Andy Dawson's Blog

My last post about the SharePoint 2013 MySite Newsfeed and required additional permissions on the User Profile Service Application dealt with adding the required permissions to the UPSA using the SharePoint 2013 GUI. Alternatively, you can add the required permissions using PowerShell:

#Grab a reference to the User Profile Service Application
$serviceapp = Get-SPServiceApplication | where {$_.DisplayName -eq "User Profile Service Application"}

#Return the SPObjectSecurity object for the Service Application
$security = Get-SPServiceApplication $serviceapp | Get-SPServiceApplicationSecurity

#Setup our claim provider
$claimprovider = (Get-SPClaimProvider System).ClaimProvider

#Specify the required principal
$principal = New-SPClaimsPrincipal "Domain\UPSAppAccount" -IdentityType WindowsSamAccountName

#Grant the required permissions on the Service Application
Grant-SPObjectSecurity -Identity $security -Principal $principal -Rights "Full Control"
Set-SPServiceApplicationSecurity $serviceapp -ObjectSecurity $security

Using PowerShell allows us to add this part of the configuration to a script rather than having a manual step to perform once the PowerShell has completed (as we all know, these additional manual steps tend to get forgotten).

This is an issue that we've been bumping up against and have seen a number of other users seeing the same problem with SharePoint 2013 implementations.

When looking at the 'Everyone' tab on a user's MySite, the following message is displayed:

and the following entries appear in the SharePoint logs:

Failure retrieving application ID for User Profile Application Proxy 'User Profile Service Proxy': Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException: UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException_Logging :: UserProfileApplicationProxy.ApplicationProperties ProfilePropertyCache does not have c2d5c86f-e928-4abf-b353-a8ab7809766c     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_ApplicationProperties()     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_AppID()           0e49dc9b-d278-1089-b021-6e2138766eae

SPMicrofeedFeedCacheService.GetUserProfile() - UserProfileApplicationProxy not available     0e49dc9b-d278-1089-b021-6e2138766eae

To correct this issue, complete the following steps:

1. Log onto the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration site as a farm administrator
2. Navigate to 'Manage Service Applications'
3. Highlight the User Profile Service Application
4. Click the 'Permissions' ribbon toolbar button:
   
5. Add the account that is used to run the User Profile Service Application and give it full control:
   
6. Click OK

At this point it is usual to see the following displayed in the 'Everyone' tab of the user's MySite:

It's worth checking the SharePoint logs at this point to see what additional errors may be reported (note that you will see 'We're still collecting the latest news' if no users have posted anything, so create a post to ensure that you have something waiting in the queue). In my case, I saw the following:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Cannot open database "SP_Content_MySite" requested by the login. The login failed.  Login failed for user 'Domain\UPSApp'.

This can be solved by completing the following steps:

1. Open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell by right-clicking and choosing 'run as administrator'
2. Issue the following PowerShell commands
   $wa = Get-SPWebApplication http://<MySiteURL>
   $wa.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\UPSApp")

At this point, the newsfeed should be up and running successfully: