want to remove the app.

To remove an app by using Windows PowerShell

Verify that you have the following memberships:

  • securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
  • db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
  • Administrators group on the server on which you are running the Windows PowerShell cmdlets.
  • Site Owners group on the site collection to which you want to install the app.

An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint 15 Products cmdlets. On the Start screen, click SharePoint 2013 Management Shell, type the following commands, and press ENTER after each one:

$instances = Get-SPAppInstance -Web
#Gets all apps installed to the subsite you specify.

$instance = $instances | where {$_.Title -eq ”}
#Sets the $instance variable to the app with the title you supply.

Uninstall-SPAppInstance -Identity $instance
#Uninstalls the app from the subsite.

At the question “Are you sure you want to perform this action?”,
type Y to uninstall the app.

Locate and remove app instances in all locations

An app for SharePoint in the App Catalog is available for users to install.Users can install apps for SharePoint on many sites. Below two Windows PowerShell scripts can be used to find all locations for a specific app and then uninstall all instances from every location.

First script to locate all instances of a specific app in a SharePoint environment. Then use the second script to uninstall all instances of the app from the SharePoint environment.

To locate specific apps by using Windows PowerShell (save as script and run script)

Verify that you have the following memberships:

  • securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
  • db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
  • Administrators group on the server on which you are running Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint 2013 cmdlets

save the below script as “Get-AppInstances.ps1”

This Windows PowerShell script gets all app instances from your SharePoint 2013 farm for a specified App ID on a specified web application. You specify the App ID and the web application URL and the script will remove all of the instances of the App for all webs in that web application.

param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [Guid] $productId,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String] $webAppUrl
)

function GetAllInstances($productId = $null, $webAppUrl = $null)
{
$outAppName = "";
$sites = Get-SPSite -WebApplication $webAppUrl
$outWebs = @()
foreach($site in $sites){
if($site.AdministrationSiteType -ne "None"){
continue;
}
$webs = Get-SPWeb -site $site
foreach($web in $webs) {
$appinstances = Get-SPAppInstance -Web $web
foreach($instance in $appinstances) {
if($productId -eq $instance.App.ProductId) {
if ($outAppName -eq "") {
$outAppName = $instance.Title;
}
$outWebs += $web;
}
}
}
}
return ($outAppName,$outWebs)
}
Write-Host "This script will search all the sites in the webAppUrl for installed instances of the App."
$confirm = Read-Host "This can take a while. Proceed? (y/n)"
if($confirm -ne "y"){
Exit
}

$global:appName = $null;
$global:webs = $null;

{
$returnvalue = GetAllInstances -productId $productId -webAppUrl $webAppUrl;
$global:appName = $returnvalue[0];
$global:webs = $returnvalue[1];
}
);

$count = $global:webs.Count;
if($count -gt 0){
Write-Host "App Name:" $global:appName;
Write-Host "Product Id: $productId";
Write-Host "Number of instances: $count";
Write-Host "";
Write-Host "Urls:";

foreach($web in $global:webs) {
Write-Host $web.Url;
}
}
else {
Write-Host "No instances of the App with Product Id $productId found.";
}
return;
  • Now Open “SharePoint 2013 Management Shell”
  • Change to the directory where you saved the file.
  • At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command: 
./ Get-AppInstances.ps1 -productId -webAppUrl

To uninstall specific apps from all locations by using Windows PowerShell (save as script and run script)

Verify that you have the following memberships :

  • securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
  • db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
  • Administrators group on the server on which you are running Windows PowerShell cmdlets.

An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint 2013 cmdlets

save the below script as “Remove-App.ps1”

This Windows PowerShell script removes all app instances from your SharePoint 2013 farm for a specified App ID on a specified web application. You specify the App ID and the web application URL and the script will remove all of the instances of the App for all webs in that web application.

param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [Guid] $productId,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [String] $webAppUrl
)

function RemoveInstances($productId = $null, $webAppUrl = $null)
{
$outAppName = "";
$sites = Get-SPSite -WebApplication $webAppUrl
$outWebs = @()
foreach($site in $sites){
if($site.AdministrationSiteType -ne "None"){
continue;
}
$webs = Get-SPWeb -site $site
foreach($web in $webs) {
$appinstances = Get-SPAppInstance -Web $web
foreach($instance in $appinstances) {
if($productId -eq $instance.App.ProductId) {
if ($outAppName -eq "") {
$outAppName = $instance.Title;
}
$outWebs += $web;
Write-Host "Uninstalling from" $web.Url;
Uninstall-SPAppInstance -Identity $instance -confirm:$false
}
}
}
}
return ($outAppName,$outWebs)
}

$confirm = Read-Host "This will uninstall all instances of the App and is irreversible. Proceed? (y/n)"
if($confirm -ne "y"){
Exit
}

$global:appName = $null;
$global:webs = $null;

