I'm not sure what the best practice is here, but I'm having a major issue trying to save sites as templates and I think I narrowed it down as to what the issue is.
When I try to save a site as a template, it creates the solution package, but it doesn't activate it. When I try to activate it manually, I get the following error:
Feature definition with Id e9431ed5-27b1-4c33-9eeb-81b4ace9d372 failed validation, file 'test1ListInstances\ElementsFields.xml', line 481, character 231: The 'SystemInstance' attribute is not allowed.
I opened up the solution package and looked at the ElementsFields.xml file. I traced the line to this:
<Field Type="BusinessData" DisplayName="Acme People Name" Required="FALSE" EnforceUniqueValues="FALSE" Group="Custom Columns" ID="{55b3bbba-a7e3-4698-9946-648a6b726e9e}" SourceID="{026904fd-f2d0-4e57-a239-c6da838458fa}" StaticName="Acme_x0020_People_x0020_Name" Name="Acme_x0020_People_x0020_Name" SystemInstance="ACME" EntityNamespace="http://????????:28241" EntityName="People" BdcField="FullName" Profile="" HasActions="True" SecondaryFieldBdcNames="0" RelatedField="People_ID1" SecondaryFieldWssNames="0" RelatedFieldBDCField="" RelatedFieldWssStaticName="People_ID1" SecondaryFieldsWssStaticNames="0" AddFieldOption="AddFieldInternalNameHint" Overwrite="TRUE" />
This is my site column that is pointing to an external list. I'm guessing SP doesn't like this. I deleted the site column and the external list just to see if it would resolve the issue.
I get the same error, but on a different line:
<Field ID="{35d79e8b-3701-4659-9c27-c070ed3c2bfa}" Name="Overtime" StaticName="Overtime" SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/fields" Type="Text" DisplayName="Overtime" Group="_Hidden" ResultType="Number" SystemInstance="ACME" EntityNamespace="http://??????????:28241" EntityName="People" BdcField="FullName" Profile="" HasActions="True" SecondaryFieldBdcNames="0" RelatedField="People_ID" SecondaryFieldWssNames="0" RelatedFieldBDCField="" RelatedFieldWssStaticName="People_ID" SecondaryFieldsWssStaticNames="0" AddFieldOption="AddFieldInternalNameHint" Overwrite="TRUE" />
I'm not sure what's going on here. Could this be a bug? What's the best practice for creating an external list then creating a site column? Should it not be done at the site collection level?
What's the fix?
Thanks in advance!