What's the use of taxonomy_topic field on Catalog Items

[Mark Roethof]

Hi all,

Just wondering what's the use of the taxonomy_topic field on Catalog Items?

When adding Connected Content to Topics for example (which is M2M record), also the Catalog Item will be updated. The taxonomy_topic field will be filled with the Topic of the just created Connected Content. Though why? As this is M2M? Also, when adding the same Catalog Item also to another Topic as Connected Content, then the Catalog Item is not updated. Why?

Is this just a legacy field for a first draft of Employee Center and Taxonomies? Or is there a real purpose behind this field?

Also really annoying, when working on a transition from Service Portal to Employee Center, working on Connected Content on your non-prod instance, Catalog Items are updated. Though of course, your Employee Center changes won't be moved to production already. While working on changes/stories for the particular Catalog Item though, you will face errors because of the taxonomy_topic field.

Anyone can clarify the taxonomy_topic field a bit?

Kind regards,
Mark

[Alisa Tipisova]

So far I've noticed that taxonomy topic appears in search results as text on top of catalog item name, which is annoying if you connect one item to multiple topics.

[Tomas Lozano]

Hi Marc

I just stumbled upon your post - did you ever get any information on the purpose of this field?

Thanks,

Tomas

[mariohildebrand]

To my understanding the taxonomy_topic field on the catalog item acts as the "Primary Topic" similar to how Service Catalog and Category work - while all subsequent Connected Content records are just added in the Related list.

So functionality-wise it does not have much impact and is simply auto-populated when you add a catalog item to its first taxonomy. The same also happens to Knowledge articles.

In my project we use the field for our Employee Center taxonomy, while the Mobile taxonomy is always the secondary one.

[JPery]

This is frustrating. When you remove the catalog item from a Topic the taxonomy_topic field remains the same and is read-only (on the catalog item). So even though you have a filter condition set to only display items that are included in your taxonomy, that catalog item will still appear in the results because the taxonomy_topic field (read-only) does not remove the topic even though the catalog item has been removed from the taxonomy.

What is best practice in correcting this issue?

Thank you in advance for any and all feedback.