Microsoft has introduced App Launcher providing a new
navigation experience in SharePoint 2016. It provides a quick access to the
apps.
After executing the post-setup configuration wizard
(psconfig.exe) of SharePoint 2016 IT Preview, the App Launcher was not visible
on Central Administration site. I created a new web application with single
site collection. When I accessed the new site collection, App Launcher was not
visible.
At this moment, I have not created any service applications.
Clearly I am not having all the functionality of SharePoint 2016 IT Preview in
place to expect it to surface all UI components. I concluded that App Launcher might
have some dependency on one (or more) service application(s).
I came across three scenarios which affected the visibility
of App Launcher even after creation the service applications. This post provides
more insight to each of the scenario.
Scenario #1: App Launcher not visible when no service application is created.
There
are multiple service applications available in SharePoint. Which service
application(s) the App Launcher has dependency on? Looking at the service
applications list, I thought my farm should have App Management service
application. I created App Management service application.
[Note: Before creating App Management service application, I
created some of the basic service applications (i.e. State Service, Usage and
Data Collection Service, Secure Store Service, Subscription Settings Service)
along with Search service.]
Even after creation of App Management service application, the
App Launcher was not visible.
Being curious, which service application make
the App Launcher visible, I started looking into the SuiteNav feature and the
related assemblies for the control rendering. The investigation led to below
method in disassembled assembly.
The
App Launcher will not be visible unless and until we have configured the My
Site Host Url in User Profile Service Application. [Note: If you create User
Profile Service Application in partition mode, you’ll not be able to configure
the My Site Host Url.]
I created User Profile Service Application but still the App
Launcher was not visible. I checked service connections group. The User Profile
Service Application proxy was not selected for the default service connection
group.
I added User Profile Service application to the service
connection group
And…it’s there! It started showing the App Launcher in
Central Administration.
Conclusion:
- App Launcher has dependency on User Profile Service Application.
- App Launcher requires User Profile Service Proxy in the web application’s service connection group.
- App Launcher will not show up if partition mode parameter is used to create User Profile Service Application [Not Tested. Reasoning: User Profile Service does not provide my site related configuration if the service created with partition mode.] It does not mean that App Launcher will not be available for multi-tenant farms. I will keep it open to explore more this topic.
Scenario #2: App Launcher is visible on Central Administration
site but not on the other web applications.
The site collection, which I created initially, is not
showing the App Launcher but the central administration site is showing it.
Both web applications have the same default service connection group. I tried
creating new web application and new site collection, it also had the same
problem. I spent many hours after my work schedule on this.
With prior experience with old SharePoint versions, a thought
came to my mind “Does it has anything to do with availability of root site
collection?”. In both web applications, I have created the site collection on “/sites”
managed path. There was no site collection on the root (“/”) of the web
application.
Quickly I created the root site collection and … it’s there!
Conclusion:
- App launcher will not be shown if there is no site collection created at the root of the web application.
Scenario #3: App launcher not visible on central
administration site after IIS Web Site binding changes.
I have updated the IIS web site binding to “xyz.pqr.com”. I
browsed the central administration site from Internet. I could access the site
but the App launcher is missing from the site. But the site collections from
other web applications were showing it when accessed from the Internet.
This one was very quick as I have intentionally avoided to
specify the AAM configuration for the central administration web application. I
added the AAM public URL and it started showing the App Launcher on the Central
Administration site when accessed from the Internet.
Conclusion:
- AAM configuration should be in place when we are accessing site from non-server machine and using fully qualified domain URL.
