Sharepoint Sites Not Creating - Site does not seem to exist

[Chupacabra]

About a month ago, it seems that Project stopped auto-creating Sharepoint
sites for new projects. I have checked and double-checked my configuration
and all seems to be right. The test URL's all work, and existing Sharepoint
sites for existing projects are fine.

If I try to create the site manually, I get the following error:

"Error occurred when creating site. Site does not seem to exist"

However, if I delete an existing site for an existing project, I can
re-create the Sharepoint site manually just fine. I have also tried
deleting an existing Sharepoint site, then trying to manually create a site
for one of the newer projects but it still fails (thinking that perhaps
there was a hard limit on the number of sites).

I have verified that I have a site template configured "Project Workspace",
there is a site owner e-mail address and a secondary owner and e-mail
address. It is configured to automatically create a team web site when the
project is published.

The Sharepoint server is on the same box as the PWA server. I have also
tried the proxycfg commands to reset the proxy but this hasn't helped
either. I have also ran the PSCOMPLUS utility and reset the user accounts,
again with no help.

Since I can create sites for older projects if I delete their current site,
it would seem that the Sharepoint settings should be OK. It's as if all the
newer projects don't have permission, or have something buggered up that's
preventing them from adding Sharepoint sites.

Any ideas or solutions will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Ray]

If you find the fix, please post back. I've got the same issue but it
started a few months ago.

Ray

 

[Chupacabra]

If you find the fix, please post back. I've got the same issue but it
started a few months ago.

Will do. Mine may have been more than a month back as well, but probably no
more than two.

 

[Ray]

That's about when we noticed it as well, because people began setting up new
projects for 2007.

Ray

 

[Chupacabra]

After doing some diagnosis, I have determined the following:

If I try to manually create a site using the Sharepoint Administrative
console to add the following:

http://servername/sites/projectserver_297

I get this error:

A site with the specified name already exists.

However, if I try to create a site with a Project ID that hasn't been
allocated yet, such as 999, it creates the site just fine.

I have tried to delete the site

http://servername/sites/projectserver_297

and get this error:

File Not Found.

I can delete the site http://servername/sites/projectserver_999 just fine if
I create it first.

I have also checked the Sites database in SQL Server, and there is no entry
for projectserver_297, so I'm not sure where it's looking to determine that
site projectserver_297 already exists

So that's where I'm at right now.

 

[Chupacabra]

OK, I found the problem

I think this happened when we backed up the Project database and had users
play around in it for training, then restores the Project database.

The problem actually lies in the "WSSConfig" database. I opened up this
table, and there were already entries in the table for project IDs that were
not creating automatically . I.E. there were entries in the "Sites" table
for projects 297-319 where the field "URLPath" had entries such as

/sites/projectserver_297
/sites/projectserver_298
/sites/projectserver_298
..
..
/sites/projectserver_319


I deleted all the rows with Project ID values above 297, and now I can
manually create the missing Sharepoint sites. I'm sure what happened is
that during the training, they created a bunch of new Projects, which of
course populated the WSSConfig database. When I restored the Project
database the WSSConfig database still had entries in it for the dummy
projects. I should have backed up and restored the WSSConfig database as
well. Lesson learned.

Anyway, for those who cannot find any other solution to this issue, check
your WSSConfig database, especially in the Sites table to see if you've
already got entries in there for sites that you cannot create using the PWA
interface and remove them.

As always, back up the databases before you go manually editing them.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

In the future, download the EditSite tool from Microsoft and create a
separate training instance for your training and experimentation needs.
Create a new WSS site for the training instance. Once you've done this you
can safely restore your production database over the training database
without causing problems suchs as you've described.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
For Project Server Books: http://www.projectserverbooks.com
For Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
For Project FAQS: http://www.mvps.org/project

 

[Chupacabra]

In the future, download the EditSite tool from Microsoft and create a
separate training instance for your training and experimentation needs.
Create a new WSS site for the training instance. Once you've done this you
can safely restore your production database over the training database
without causing problems suchs as you've described.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that utility and see how it works!

 

[MikeT]

I am having this exact issue on Project Server 2003 ... I don't see the
WSSConfig database that is mentioned..is it a 2007 thing or could it be known
by another name?

Any help would be appreciated!

Mike