Communication Site - Highlighted Content > Pages > Managed Property Empty

[Tyler Bankston]

We are building a communication site and using the Highlighted Content web part. We have built our own content type of "HP Site Page" with the Site Page parent. We have created 2 custom columns called "BB Category" and "BB Publish". When we dig into configuring the Highlighted Content web part no Managed Property Names surface.

We have been able to get these custom columns to surface when using a document library, just not pages. Is this a feature that will be released or are we missing something?

Sharepoint online newbie so please let me know if there is any additional information that would be helpful here.

Thank you in advance.

[#2]

Check the Page Properties feature out:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Structure-your-intranet-page-metada...

We were able to accomplish what we were trying to do with Filtering the News per region or category

[#3]

I know this thread has been quiet for a while, but I'm having the described issue, and the noted fixes aren't working. Here are the particulars:

--SharePoint Online, Communications Site

--I created a new Content Type (named "Get Informed Page") inheriting from Site Pages

--I created a new Site Column (called "Topic") of type Managed Metadata, and placed it in Custom Columns (though I did end up moving it to Base Columns to see if that would make a difference)

--I told it to use a Custom Term Set, and I added two terms to it

--I attached the "Topic" column to my "Get Informed Page" page

--I created a Get Informed Page, populated the Topic column with one of the designated terms, and Published the page

Then I waited 24 hours. I can't see the Managed Property in the HC web part, nor can I see it if I try to map it to a RefinableString. I have told the site to Re-Index, but still nothing.

This page says that Managed Metadata columns will always (automatically) have a Managed Property created for them:

https://en.share-gate.com/blog/understand-sharepoint-crawled-and-managed-properties-for-search

And this page says that the Managed Property will receive a prefix of "ows_taxId":

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/from-site-column-to-managed-propertywhat-...

Separately, I followed @JHerschel's link about structuring metadata. I created a separate column from the Site Pages library, assigned it to all content types, and then populated the field (through Quick Edit) for a few pages. I can't get that one to show up, either.

I admit I am probably missing steps to this process, so I would appreciate someone pointing them out.

[#4]

If you edited via Quick Edit, there is a chance that the pages are not Published, which means they won’t get indexed. Hoping that it is just this simple - make sure the pages are published!

[#5]

Thanks for the reply @Susan Hanley... I have made sure the pages are Published. I will let the site index over the weekend and report back Monday. Fingers crossed!

[#6]

We have it working (somewhat). We abandoned creating a Site Column of type "Managed Metadata," assigning/creating a term set, not finding the auto-created Managed Property for the column, failing to be able to map the property to a Managed Property, which wouldn't have worked anyway since the RefinableString type everyone suggested was not (and could not be) set to be "Searchable", instead creating a custom Managed Property, attaching our column to custom Site-Page-type-derivations....

Honestly... how scalable is that to hand off to content authors?

@JHerschel's link with instructions to create the column within the Site Pages library was helpful. The trick was to have the Highlighted Content pull from the "The page library on this site" rather than any of the other choices. That makes "Page properties" available as a Filter type, and you can select those columns.

But that creates its own problem. In order to construct an "AND" intersection of my filters, I have to filter against different filter types. Filtering against multiple Page Properties will create an "OR" union of all matching pages. Once I change to "The page library on this site," my list of available filters no longer includes "Content includes the words...". Why would that filter no longer be available?

Imagine this use case:

For any given topic, I want INFO pages and ACTION pages. On an INFO page, I want a HC web part to show my topically-related ACTION pages. On an ACTION page, I want a HC web part to show my topically-related INFO pages. This could be a many-to-many relationship (many INFO pages to many ACTION pages).

In any other development environment, the answer is simple: pull the pages that are tagged as both (TYPE="INFO") AND (TOPIC includes "XXXX"). In SharePoint, even if I use 2 different page columns, I will get an "OR" because the Filter type for both will be "Page Property." In order to get the AND intersection, I need a second filter type. I don't mind putting a small content tag at the bottom of a given page (like a code):

Type: Info

(or...)

Type: Action

But I don't see how I can use the "Content includes..." filter with the Page Properties filter. Filters that use the page's creation date, modified date, or the author don't help, obviously. Title is the only filter that offers a hope, but changing my page titling so it includes some sort of code prefix/suffix is a step too far just to RECREATE basic functionality that Microsoft has apparently buried.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to go about this with 2 Page Property columns?

[#7]

Unfortunately, you hit the limitation with that web part - no ability to do an AND connection with two different columns .... for now.

[#8]

Thanks for this thread, lots of good helpful information here.  Just to report my experience.  We have a Communications Site where News pages are published in the Site Pages library as a central repository for other site collections to pull from.  I set up the Managed Property + Highlighted Content web part machinery outlined here and got it all working as intended.  No small task.  However today one of our Team Site owners found her HC webpart will not populate the Managed property name dropdown even using exact same settings as the other 3 site collections where things are working fine (including another Team Site).  Why would this fail for one site when several others are working?

[#9]

It should work the same on all sites. I would make sure that there aren't any differences on the sites.

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[#10]

A small glimmer of usability I figured I had better report:

I mentioned that the Highlighted Content web part allowed an "AND" construction only if you used different types of filters ("Created By..." paired with "Content Contains...", for example). My problem was that when I switched the source of the HC to be "Page library on this site" I lost the "Content contains..." filter, and didn't see a way to use two filters of different type (of those that remained to me) in order to get that "AND" selection of the content that would show up.

I have now found that different Page Properties do create an "AND" selection. This means that if I add two columns from the Site Pages library (Category and Topic) for page properties, and for 3 pages I populate them as:

Page Name	Category	Topic
Page 1	info	encryption, malware
Page 2	action	malware
Page 3	info	bananas

And then I set up a HC web part, I can configure the filters to produce the following results:

Filter 1	Filter 2	Pages Returned
Category equals "info"		Page 1, Page 3
Category equals "info"	Topic contains "malware"	Page 1
Category equals "action"		Page 2
Category equals "action"	Topic contains "bananas"	<none>

I have not tested with 3 filtered conditions, but my guess is that if they are filtering the same column, they would roll up into an "OR" union before being compared to the cross-column "AND" match.

Still, this bridges the use case I was having trouble putting into practice, so I will take it! Hopefully the info helps someone else, too.

[#11]

As it turns out, the one site affected was just the newest site... after more troubleshooting we found the HC / Managed property setup stopped working for all new sites and all new web part installs on existing sites.  I wound up requesting a Reindex of the Pages library where the news stories live, and that fixed it for all.