Filtering by managed property in Highlighted Contents web part

Question

I am setting up a hub site with some site collections attached to it. The site collections will share the same set of content types, site columns and have common metadata stored in the termstore. I am using a PnP xml file to set up the site columns and content types so that they will have the same IDs across the site collections.

I am now trying to use the highlighted content webpart in one of the site collections, to show documents and pages that have for instance the site column "Area" set to a specific value. So I am filtering on a managed property. The documents and pages have had the Area column set for some weeks. The values came from the termstore.

When I search for Area in managed properties in the highlighted wp I find AreaOWSCHCM, AreaOWSCHCS, AreaOWSTEXT, owstaxIdArea and a bunch of other area variants that seem to be somewhere else in the tenant (large company). Neither of these are returning any results.

So I read that I had to map a RefinableString to a managed property. Properties I find that I could map are: ows_Area, ows_Area0, ows_taxId_Area, Area, ows_CHCM_Area, etc The ones I have tried so far do not return any results, and I have re-indexed the document library.

Is there any tool available to help locate the correct properties to use in the highlighted web part?

If I manage to get it to work with RefinableStrings, do I have to set up the same refinable strings on all the other site collections if I would like to search all the sites connected to the hub?

I am site collection admin on the hub and the sites connected to the hub, but I do not have any admin rights on the tenant level.

Answer 1

I don’t seem to find such tool for this request. But there are patterns how the crawled properties are created and named in a SharePoint environment. Also check out this post with explanation: How to check correct Crawled property for a list column.

If you map the properties at site level, then it works only at current site level. So it is better that you map the properties directly at tenant level via SharePoint admin center > search > Manage Search Schema. Ask the organization admins to do that if you do not have enough privilege.

Answer 2

I recommend downloading the "SmartCAML" app from Microsoft store. You can connect to a SharePoint online site, and it will load your lists and libraries, and you can easily create a custom query. Then add that as a custom query to your highlighted content web part. When adding to web part from SmartCAML, you need to add view tag around the content seen in below support article.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/use-the-highlighted-content-web-part-e34199b0-ff1a-47fb-8f4d-dbcaed329efd

• see custom query section, use SmartCAML app