This blog post was written about the Preview of SharePoint 2013. This behavior may be different in the RTM version of the product.
One of the new features of SharePoint 2013 is the ability to save your custom navigation in the Managed Metadata Service Application. Some of my coworkers were playing with it and noticed it worked fine on farms set up with the Farm Configuration Wizard (Booooo!) but did not work on Farms where the service applications had been lovingly created by hand. With the help of the very fashionably bearded Randy Drisgill, we were able to find the difference and fix it. I would tell you how now, but I’m building up for the big reveal at the end. Big reveals are the hallmark of great storytelling.
We found the problem when going to a site collection with the Publishing Feature enabled and going to Site Settings > Navigation. We tried to enable the Managed Navigation, which stores our custom navigation links in the Managed Metadata service. Here’s what the problem looked like:
We checked the two boxes to enable Managed Navigation. Since we were turning it on for the first time we didn’t have a term set created to store our navigation in. Clicking the “Create Term Set” button on the bottom resulted in the following error:
Failed to create term set. A default managed metadata service connection hasn’t been specified.
This message made it sound like the service application wasn’t created (it was) or that it wasn’t in this web application’s proxy group (it was), but that wasn’t the case. Randy discovered there’s a magic checkbox in the Proxy for the Managed Metadata Service application that makes it available for navigation. The Farm Configuration Wizard checks that checkbox. I hadn’t. Here’s how to do it. Go into Central Admin > Manage Service Applications and highlight the Managed Metadata Service Proxy. Then click Properties in the Ribbon.
In the Properties for the Proxy, check the box next to “This service application is the default storage location for column specific term sets.”
If you’d prefer to do it with PowerShell (and honestly why wouldn’t you?) you can do it like this:
and for your copying and pasting pleasure:
$saproxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | Where-Object { $_.typename -like "Managed*" }
$saproxy.Properties.IsDefaultSiteCollectionTaxonomy
False
$saproxy.Properties.IsDefaultSiteCollectionTaxonomy = $true
$saproxy.Update()
Regardless of how you change that setting, either through PowerShell or the wimpy way through Central Admin, you should be able to create a Term Set when enabling Managed Navigation. Victory looks something like this:
Your screen may or may not say “Boom!” on it.
tk
ShortURL: http://www.toddklindt.com/SP2013ManagedNav