No left navigation when new webpartpages are created in SharePoint 2010

Creating webpart pages or basic pages in SharePoint is done with a click of a button. But when you view the page you've created you won't get to see the left navigation menu. The cause I reckon is that the left side navigation is defined in the Master Page in the "PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" content place holder and templates for webpart pages shipped with SharePoint are overriding this content place holder and delete its content. 


The solution for this is to change the page so it will not override the menu place holder, but inherite it from the Master Page. The place holders we are interested in are: "PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" and "PlaceHolderNavSpacer". 


Start by opening the SharePoint Designer. Open the webpart page or basic page you want to add the menu to. In code view look for the following lines and delete them:

      <asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderLeftNavBar" runat="server"></asp:Content>

and

      <asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderNavSpacer" runat="server"></asp:Content> 

and

      <SharePoint:UIVersionedContent ID="WebPartPageHideQLStyles" UIVersion="4" runat="server">
      <ContentTemplate>
      <style type="text/css">
      body #s4-leftpanel {
      display:none;
      }
      .s4-ca {
      margin-left:0px;
      }
      </style>


Save the file. You will get a warning saying you are about to customize the page. Just go ahead.


Hope this saves time.

Connecting PerformancePoint 2010 site with Dashboard Designer throws error

Recently I had a problem with connecting to a PerformancePoint 2010 site using Dashboard Designer.

I created a new site in SharePoint 2010 using the "Business Intelligence Center" template and started the Dashboard Designer. When I tried to connect to the site, the Dashboard Designer failed to connect and throws the following error : "The URL is not available, does not reference a SharePoint site, or you do not have permission to connect".

When a System Administrator (working for our customer) checked the Event Logs (Administrative Tools | Event Viewer | Windows Logs | Application), he saw the following message : "Login failed for user : domain\username". After some research, it appears that the Service Account under which the PerformancePoint Service runs, did not have sufficient permissions.

The System Administrator executed the following commands in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to fix this problem:

$w = Get-SPWebApplication("Web application name")

$w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\username") 

For more information about how to grant a managed account access to the content databases where PerformancePoint data will be stored, read this article on Microsoft Technet.