Connect and disconnect a publishing site to a catalog in SharePoint

By connecting a publishing site to a catalog, you can configure friendly URLs for your catalog item page. You can also:

• Integrate catalog content into the publishing site collection.

• Integrate the term set used by the catalog into the term set of the publishing site collection.

• Create a category page and a catalog item page.

• Create a result source for the catalog.

Before you begin

Before you connect your publishing site to a catalog, make sure that you:

• Enable a library or list as a catalog in SharePoint.

• Do a full crawl of the content source that contains the catalog. See Manually request crawling and re-indexing.

• Enable the SharePoint Server Publishing feature on the publishing site. See Enable publishing features.

• Enable managed navigation on the publishing site.

• Make the tagging term set that is used by the catalog available to the publishing site collection.

• Make sure that you're a member of the Owners SharePoint group on the publishing site.

Connect a publishing site to a catalog

1. On the publishing site, from Settings , select Site Settings.

2. On the Site Settings page, in the Site Administration section, select Manage catalog connections.

3. On the Manage catalog connections page, select Connect to a catalog.
   

   Important:  Only crawled catalogs will appear.

4. Find the catalog in the list, and select Connect. You can also type the catalog name in the search field.

5. On the Catalog Source Settings page, in the Connection Integration section choose:

   • Integrate the catalog into my site. This option enables you to define how your friendly URLs will look, and where to integrate the catalog tagging term set in the publishing site navigation term set. Also, a category page, a catalog item page and a result source for the catalog will be automatically created for you.

   • Connect, but do not integrate the catalog. This option automatically creates a result source for the catalog.
     

     Note:  By selecting this option, you won't be able to do any further configurations on the Catalog Source Settings page, and you won't be able to define friendly URLs for your catalog item pages.

6. In the Navigation Hierarchy section, select a term from the catalog tagging term. The term you select will be the level at which the catalog tagging term set will be integrated into the publishing site navigation term set.
   The default value is the tagging term set that you selected when you enabled a library or list as a catalog. If you want to integrate the tagging term set from a different term, do the following:

   • Next to the Root term of hierarchy box, select the Browse for a valid choice icon.

   • In the Select: Add Terms dialog box, select the term that corresponds to the level from which you want to integrate the catalog tagging term set.

   • To integrate the root term that is the parent of the selected term in the publishing site navigation term set, select the Include root term in site navigation check box.

     Note:  For site navigation to work as intended for all items, all items in the catalog must be tagged with a term from the specified catalog tagging term set.

7. In the Navigation Position section, specify the term in the publishing site navigation term set where the catalog tagging term set should be integrated:

   • To integrate the catalog tagging term set to the root term of the publishing site navigation term set, select Add to navigation root.

   • To integrate the catalog tagging term set to a term below the root term of the publishing site navigation term set, select Select an alternate location in site navigation, and then do the following:

     • Select the Browse for a valid choice icon. A dialog box showing the publishing site navigation term set opens.

     • In the Select: Add Terms dialog box, select the term that corresponds to the level from which you want to integrate the catalog tagging term set.

8. If you want changes to the catalog tagging term set to be updated on the publishing site, in the Navigation Pinning section, select the Pin terms to site navigation check box. By default, this option is selected.

9. In the Catalog Item URL Behavior section, specify the URL to your catalog items:

   • Make URLs relative to this site. This option enables you to create a friendly URL for your catalog item page, for example http://www.contoso.com/Computers/model101. When visitors select an item on your site, they'll be taken to the catalog item page.

   • Make URLs point to source catalog. By selecting this option, you won't be able to create a friendly URL to your item pages. When visitors select an item on your site, they'll be taken to the item in the catalog. Here's what a URL to the item in the catalog could look like: http://www.contoso.com/pages/computers.aspx.

10. In the Catalog Item URL Format section, select which properties the friendly URL of the item details page should contain:

    • Use the default URL format provided by the catalog source. By default, the value in this field is what you selected as Primary Key the when you enabled the library or list as a catalog.
      

      Note:  Make sure that all items in the catalog have values for the specified field, or else site navigation won't work as intended.

    • Manually define a URL format. This option enables you to manually define a format for the URL. Only select this option if you've created an item details page and the items in your catalog are not tagged with a term from a catalog tagging term set. Type the URL in the following format: /<Folder of item details page>/<Name of item details page>.aspx? <Managed property name>=[Managed property value] - for example, /Pages/itemdetails.aspx?TitleProperty=[Title].

    • Construct a URL format from catalog properties. This option enables you to construct a custom URL based on catalog properties. From the Available Fields list, select up to five properties, and then select Add.
      

      Important:  Properties of site column type Number won't create a valid URL. Also, all items in the catalog must have values for the selected properties. Site navigation won't work as intended for items with missing values.

11. In the Category Page section, select:

    • Create a new page to automatically create a new Category page for your catalog content. From the Select the master page menu, select the master page you want the Category page to use. The page will be added to the Pages library with the name Category-<catalog tagging term set name>. The page won't be published automatically.

    • Use an existing page if you've already created a category page. Select Browse, and then specify the location of the page.

12. In the Item Page section, select:

    • Create a new page if you want SharePoint to automatically create a new item page for your catalog content. From the Select the master page menu, select the master page you want the Item page use. The page will be added to the Pages library with the name CatalogItem-<catalog tagging term set name>. The page won't be published automatically.

    • Use an existing page if you've already created an Item page. Select Browse, and then specify the location of the page.

13. Select OK.

Disconnect a publishing site from a catalog

To remove the content of a connected catalog from a publishing site, you have to disconnect the publishing site from the catalog.

Important: 

• If you've integrated a catalog tagging term set into the publishing site navigation term set, the tagging terms won't be removed from the navigation when you disconnect from the catalog. To remove the tagging terms from your site navigation, you have to delete the terms in Term Store Management. See Create and manage terms in a term set.

• If SharePoint Server automatically created a category page and an item details page for the catalog pages, they won't be deleted from the Pages library when you disconnect from the catalog.

1. Make sure that you're a member of the Owners SharePoint group on the publishing site.

2. On the Site Settings page, in the Site Administration section, select Manage catalog connections.

3. On the Manage catalog connections page, a list of connected catalogs appears.

4. On the line that contains the catalog that you want to disconnect, select Disconnect, and then in the dialog box, select Disconnect again.

About the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) browser title and catalog connections

When you connect a publishing site to a catalog, the SEO browser title property for the category page on the publishing site will automatically be set to use the corresponding term from the tagging term set. If you change a term in your tagging term set on the authoring site after you've connected to a publishing site, the SEO browser title on the publishing site will not automatically be updated. For example, if you've tagged items in your catalog with the term "Jackets", and you connect a publishing site to this catalog, the SEO browser title for the category page that shows the jackets will be "Jackets". If you then change the tagging term from "Jackets" to "Winter jackets", the SEO browser title will still be "Jackets".

To change the SEO browser title of a category page after you've connected to a catalog, edit the SEO browser title property on the publishing site.

1. On the publishing site, go to the page where you want to change the SEO browser title property.

2. From the PAGE ribbon, select Edit properties and then Edit SEO properties.

3. On the SEO Properties page, in the Browser Title field, enter the SEO browser title that you want to use.

4. Click OK to save the changes.