Troubleshooting SharePoint Online source issues

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In this article

Important: Troubleshooting fundamentals
Common issues

This article provides troubleshooting best practices and lists common issues when indexing content with the SharePoint Online source.

Important: Troubleshooting fundamentals

Though the information provided in the Common issues section will often help you identify and resolve a problem, keep the following in mind:

A given set of symptoms can be caused by different underlying issues.
When you expand a content update activity in the Activity panel or Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, the error code and messages displayed may only be general indicators of the problem.
Coveo only halts an indexing operation and displays an error when specific conditions are met.

Consequently, finding the root cause of an issue may require more granular information, which only update logs can deliver.

To download an update log

On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click the desired resource, and then click Activity in the Action bar.
In the Activity panel that opens, click the desired activity, and then click Download Logs in the Action bar. The downloaded file is named after the unique operation ID representing the selected activity.

To locate issue root causes in logs

Open the log file in a text file viewer.
Look for WARN,ERROR, and FATAL messages.

Use a log file viewer that supports highlighting by log level to make these messages more noticeable.
If necessary, review INFO messages. They sometimes reveal a configuration that you overlooked and that may be causing the issue.

Common issues

Issues are divided into categories. Click a category description below to reach the related section.

Missing items
Extra or unwanted items
Unexpected or missing content inside items
Unexpected item field values
Indexing is slow
Indexed content isn’t up to date

Missing items

URL exclusion

Context and symptoms

You’re using the Hub site URLs or Specific URLs content type option.
All pages accessible through one of the source URLs you specified aren’t indexed.
The Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page may display a NO_DOCUMENT_INDEXED error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Your current inclusion and exclusion filters may be filtering out the URL you specified.

Resolution

Open your source and review your URL exclusion and inclusion rules.

To be accessed, a URL must meet the following requirements:

It must not match any exclusion rule.
It must match at least one inclusion rule.

Sites discovery address missing from inclusion scope

Context and symptoms

You’re using the All sites or Hub site URLs content type option.
No items are indexed.
The Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page may show a NO_DOCUMENT_INDEXED error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

When using the All sites or Hub sites option, Coveo uses a special URL (that is, sharepoint://online/Administration tenant) to discover sites in your tenant. This address must be part of the inclusion scope.

Resolution

If you don’t need to filter content on a URL basis, use the Include all non-excluded items inclusion option.

Open your source.
In the Inclusions section, select the Include all non-excluded items inclusion option, as shown in the following image.
Save your changes.

If you need to filter content on a URL basis, add the sharepoint://online/Administration tenant address to your inclusion filters. See the All sites and Hub site URLs documentation sections for configuration examples.

List, library, or site isn’t configured to be indexed

Context and symptoms

Items in a list, library, or site aren’t indexed.
In the case of a list or library, you’re not excluding the list or library using the Exclude template types option.
There are no errors in the Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

SharePoint Online has settings to prevent list, library, and site items from being indexed. Coveo only indexes items that are configured to be indexed in SharePoint Online. For example, if items in a specific list don’t appear in your SharePoint Online source, the Allow items from this list to appear in search results? list setting may be set to No.

Resolution

Make sure the list, library, or site setting allows indexing. The following procedure shows how to allow indexing for a list by selecting Yes for the Allow items from this list to appear in search results? option. The option name for the library and site settings are similar. The site indexing setting is located under Site Settings > Search and Offline Availability.

To allow indexing for a list

In your SharePoint Online site, click the list you want to {index-verb}.
Click the Settings icon in the upper-right, and then click List settings.
In the General Settings section, click Advanced settings.
Next to Search, select Yes for the Allow items from this list to appear in search results? option.
Click Reindex List, and then confirm the action.
Click OK.

Too many requests

Context and symptoms

Indexing stops with the Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) displaying a TOO_MANY_REQUESTS error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The SharePoint Online API limits the number of requests that can be made in a given time period. One of these limits has been reached and the SharePoint Online API no longer accepts requests.

Resolution

The SharePoint Online API will start accepting requests again after a certain time period. The short-term solution is to wait for a few minutes before trying an indexing operation again.

There are several long-term solutions, including the following:

Using App authentication using certificate instead of User delegated access using OAuth 2.0.
Splitting your source into several sources and optimizing update schedules.
Using the SharePoint Online source scoping options to exclude irrelevant content.

Absolute path of item is too long

Context and symptoms

SharePoint Online items whose absolute paths are long aren’t indexed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The SharePoint Online API supports path lengths up to 400 characters. You may be trying to index items whose absolute paths are longer than 400 characters.

