Working with Correlation IDs in SP2010


One of the most useful (from an Admin’s perspective) improvements in SharePoint 2010 was the introduction of Correlation ID’s to assist with diagnosis of errors. Unfortunately a lot of people I’ve talked to don’t use them because they don’t understand how.

I recently came across this post from Tobias Zimmergren that does a superb job of showing you several quick and easy ways to make these little GUID’s work for you.

In short…

get-splogevent | ?{$_.Correlation -eq "<GUID>"} | select Area, Category, Level, EventID, Message | Format-List

…will return the detailed log chain relating to that ID, in a human readable format. Handy.

And this..

SELECT	
  [RowCreatedTime],
  [ProcessName],
  [Area],   		
  [Category],  
   EventID,  
  [Message]  
FROM [WSS_UsageApplication].[dbo].[ULSTraceLog]
WHERE CorrelationId='<GUID>'

…in a SQL query will return much the same detail. I particularly like the suggestion of inserting this in a data-query web-part in Central Admin web-part. Super handy.


JB / The Daywalker

Ginger IT dude hanging out down in New Zealand, playing with technology since ages ago.

Currently Service Delivery Manager at Silicon Systems, formerly Skype for Business MVP, and generally into all things Microsoft (and a few things that aren’t).

When I’m not nerding out on technology, you can find me running ultramarathons, brewing beer, or in my woodshop building something.


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