Managed Metadata Grayed Out seemingly at random

Question

We have taxonomy fields as part of a proven solution (SP 2010 -- fields demonstrated to work & are provisioned properly). We decided to experiment with Service Application architecture and created a second Managed Metadata Service to perform content type syndication.

Now seemingly at random, all of the taxonomy fields in our publishing site are grayed out. We will fix them but they will become grayed out shortly after this again.

Is anyone aware of any limitations of using two Managed Metadata Service Applications that could cause this?

The first MMS is default for keywords & column specific term sets. The second performs syndication. Only the second is configured as a ctx hub.

BTW, we're experimenting with two MMS because we've had difficulty deleting syndicated content types. Seems as though once a content type is syndicated, it gets stuck in the hub forever (at least as far as Feature scoped content types go). Other options?

Answer 1

The problem here was the SSP ID for MMS Fields was being garbled after Content Type Syndication. Seemed like a bug.

We recreated the syndication MMS, reset the SSP ID's on the Taxonomy Fields to the keyword MMS. Then re ran syndication and have experienced no problems since.

I believe the problem was in the default Service Connection for the Web Application however we have not experienced this again so tough to give a concrete answer.

This is a safer model for when SHTF.