Resolution

Shorten folder and file names or rework the folder structure in SharePoint Online to reduce the absolute path length of the items you want to index.

Tagged site hasn’t been indexed by SharePoint Online

Context and symptoms

You’re using tagged sites.
All items in a tagged site aren’t indexed.
The non-indexed site doesn’t appear when using the SharePoint Online search box to query your list of tagged sites. For example, if you’ve set up a CoveoSiteFilter managed property and have tagged sites with value Canada, the non-indexed tagged site isn’t listed when you search for CoveoSiteFilter:Canada in SharePoint Online.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The tagged site hasn’t yet been indexed by SharePoint Online.

Resolution

Make sure you request the reindexing of your site in SharePoint Online.
Wait for the site to be indexed by SharePoint Online. When it is, the site will appear when querying your list of tagged sites using the SharePoint Online search box.
The tagged site will be indexed by Coveo on the next rescan.

Content freshness issue

Context and symptoms

Recently added items in SharePoint Online are still not appearing in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).

Likely cause and resolution

Cause and Resolution

See Indexed content is not up to date.

Extra or unwanted items

Missing filtering

Context and symptoms

The Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) shows items you don’t want to index.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Your current SharePoint Online source filtering settings don’t filter out the unwanted items.

Resolution

Edit your source. In the Content to index subtab, adjust your filtering to exclude the unwanted items.

Content freshness issue

Context and symptoms

Items recently deleted in SharePoint Online are still appearing in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).

Likely cause and resolution

Cause and Resolution

See Indexed content is not up to date.

Unexpected or missing content inside items

The “Embed” web part content isn’t indexed

Context and symptoms

When accessing the Quick view of a page item, the content added using the Embed web part isn’t displayed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The Embed web part content is added to the page as an <iframe> tag. The SharePoint Online connector retrieves the page HTML through the SharePoint Online API and indexes it as is (that is, with the <iframe> tag). Coveo doesn’t fetch the iframe content to index it. Consequently, the body of the page item, as displayed in the Quick view, doesn’t include the Embed web part content.

For example, if you embed a YouTube video in a SharePoint Online page, the video isn’t displayed in the Quick view. Only information about the video included in the <iframe> tag (for example, the video title) is indexed and searchable.

Resolution

The described behavior is the expected one. As a workaround, you may consider integrating the content of the external page into the SharePoint Online page, in a text section or comment.

Quick view of site pages show HTML tags or unexpected characters

Context and symptoms

When accessing the Quick view of a page item, HTML tags or unexpected characters are displayed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The SharePoint Online connector retrieves the CanvasContent1 field value of the SharePoint Online API response and indexes it as is. The CanvasContent1 field value contains the HTML content of the page, including web parts and their configurations. Certain web parts (for example, the Code Snippet web part) may generate content in the CanvasContent1 field that the Quick view isn’t able to handle. Additionally, the Quick view doesn’t replicate the SharePoint Online page CSS styles. For all these reasons, the quality of the Quick view varies from one SharePoint Online page to another.

Resolution

A possible solution may be to replace the web part (for example, the Code Snippet web part) with a more basic one in the SharePoint Online page.

Indexing by reference

Context and symptoms

When viewing source items in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), item Description areas are empty.
If you then click a specific item, and then click Properties, the Quick view tab isn’t displayed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

You may be indexing by reference. When indexing by reference, the body of the web page (used for the Quick view) isn’t retrieved and no excerpt (used for the item description) is generated.

Resolution

Access the Edit configuration with JSON panel. If HTML documents are currently indexed by Reference, change that value to Retrieve.

Broken images in the Quick view

Context and symptoms

When accessing the Quick view of an item, images are broken.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The connector retrieves web page HTML as is and doesn’t retrieve the images referenced in the HTML. The Content Browser Quick view displays this HTML without any alteration. This means it doesn’t replace relative paths, such as <img src="/sites/…/myimage.jpg">, with the corresponding absolute paths, such as <img src="https://…/myimage.jpg">. As a result, when web pages contain images that are referenced using relative paths, the images can’t be displayed in the Content Browser Quick view.

Images that require authentication to be viewed also appear broken when browsing the web page item Quick view in the Content Browser.

Resolution

None. This is a known limitation of the Content Browser Quick view.

The Quick view is intended to provide a preview of the item content, not a full rendering of the web page. To view the full web page, users can open the original document by clicking the item clickable URI link in the search results.

