Using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Query.SortList

Question

I have this piece of code that works brilliantly returning a list of people by a searchTerm. However, I want to add sorting:

var searchTerm = $("#txtSearchBox").val();

    clientContext = new SP.ClientContext.get_current();


    //Building Keyword query for the search
    var keywordQuery = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Query.KeywordQuery(clientContext);

    keywordQuery.set_queryText(searchTerm);
    keywordQuery.set_sourceId("B09A7990-05EA-4AF9-81EF-EDFAB16C4E31");
    keywordQuery.set_rowLimit(500);
    keywordQuery.set_trimDuplicates(false);
    sortproperties = keywordQuery.get_sortList();
    ///// sortproperties.add("LastName", 0);
    keywordQuery.set_enableSorting(true);

    var searchExecutor = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Query.SearchExecutor(clientContext);
    results = searchExecutor.executeQuery(keywordQuery);

    clientContext.executeQueryAsync(onQuerySuccess, onQueryError);

So, that line I commented out above,

///// sortproperties.add("LastName", 0);

Seemed to cause errors when I uncomment it (and I checked the syntax, it's all correct), the managed-metadata exists with that name, and the sorting direction value is correctly used based on the enumeration value, ascending.

The error message I got was this:

Search has encountered a problem that prevents results from being returned. If the issue persists, please contact your administrator.

What am I missing, Sharepoint crawls once a day for us, and I'm pretty sure it would crawl through these meta-data just fine: I can even bring up the data for display just fine, just have no idea why it refuses to sort...

Answer 1

As it turns out, I changed over to using FirstName and it worked. In digging around I found the following:

1. Go to Central Admin,
2. Go to Service Application,
3. Search Service Application,
4. Search Schema (left menu)
5. Type in the Managed Property Name, ensure that it has "Sortable" as Yes (Active).

And then, I guess, wait for the next crawl for it to work.