Document ID does NOT work issue

Sometime you click the Document ID link, you get the following error message

Root Cause

To make sure the root cause can be easily understood, a general introduction about what is Document ID and how does it work is necessary.

Document ID

Format

Document ID Prefix + List ID + Item ID

E.g.MJD2Q27QP2MR-85-2:

“MJD2Q27QP2MR” is the prefix, it only can be configured at site collection level:

List ID is the list sequence number in all lists within a site collection. 

E.g.“85” means this list is the 85th list in current site collection.

“2” is the item ID in that list.

How it works?

Check the following workflow for how it works, if it’s still hard to understand please read the explanation associated it, otherwise skip the explanation.

      

Analysis of the issue

The issue sites were created based on a saved site template. But this site template was saved with “SharePoint Publishing Feature” (Site Collection Feature and Site Feature) enabled which it made the Document ID prefix was also saved into the site template.  If you upload the saved template to another site collection you will probably have this issue: Document ID prefix is different between the saved site template and the host site collection.

For example:

Document ID Setting  of the site collection

The Document ID prefix of saved site template:

 

It is obviously that the two prefixes are different, so when end user access the document by Document ID link, it will always search SharePoint Search Content Database.

Why it works for some documents and does not work for others?

The reason is SharePoint search service does NOT index documents with “Draft”version(so if the library was enable Major and Minor version), when you access the Document ID link of a draft document, the document cannot be found in search database. And for any new documents with Major version, it takes 20minutes to index them by SharePoint Search service , which means the Document ID link will not work for that file with the first 20 minutes after it was published.

Please check the settings of SharePoint Search Service:

 

Solutions

Solution 1

Disable the Minor version in document library

It will makes all new uploaded files has at least one major version, which make sure it will be indexed by SharePoint Search Service within 20 minutes.

Solution 2

Change the Document ID prefix on the issue sites to make it as the same as the one defined in Document ID settings through SharePoint Object Model, this solution requires additional work for all existing documents.