Unexpected item field values

Inexistent field

Context and symptoms

When inspecting an item in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), the expected field name doesn’t appear.
On the Fields (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, the expected field doesn’t appear.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The field doesn’t exist. You need to create the field and the field mapping.

Resolution

On the Fields (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, at the upper right, click Add field.
Follow instructions in the Add or edit a field article to configure your field.
On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click More > View and map metadata.
Choose the metadata you want to use to populate the field.
On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click Mappings in the Action bar.
Follow instructions in the Add or edit a mapping rule section to configure your mapping.

Field mapping issue

Context and symptoms

When inspecting items that should have values for the field in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), the expected field name doesn’t appear in any item.
On the Fields (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, the expected field appears.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

There may be a field mapping issue.

Resolution

On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click More > View and map metadata.
Make sure the metadata that should be used to populate your field appears. If the metadata is being used to populate a field, it will be shown as Indexed. If you see two entries under the same metadata name, take note of the indexed and not indexed metadata Origin values for the final step in this procedure.
On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click Mappings in the Action bar.
Make sure the mapping rule for the field references the right metadata name.
Add or edit the Origin value in the field mapping rule (for example, %[description:crawler]).

Title field value selection

Context and symptoms The item title field value isn’t ideal.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Coveo has a title field selection process to ensure all indexed items have titles. This process may not return ideal titles in your use case.

Resolution

Coveo automatically extracts several pieces of metadata that you can use as item titles. See Item title selection mapping rule options to control the value selection process. Edit the title field mappings on your source.

Indexing is slow

Indexing performance issue

Context and symptoms

Indexing the source pages is taking a long time.
Indexing may sometimes stop with the Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) displaying a TOO_MANY_REQUESTS error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause and Resolution

See Indexed content is not up to date.

Indexed content is not up to date

Content scoping or throttling issue

Context and symptoms

Indexing the source pages is taking a long time.
Indexing may sometimes stop with the Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) displaying a TOO_MANY_REQUESTS error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

A combination of factors may cause poor SharePoint Online source indexing performance. These revolve around insufficient content scoping and SharePoint Online API throttling.

Resolution

The Performance leading practices article provides many recommendations to improve indexing performance, namely:

Using App authentication using certificate instead of User delegated access using OAuth 2.0.
Splitting your source into several sources and optimizing update schedules.
Using the SharePoint Online source scoping options to exclude irrelevant content.

Source update schedules

Context and symptoms

Recent changes to site pages aren’t reflected in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Your source rescan or refresh schedule may be disabled.
Rescan and refresh update frequencies might need to be optimized.

Resolution

Make sure the rescan and refresh schedules are enabled and that their frequency settings are optimized.

Number of items limit reached

Context and symptoms

Recent updates to web pages and newly added pages aren’t reflected in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).
The Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) shows schedule-triggered refresh and rescan activities are failing with a DOCUMENT_LIMIT_EXCEEDED error code.
In the Limits (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, in the Content section, you see that items usage is over twice your license limit.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Indexing is blocked because you’ve reached the 200% license item usage threshold.

Resolution

If possible, delete unused sources to bring the item count below the 200% threshold. Then, see the July 20, 2023 Coveo Platform update for suggestions on how to reduce your item count even more.
To reassess your needs and discuss your options, contact your Coveo Customer Success Manager.

Authentication issue

Context and symptoms

Recent changes to SharePoint Online content aren’t reflected in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).
The Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page shows that the last source update failed because of an authentication issue.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The SharePoint Online connector may be unable to authenticate to SharePoint Online because the access token associated with the certificate or SharePoint Online user account is no longer valid. An invalid access token occurs when:

The certificate expires (when using App authentication using certificate).
The SharePoint Online crawling account credentials (email and/or password) are modified (when using User delegated access using OAuth 2.0).

Resolution

After making sure that the issue is indeed due to an invalid access token, update the access token.

Changed site collection URL

Context and symptoms

Your source uses the Specific URLs content type option.
Recent changes to content associated with a specified URL in the SharePoint Online source configuration aren’t reflected in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).
The Activity Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) shows that the last source update failed with a SHAREPOINT_ONLINE_INVALID_STARTING_ADDRESS error code.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The site collection web address may have been changed in SharePoint Online and your source configuration may not have been updated accordingly.

Resolution

Get in touch with your SharePoint Online administrator to get the new site collection web address.
Edit your source so that the URL reflects the new site collection web address.
Adjust your exclusion and inclusion rules to ensure the new site collection web address is part of the inclusion scope. To be part of the inclusion scope, a URL must meet the following requirements:
- It must not match any exclusion rule.
- It must match at least one inclusion rule.