Usage of hashtags Community Sites vs. Newsfeed

Question

I can use hashtags in Newsfeeds and Community Sites. When I click on a hashtag within the Newsfeed I get to an overview page where I see all previous usages of this hashtag. This is all fine.

However, when I use a hashtag in a Community Site I also get re-directed to an overview page but no previous posts/conversations show up.

While looking at the MSDN forum I found this:

I called Microsoft support and they confirmed that "Hashtag Profile" only shows Related conversations that originated on user's Mysites newsfeed. They do not show related conversations from Community site discussions. Original Post

My two part question:

1. Is this true or is this a bug? Has anyone ever gotten a community Site working to show previous usages of hashtags?
2. If displaying the previous usages of a hashtag within a community site is not supported why use hashtags within a community at all? What is the point? What am I missing?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As it often is with SharePoint, your best answer you will find yourself by looking into the inner working of things.

The problem is that the HashTags column is set to Hidden in a Community discussion board. Hidden columns are not indexed by SharePoint search so you cannot find them. Easy solution: Set the column to visible, only that this is a bit more complex as CanToggleHidden is set to false...We will need some ugly reflection for that. The following powershell will set the column to visible and allow search to crawl.

$web = Get-SPWeb http://myweb
$list = $web.GetListsOfType([Microsoft.SharePoint.SPBaseType]::GenericList) | ? {$_.BaseTemplate -eq "DiscussionBoard"}
$fld = $list.Fields["HashTags"]
$hiddenState = $fld.Hidden
Write-Host "Currently 'HashTags' Hidden is set to $hiddenState"
if ($hiddenState) {
  $type = $fld.GetType()
  $method = $type.GetMethod("SetFieldBoolValue",[System.Reflection.BindingFlags]$([System.Reflection.BindingFlags]::NonPublic -bor [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]::Instance))
  $method.Invoke($fld, @("CanToggleHidden",$true))
  $fld.Hidden=$false
  $fld.Update()
  Write-Host "Now field 'HashTags' is set to visible"
}

You will need a full crawl after setting the HashTags field to visible.

This should answer question one. Personally I added the PowerShell code feature stapled to the COMMUNITY#0 web template and I'm always good with new communities.

Question two: As it most likely is a really old bug (from 2013), hashtags would make sense if implemented correctly. The HashTag profile page on the MySite as well as the Trending hashtags WebPart also on the MySite will only show Newsfeed Hashtags. The underlying search for both pages is hardcoded to only look for newsfeed content types - as discussion lists have a discussion and a message content type this way they won't find any HashTags for these items.