Introduction

The Watson™ Explorer Engine enables you to define and add autocomplete suggestions to a search application. The autocomplete suggestions will help the user create well-defined queries that are appropriate to the collections which are being searched.

An autocomplete dictionary stores phrases in a dictionary that are suggested to the user when they start typing based on the query. The suggestions are refined as the typing continues. If the entered text does not match any phrases in the autocomplete dictionary, then no suggestions are returned.

The steps to implement autocomplete are:

• Create the autocomplete dictionary by defining the list of phrases that can be delivered as suggestions.
• Deliver the suggestions by either:
  • Configuring your display to use the autocomplete dictionary
  • Configuring an external application to call the Watson Explorer Engine API.

This tutorial shows you how to create an autocomplete dictionary and then add it to a display.

This tutorial has been designed to be self-contained, and therefore includes initial sections that deal with creating a project, crawling a source, and creating a display. These steps are described in detail in the following sections.

To proceed to the process overview, click Adding Autocomplete to a Search Application: Process Overview.