Issue
When crawling SharePoint content with the SharePoint Optimized Connector in Fusion, the crawl job fails with exceptions such as Error retrieving term or IllegalArgumentException: argument "content" is null. This issue occurs when documents reference taxonomy terms that have been deleted or are unavailable in the SharePoint term store.
Diagnosis
To determine whether this issue applies:
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Review the connector logs for exceptions similar to:
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com.lucidworks.fusion.connector.plugins.sharepoint.exception.SharePointException: Error retrieving term <term-guid> -
IllegalArgumentException: argument "content" is null
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Confirm with your SharePoint administrator whether the taxonomy terms referenced by affected documents have been deleted or are missing from the term store.
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Attempt to crawl with the "taxonomies disabled" option in the connector. If the crawl succeeds when taxonomies are disabled, the failure is likely due to missing or deleted terms.
Environment
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Fusion 5.x (including version 5.9.2)
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SharePoint Optimized Connector (versions 2.0.0, 2.1.0, and above)
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Kubernetes deployments (for example, AKS)
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Applicable to environments where SharePoint taxonomy terms are used in document metadata
Cause
This issue occurs when the SharePoint Optimized Connector attempts to crawl documents that reference taxonomy terms which no longer exist in the SharePoint term store. The connector expects these terms to be present; if they are deleted or unavailable, the crawl process fails with an exception and affected documents are not indexed.
Resolution
To resolve or mitigate this issue:
1. Verify SharePoint taxonomy integrity
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Work with your SharePoint administrator to ensure that all taxonomy terms referenced by documents to be crawled are present in the SharePoint term store.
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If terms have been deleted, consider restoring them if possible, or updating document metadata to remove references to missing terms.
2. Review connector configuration
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Confirm that the connector is properly configured to access required SharePoint paths and has sufficient permissions to all target content and taxonomy metadata.
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If using the "taxonomies disabled" option, note that this may allow the crawl to succeed, but taxonomy fields will not be captured. Use this only if taxonomy data is not required.
3. Analyze connector logs
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Examine the connector backend logs for error messages indicating which taxonomy terms are missing.
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Use these details to identify and correct problematic documents or taxonomy references in SharePoint.
4. Consider connector version updates
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Upgrading to a newer version of the SharePoint Optimized Connector (such as 2.1.0) may improve error handling in some scenarios; however, this does not guarantee resolution if the root cause is deleted terms in SharePoint.
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After upgrading, always restart the connector pod and verify connector functionality.
5. Re-crawl after addressing missing terms
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Once missing taxonomy terms are restored or document metadata is updated to remove references, restart the crawl job.
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Confirm that previously failing documents are now indexed successfully.
Note: Skipping or dropping null value fields in the index pipeline does not resolve this error if the crawl process fails before documents are indexed.