Note: This is a repost from Brian Smith’s Blog (thanks Brian). I found it so helpful I wanted it close by.
This follows on from the posting on the structure of the Business Intelligence Center in Project Server 2010 - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brismith/archive/2010/08/24/project-server-2010-business-intelligence-center-behind-the-scenes.aspx and covers a few of the possible errors you might run in to.
For Project Server 2007 one of my most read, or at least “most viewed” and commented pages was Common Error Messages when Building Cubes with Project Server 2007. I think with the architecture of 2010 we resolve many of those cube building difficulties, but the configuration or Excel Services Application and Secure Store Service will fill the gap that leaves. I am preparing some internal training on this topic so thought I’d re-purpose many of my screenshots in this blog posting. I start with no configuration or Excel Services or the Secure Store Service at all, as if I had never read or even heard of the excellent article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662106.aspx that describes how things should be configured and then hit one error after another until finally I have it all working. I will attempt to run the SimpleProjectList sample report from the default English (United States) library. I will number the errors, and then at the end of the posting I will list the ULS log entries you can expect to see for each error, along with the text from these error dialogs, and hopefully this will allow you to work backwards from the logs to the cause. I want to include the logs so the search engines have something cool to read without breaking the flow of the story too much – and the text from the dialogs as the search engines may struggle with the pictures.
Error 1
The first error I see tells me that it will not open that report as the Data Connection file is not in a trusted location. Well that’s an easy one to fix (referring to the TechNet document referenced above) so I add the right URL as a trusted location and move on…
Error 2
Well at least this ones just a warning – and I can continue just by clicking “Yes”, but we should really fix that. This is an interesting one as you might have wondered (if you know already what needs configuring) why we didn’t get an error about our file itself;f not being in a trusted location. The reason is that by default there is a trusted location of http://. And this is configured to trust children, and also to allow External Data. In fact the only thing it is missing from our recommended configuration is that Refresh warning enabled is still checked – hence the warning we are getting at Error 2. Best practice would probably be to delete the http:// location and then just explicitly set the locations as per the TechNet document. So moving on…
Error 3
Now we have Excel Services Application configured just right – so we start hitting the Secure Store Errors. In a bid to hit most of the possible errors I created a Secure Store Service Target Application but didn’t set any credentials…
Error 4
Hmm. Same error, but the ULS logs distinguish between them (– see the section at the end of the blog for the differences. So now I set some credentials, but put in a bad password…
Error 5
Different error, and this makes sense. We have some credentials, but they d
