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

[Daniel Peel]

It's funny you just posted this... as we just found this too... read only field, no assigned topics but still shows up in search lol.  
There are 3 ACLs (write, create, delete) that are set for nobody to have access to that field... I wonder what the official process is to have this value cleared because it does cause search issues.

[Tomas Lozano]

Hi Mark
You can ignore the field. The topics related list supersedes it.

At best it's meant to track the first topic you add, however it's of no use when you add multiple topics. There's a BR on the m2m table that writes to it, check it out if you want more details.

Cheers,

Tomas

[Daniel Peel]

You're correct that it was superseded... but if populated... will cause items to appear in Search even if you do not have have a Catalog/Category or any Assigned Topics... so it's not really something we can just ignore as it's incorrectly adjusting search results.  We can adjust the ACLs or BRs but that will impact upgrades... so it would be nice to have an official fix for that field being populated