Jason Lee's Blog

We recently ran into a perplexing issue with SharePoint 2013. We'd create a Managed Metadata service application, and we'd be able to create and use term sets without any issues. However, when we created a Product Catalog site, the site collection term store group and the Product Hierarchy term set did not get created. This is a fairly major roadblock, as the entire structure of the site (e.g. the Item Category site column, the Products list) is built around this term set.

In other words, you click this:




















You expect to see this:





















But you actually see this:


The Solution
On the properties for your Managed Metadata service proxy, you need to select the option This service application is the default storage location for column specific term sets. To do this, in the list of service applications, select the Managed Metadata service application proxy (be sure to select the proxy, not the service application itself). Then, on the ribbon, click Properties: 



















Next, on the Edit Managed Met…

Today's SharePoint 2013 configuration quagmire is this: you provision the Search service application, you click on Search Dictionaries - for example, to manage company name extraction or query spelling correction - and you see a largely empty term store.

In other words, you click this:



























You expect to see this:



























But instead you see this:















As is often the case with these issues, you'll probably that everything works fine if you use the Farm Configuration Wizard to provision your services. However, if you do things properly and create your service applications by hand, you come across this kind of issue.

The Solution
The Search Dictionaries term set group is not created when you provision the Search service application, it's created when you provision the Managed Metadata service application. When you create a Managed Metadata service application, it should create the Search Dictionaries and the People term set groups in addition to the System group. However, this will only happ…