My Site is scheduled for deletion messages--but I don't have Site Deletion Set

Question

I came in to work on Monday, and found out a number of managers had received the following messages about My Site deletions:

Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 12:20 AM

To: Manager

Subject: The My Site of "User" is scheduled for deletion

 

The My Site of "User" is scheduled for deletion. As their manager you are now the temporary owner of their site. This temporary ownership gives you access to the site to copy any business-related information you might need. To access the site use this URL

>>>Except the My site had been deleted!!

I don't have any settings defined for:

Central Administration > Application Management > Site Use Confirmation and Deletion  

so I don't understand how these sites were deleted or missing due to not being crawled.

I also noted in the crawl logs that the missing MySites could not be found and were throwing errors.

How I fixed it:

1. I set it in Central Administration > Application Management > Site Use Confirmation and Deletion  to check for unused site collections once a month, just so I would have an entry defined here. I left the "delete unused sites" unchecked.

2. I reset the  Import Connections Search base, here:Shared Services Administration: SharedServices1 > User Profile and Properties > Manage Connections > Edit Connection  

3. I reset the crawl content access account

4. I did a full user profile crawl and the My Sites were repopulated with a few exceptions; which I restored from backup

5. Although the My Sites were repopulated, the path to user pics was not, so I added the picture paths

All seems well now, but I don't understand how it happened in the first place.
Any ideas?
Active Directory connectivity did not seem to be an issue, but it happened for one OU. Also, no group membership changed.

Answer 1

I think this may be a case where the My Site wasn't actually deleted, but the user profile was, and that made the My Site inaccessible. In investigating the Manager's emails in our sharepoint environment, I came across this blog post, and this whitepaper, which went a long way in explaining the relationship between Active Directory user accounts, MOSS user profiles, and My Sites archiving and maintenance.

Answer 2

Dear John,

I have read both the links mentioned in your mail. But could not find an appropriate method to stop such notification mail. I must be missing something.

Can any one please tell what has to be done to stop such notification mails to their respective managers?

Thanks and Regards,

---

Reks

Answer 3

I have been researching this issue and I don't believe that there is a setting for the notifications. It is not an option provided. However, others have discovered that you can change the LDAP query that causes the notifications so that only active AD accounts are identified in the User Profile Import. This apparently stops the notifications.

See these sites for details.

http://www.sharepointed.com/2009/01/30/the-my-site-of-user-name-is-scheduled-for-deletion/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827754

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsocialcomputing/thread/3227a125-d7d1-4287-94d5-c81b012e4140

 

 

 

Moderator Note: The OP has already written "But that still wont help out to solve the query" so there is no point in after that proposing this post as an answer.

Answer 4

Thanks for reply DaveP.

But that still wont help out to solve the query. Is there any other way to do the required?

---

Reks

Answer 5

Hi, did you solve your problem?

i had this to. And found solution in:

 http://www.sharepointed.com/2009/01/30/the-my-site-of-user-name-is-scheduled-for-deletion/

personal sites wasnt deleted, just owner hwo is user. Then user disabled or deleted in Active directory, sharepoint crawl cant find him and wount crawl him. So in what user site he deletes owner and gives ownership to user manager. Site will be deleted if you select option for deletion in central admin.

you can easily solve this by changing crawl filter to:

 (&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)( !(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)))

this means that crawl is looking only for users who is active in Active directory.

 

---

Imposible is nothing

Answer 6

The issue is mainly because the profile is deleted. The My site is still there if you navigate to http://moss/personal/username/_layouts/settings.aspx or _layouts/viewlsts.aspx.

My problem is that the manager wouldn't know how to navigate to the settings page and the email that SharePoint sends out is incorrect. Users are getting errors when they navigate to the site that's being generated by SharePoint, even if the manager is made a site collection admin.
This seems like a bug in SharePoint, any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

---

Luis A Segura

Answer 7

Is there a way we can change the email to send them to the _layouts/settings.aspx page?

Answer 8

When a user leaves the organization we disable or delete their account in AD. The user no longers has access to SharePoint. Good. However, they still have a profile in SharePoint and a My Site. Bad. 

The SharePoint admin then deletes their profile in Central Administration. This removes the user from the directory search and corporate directory. It appears that the My Site is deleted along with the profile, but it is not. The My Site lives on! It continues to take up space in the content database.

However, there is no activity on the My Site; SharePoint sends an email to the user's manager notifying them that the site is scheduled for deletion. The Manager tries to link to the My Site, but the profile is deleted so the link to the My Site profile page is broken.

Our Solution

1. Go to the "hidden" My Site (https://sharepoint/persaonl/username/_layouts/settings.aspx)

2. Sign-in as SP admin

3. Delete the site

Our Process going forward

1. Disable AD

2. Move user's My Site files to their MAnager's My Site

3. Delete the user's profile and My Site