New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name '_artifactsLocationSasToken'

Problem

I was trying to deploy new Azure Resource Group using private storage on Azure instead of GitHub (or some other publicly) hosted templates, but run into error when including artifacts.

With the default Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1 (as it comes with Azure SDK, full file can be found, e.g., here), it throws the following error when UploadArtifacts parameter was set to $true.

New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment : A parameter cannot be found that
 matches parameter name '_artifactsLocationSasToken'.

Same occurred if I execute Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1 via PowerShell ISE or did Deploy via Visual Studio.

At the end of Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1, there is call to Deploy-AzureResourceGroup.ps1 like this:

New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment -Name ((Get-ChildItem $TemplateFile).BaseName + '-' + 
((Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()).ToString('MMdd-HHmm')) `
                                   -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName `
                                   -TemplateFile $TemplateFile `
                                   -TemplateParameterFile $TemplateParametersFile `
                                   @OptionalParameters `
                                   -Force -Verbose

@OptionalParameters was correctly populated with HashTable containing values for _artifactsLocation and _artifactsLocationSasToken, but New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment is not accepting them.

 

Solution

Adding the missing parameters to azuredeploy.json solved the original error. What I didn’t know was that (obviously), New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment passes the parameters to the TemplateFile (usually called azuredeploy.json).

"_artifactsLocationSasToken": {
  "type": "string",
  "metadata": {
    "description": ""
  }
},
"_artifactsLocation": {
  "type": "string",
  "metadata": {
    "description": ""
  }
},

Solution 2

One final issue was that I needed to include the _artifactsLocation in the configuration variables of the resources like this to append the SAS Token to the URL so that deployment engine can fetch those from our private Azure Storage Account:

"provisioningPrimaryDCURL": "[concat(parameters('_artifactsLocation')
,'/provisioningPrimaryDomainController.json'
,parameters('_artifactsLocationSasToken'))]",

Display error details with custom SharePoint WCF Service

Problem

I always keep forgetting how to configure web.config file in order to display verbose error messages thrown by custom WCF services you create for SharePoint (the ones under _vti_bin). That will greatly help when you try to debug problems in custom solutions.

Solution

In %PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\ISAPI\web.config within system.serviceModel\behaviors\serviceBehaviors add:

<behavior>
    <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
</behavior>

This will display verbose / detailed error messages of your WCF service.

PowerShell 4.0 GetEnumerator not working if array variable name length > 20 chars

Problem

Was going about my daily PowerShell (4.0) life and run into issue where the following script didn’t output any rows.

$moduleSiteCollections = @{
    'Field Intelligence' = 'fi';
    'News Feeds' = 'nf';
    'Key Developments' = 'kd'
}
foreach ($sitecoll in $moduleSiteCollections.GetEnumerator()) {   
    Write-Host $($sitecoll.Value)
}

Solution

If the length of the name of the variable holding the array is longer than 20 characters, GetEnumerator won’t return any results, so reduce variable name to 20 characters or less. Or use PowerShell 5.0.

The following script works fine.

$moduleSiteCollection = @{
    'Field Intelligence' = 'fi';
    'News Feeds' = 'nf';
    'Key Developments' = 'kd'
}
foreach ($sitecoll in $moduleSiteCollection.GetEnumerator()) {   
    Write-Host $($sitecoll.Value)
}