I am currently setting up SharePoint 2010 farms back and forth testing out the most optimal ways using least privileges and different configurations. The by far most complex part in the configuration is the User Profile Service Application and the User Profile Sync. Spencer Harbar have fortunately documented how to do it properly in his Rational Guide to implementing SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile Synchronization article. Following that you will likely not fail…
Today I configured a new farm to thoroughly document all the involved steps from a clean OS to an optimal farm I followed Spencers instructions and after the mandatory boot (I always need the boot to get the FIM working) the UPS was up and running. I headed on over to the My Site to check that all properties was correctly imported and found this:
Some of the user profile properties had this error. “There was a problem retrieving data for this field. Updating values in this field is disabled temporarily. You can still update values in other fields”. I actually saw this error earlier today at a colleagues new farm.
I was first tracing backwards what did I do wrong this time and found no errors so I headed on over to check how that property was defined in the service app. And now things really made me believe that I needed to start all over again.
This property really is misconfigured! I checked the miisclient.exe for mappings, examined logs inside out etc. I started up another farm I built the other day and in that farm the property looked fine and had no strange mapping. It’s Friday and I don’t have time for this - so I turned to the SharePoint Jedi Spence and without doubt he had the answer in his sleeve. The error is due to the fact that the Managed Metadata Service is not setup or configured.
Since the UPS is the service I usually start with I had no other service apps running. I added the Managed Metadata Service and tada - the properties was working as they should. So if you stumble upon this you now know what to do and can leave Spence doing what he really should be doing Friday evenings…
Thank you Spence!