Testing the Crawl

About this task

Once the IBM Connections connector has been installed and configured in your Watson™ Explorer Engine installation, you will likely want to run several tests to determine that it is functioning correctly. What follows are recommended steps to test the IBM Connections connector to ensure that it is working properly:

Procedure

  1. In the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool's Configuration tab, navigate to your site collection seed configuration display.
  2. Test It - Click Test It to verify initial connectivity and that the IBM Connections connector is successfully communicating with IBM Connections.
  3. Confirm Authentication - Once connectivity has been successfully tested, confirm you can authenticate with an appropriate authentication type, user name, and password.
  4. Null Search - Perform a null search by simply clicking the search button in your Watson Explorer Engine or Watson Explorer Application Builder search display. If results are not displayed, something is likely not configured properly. A null search should return all results.
  5. Document Search - If results are successfully displayed, then test the search bar by searching for a document that is already known to be part of the index. For instance, an administrator may search for a document that they added to IBM Connections previously and therefore know that this document should be returned as a search result by the IBM Connections connector.
  6. Security/ACLs - If a known document is successfully returned in the search results, then test security and ACLs (access control lists) by searching first for a document to which access should be granted based on the current account permissions, and then for a document that should not be accessible based on the current account permissions.
    Important:

    During testing, you must confirm that users can only access documents whose security requirements are satisfied by a user's current security and access permissions. You should test security and ACL support by using several accounts with different IBM Connections permissions.

  7. Refresh Capability - Once that security authentication is properly confirmed, test the refresh capability of the IBM Connections connector. Search for a document and note exactly what is returned for that search. Locate the source document and modify it. Click refresh. Confirm that the document has indeed been modified and returned successfully in a search. Make sure that you pay attention to any time interval settings configured in the site collection seed configuration.
  8. Document Count - At this point, it is suggested to test the overall document count in the search results. Perform a search query. Note the number of results. Add a document to IBM Connections and perform the same search. The total results should now be increased.
    Note:

    Many of the tests here can safely be performed in a production environment. However, it may be harder to determine their effect. For example, if you are adding documents while other users are adding documents, it may be difficult to confirm that your document is the one that directly impacted the search results.

Results

The IBM Connections connector should successfully perform each of the tests in the previous list. If not, you may not have configured the IBM Connections connector correctly, or an issue may exist in your computing environment that is preventing successful connectivity and document retrieval. The next section lists common steps to identify and debug such problems.