Creating and configuring search collections

To administer search collections, click Administration > Search Administration > Manage Search > Search Collections. This panel includes creating, updating, and removing search collections, and other administrative tasks that refer to search collections. For more information and step-by-step instructions for performing administrative tasks, refer to the portlet help.

Managing search collections:

In the Search Collections panel you can select the following option icons and perform the following tasks:

• Change the search collection with which you want to work. To do this, select another search collection from the pull-down list.
• New collection. Select this option to create a new search collection.
  Notes:

  1. You cannot create additional search collections for the default Content Model search service.
  2. When you specify the directory location for the collection, be aware that creating the collection can overwrite files in that directory.
• Refresh the list of collections.
• Locate a collection and perform one of the following tasks by clicking the appropriate icon for that collection:
  • Search and Browse Collection. Use this option to work with the documents of the selected collection. You can complete the following administrative tasks:
    • Browse the documents of the selected collection.
    • View the individual documents of the selected collection.
    • Search the documents of the selected collection.
    • Edit the fields of the documents in the selected collection.
    • Delete documents from the selected collection.
  • Import or Export Collection. Use this option to import or export the selected search collection. Portal Search provides a Portal Search XML interface for this feature. The export and import operations can be of benefit when you upgrade to software levels which are not necessarily compatible with the data storage format of older versions of the software. To prevent loss of data, you export all data of search collections to XML files before upgrading the software. Then after upgrading the software level, you can use the previously exported files to return the search collection data back into the new software level.
    Notes:

    1. Before you export a collection, make sure that the portal application process has write access to the target directory location. Otherwise you might get an error message, such as File not found.
    2. You can import collection data only into an empty collection. You cannot import collection data into a target collection that has content sources or documents already.
    3. When you import collection data into a collection, all collection settings are overwritten by possibly imported settings. For example, the language setting is overwritten.
    4. When you import a collection, a background process fetches, crawls, and indexes all documents that are listed by URL in the previously exported file.
  • Delete Collection. Use this option to delete the selected search collection.
• Select a collection by clicking the collection name link. Portal Search displays the Content Sources and the Status of the selected collection. You can select the following option icons and perform the following tasks:
  • New Content Source. Use this option to create a new content source for this collection. You can create more than one content source for a search collection.
  • Refresh the list of content sources and the status shown for this collection.
  • Work with the content sources of the collection.
  • View the Collection Status information of the selected search collection. The status fields show the following data that changes over the lifetime of the search collection:

    Search Collection Name:

    Shows the name of the selected search collection.

    Search Collection Location:

    Shows the location of the selected search collection in the file system. This is the full path where all data and related information of the search collection is stored.

    Collection Description:

    Shows the description of the selected search collection if available.

    Search Collection Language:

    Shows the language for which the search collection and its index are optimized. The index uses this language to analyze the documents when indexing, if no other language is specified for the document. This feature enhances the quality of search results for users, as it allows them to use spelling variants, including plurals and inflections, for the search keyword.

    Summarizer used:

    Shows whether a static summarizer is enabled for this search collection. The static summarizer creates a summary of the page, which is based on the page's full content. The page's full content can include metadata, HTML elements, and Web Content Manager templates. These additional elements might be interpreted as text and thus become a part of the page's summary. Do not use the static summarizer if the page's summary contains a large amount of noise from these additional elements.

    Last update completed:

    Shows the date when a content source defined for the search collection was last updated by a scheduled update.

    Next update scheduled:

    Shows the date when the next update of a content source defined for the search collection is scheduled.

    Number of active documents:

    Shows the number of active documents in the search collection, that is, all documents that are available for search by users.

    Notes:

    1. To update the status information, click Refresh. Clicking the refresh button of the browser will not update the status information.
    2. If you delete a portlet from the portal after a crawl of the portal site, the deleted portlet is no longer listed in the search results. However, refreshing the view does not update the status information about the Number of active documents. This information is not updated until after the next cleanup run of portal resources.