{
$returnvalue = RemoveInstances -productId $productId -webAppUrl $webAppUrl;
$global:appName = $returnvalue[0];
$global:webs = $returnvalue[1];
}
);

$count = $global:webs.Count;
if($count -gt 0){
Write-Host "All the instances of the following App have been uninstalled:";
Write-Host "App Name:" $global:appName;
Write-Host "Product Id: $productId";
Write-Host "Number of instances: $count";
Write-Host "";
Write-Host "Urls:";

foreach($web in $global:webs) {
Write-Host $web.Url;
}
}
else {
Write-Host "No instances of the App with Product Id $productId found.";
}
return;
  • Open SharePoint 2013 Management Shell
  • Change to the directory where you saved the file.
  • At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:
./ Remove-App.ps1 -productId -webAppUrl

If the issue still persists like as below

“If you have an orphaned app in the initialized state on a site and you delete the site, Health Analyzer reports that there's an error and the auto-fix doesn't work.”

Apply CU November 2016 which will 100% resolve the issue

SharePoint Server 2013 (KB3127933)
SharePoint Foundation 2013 (KB3127930)

Activate site Features create APP in Site Contents SharePoint2016

Today I successfully installed SharePoint Server 2016 on-premises overcoming few errors related to prerequisite as per my previous posts.

You can see below previous posts :

  1. Windows Server Appfabric: Installation error SharePoint 2016
  2. Cannot connect to database master at SQL Server at server_name. The database might not exist, or the current user does not have permission to connect to it Error SharePoint 2016
  3. Failed to create configuration database. An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade. SPUpgrade Exception was thrown. Additional exception information: One or more types failed to load. Please refer to the upgrade log for more details Error SharePoint 2016
  4. Program can’t start because api-ms-win-crt-heap-l1-1-0.dll is missing SharePoint2016
  5. Unable to install Microsoft Information Protection and control Client 2.1 error SharePoint 2016

Here I am very excited to let you know the “SharePoint APP” created in “Site Contents” by activating the “site feature“.

you may take it very easy but its not as simple as to resolve issues sometimes, that time it will help you a lot.

a. “Default APP” once site is created, before activating any feature.

Default APP in Site Contents with no feature activate

Default APP in Site Contents with no feature activate, once site is created

b. New APPs  added in Site Contents  after “Publishing Feature” is activated

New APPs added in Site Contents after

New APPs added in Site Contents after “Publishing Feature” is activated

c. New APPs  added in Site Contents  after “Content Organizer” feature is activated.

New APPs added in Site Contents after

New APPs added in Site Contents after “Content Organizer” feature is activated.

d. New APPs  added in Site Contents  after “Community Site” feature is activated.

Site-Contents-Community-Site-Feature-activate

Site-Contents-Community-Site-Feature-activate

e. New APPs  added in Site Contents  after “Site Feed” feature is activated.

New APPs added in Site Contents after

New APPs added in Site Contents after “Site Feed” feature is activated.

f. New APPs  added in Site Contents  after “Project Functionality” feature is activated.

New APP created once

New APP created once “Project Functionality” feature is activated.

amazon     amazonsp2016  amazonsp2016_2

Using the My Site Organization Browser Web Part inside Non-My Site Application

People have liked the Organization Browser web part so much that they want the web part to be added to their companies main Portal web application. I too recently came across this interesting situation, wherein we were supposed to show the My Site Organization Browser web part inside our publishing site. It was a task that according to me was very small. Just add the Organization Browser web part from the Social Collaboration group (as shown in the figure below) in the webpage and you are sorted.

WebPartAdding

I started working on it. As mentioned, I just added the web part from the Social Collaboration group, and whoa!!!.. I was done. Wait……there was something wrong. The Silverlight web part did not show anything inside it. There was no rendering done. I tried to do a lot of tweaking, but to avail no success : (

I started searching for the solution over the internet, and noticed that I was not the only one facing the problem. Instead there were many with the same problem. Finally I got something that helped me resolve the issue. There are two approaches to resolve the issue. They are:

Solution 1:

The web part is available and functions as expected IF the Portal and My Sites are on the same web application. This implies that the My Site and the Portal should be configured on the same web application.

Solution 2:

Having the Portal and the My Site in the same web application is not a best practice approach. There are also the situations when the environments are entirely different. In such a scenario, when the Organization Browser is added on a page in the Portal web application, the web part is added properly, but it displays blank as shown below:

OrganizationBrowser

In order for the web part to function on the portal web application as it does on the My Sites, following are the steps to be followed:

Create a clientaccesspolicy.xml file. This file will contain the following lines on xml:

clientaccesspolicy

To follow the security best practices, limit this policy to allow access only to your portal web application.

2.Add this xml file inside the root of the virtual directories of both the portal web application and the My Sites web application. The virtual directories for the web sites are located within “C:inetpubwwwrootwssVirtualDirectories”

VirtualDirectory

After you are done adding the file to the root directories of both the applications, open the portal web application and you would see the Organization Browser web part functioning properly.