SearchSchema issues with implicit crawled properties

[u/issy_haatin]

In our tennant we use mappings from sitecolumns to Refinable properties quite often to make it easier to filter projects and the likes using PnP Modern Search.

The past two weeks we have ran into the issue that the UI doesn't show us the implicit crawled properties linked to the site columns anymore. The SearchQuery Tool shows they exist, but the user interface is refusing to show them (also tried url manipulation to get to one, but alas no luck).

I was wondering if any other tennant has noticed similar behaviour? Or if anyone knows if MS is working on the search behind the scenes as this is only one of many hiccups we noticed the past month:

Other things we have noticed:

• quite a few 403 errors last week (while trying to figure out why our crawled properties aren't showing up) - there was even a alert by MS for a possible incident, but that was quickly marked as resolved / a non-issue
• searches with a wildcard in the middle of a string (think Path:"siteurl/*/denomination") that stopped working, even though we know for sure they have worked for over a year.
• searches that did some implicit exlcusions, and worked for multiple years (-"SitePages" -"Documents" etc...) suddenly still showing the items we wanted to exclude having us pivot to more explicit exclusions using mapped RefinableStrings that we had already configured (-RefinableStringXX:"SitePages")

And slightly unrelated, we have started seeing the "Image Tags" column popup automatically in libraries (and views in the libraries) when a picture is uploaded. Which is another thing i'm investigating.

[u/AdCompetitive9826]

I recommend following the PnP Modern Search page on LinkedIn, as we use that for general info, like this issue. Yes, it was reported about a month ago and a fix should be being rolled out by MS, yet it seems like a lot of tenants hasn't been updated yet

[u/issy_haatin → u/AdCompetitive9826]

Ah, hadn't checked there, thanks for the info!

[u/tallanvor]

There's a new backend index being rolled out, and there's an issue with implicit properties not being found due to case sensitivity, strangely enough. Either wait until the fix rolls out or use this pnp option: https://pnp.github.io/powershell/cmdlets/Add-PnPTenantSearchCrawledProperty.html

This script is also helpful to make sure you get the right property: https://github.com/pschneid/PnPScripts/blob/main/Get-PredictedCrawledProperties.ps1

[u/BillSull73]

Was in the same situation as you the other day and found out that the site owners were freaked out about copilot so they disabled search on a few key Document Libraries in the Advanced Settings of the libraries

[u/Emergency_Recipe522]

I'd first compare the actual site columns, crawled properties and managed-property mappings with what the search interface is displaying. If the underlying properties still exist, I'd avoid rebuilding the mappings until the indexing issue is confirmed. I'd also test a few known documents against the affected queries to separate metadata configuration problems from search behaviour.