Configuring rule-based categories

You can create any number of categories for a collection, and each category can contain any number of rules. The rules determine which documents are associated automatically with the category.

About this task

If your applications enable support for categories, users can narrow results by selecting categories in the facet navigation pane. When a user selects a category, only the documents that belong to the selected category are shown in the search results.

Important: If you change category rules after you crawl and index documents, the index becomes inconsistent. To ensure the accuracy of search results, all documents in the collection must be crawled or imported again and then re-indexed again. If the collection is configured to use the document cache, you can rebuild the index without recrawling or re-importing documents.

If a user has the authority to create category rules, the rules that the user adds are displayed in the category tree. You can see the user IDs of the application users who added rules and edit or remove these rules. Unless the application user also has authority to rebuild the category index, the categories are not reflected in the user application until you rebuild the category index.

Procedure

To configure a rule-based category:

  1. On the Collections view, expand the collection that you want to configure. In the Parse and Index pane, click Configure > Global processes > Rule-based categories.
  2. On the Rule-based Categories page, select the category that you want to configure:
    • Select the default root category if you want to add a category at the top level in the category tree. You cannot edit the definition of the default root category or remove the default root category from the tree.
    • Select an individual category in the tree if you want to add a subcategory to a category. You can edit the category rules, change the order of the subcategories, or remove the category or subcategory from the tree. You can nest subcategories to define the hierarchy in which the categories are displayed when users query a collection.
  3. Add a category.
    You must specify the category path, which is an ID that enables the category to be used programmatically. The following special characters and alphanumeric characters are supported: hyphen (-), underscore (_), 0-9, a-z, and A-Z.
    You can also specify a display name for the category. If you do not specify a category name, the category path is used as the display name.
    Tip: The category path ensures the uniqueness of each category. If you specify a category name, you might want to ensure that each name is unique, too. Users might be confused by seeing more than one category with same name when they query a collection.
  4. In the category tree, select the category that you added and click the button to edit category rules.
    A list of currently defined rules is displayed. You can see the rule name, the type of rule, the content of the rule, the user ID of the user who added the rule through an application (if any), the query language to be used with documents that belong to the category, and the date and time that the rule was last modified. You can change how the rules are displayed:
    • Click the header of the column that you want to sort the rules by. To reverse the sort order, click the column header again.
    • Limit the list to rules that match a pattern that you specify. In the Filter by field, select how you want to filter the rules (by the name of the rule, by the text that defines the rule, or by user ID) and then type the characters that rules must contain. As you type, the list of rules is dynamically updated to show only the rules that match.
  5. Add a rule:
    1. On the Rules page, click Add.
    2. On the Add Rule page, type a name for the rule if you are configuring rules for an enterprise search collection. The rule name is not required for content analytics collections.
      The rule can be based on URI patterns or document content:
      URI pattern rules
      To use the URI of a document to determine whether the document belongs to the category, click URI pattern and then specify the URI pattern. If the text that you specify exists in the URI, the document is associated with the category. For example:

      file:///c:/program+files/finance

      Document content rules
      To determine whether a document belongs to the category by querying searchable content, click Document content, select the language of the documents, and then specify the words and phrases that must or must not appear in the document content. If a document includes or excludes the words that you specify, the document is associated with the category.

      You express the rule in the same format as a query. For example:

      +finance -accounting +title:"fiscal year"

      The rulebased::category-id query operator is not supported.

      After you click OK, the Rules page shows the rule that you created. You can add another rule, edit a rule, or remove a rule that you previously added.
    3. After you finish configuring rules for this category, click OK to return to the Rule-based Categories page.
  6. Optional: Change the order of the categories in the tree.
    You can change the hierarchical structure of the category tree in two ways:
    Dragging categories
    You can select and drag subcategories to different locations in the tree. You cannot drag the root category and you cannot drag a subcategory to a top-level position below the root category. The system provides indicators to let you know where you can drop a category or subcategory that you selected to drag. You can use the Ctrl key to select multiple subcategories from the same category and drag them together to a new position in the tree. You cannot select and drag subcategories that belong to different categories.
    Moving categories
    Select the root category to organize top-level categories, or select a category to organize the subcategories of that category. When you click the Edit icon in the Category order area, a list of all subcategories for the selected category is displayed. Select a subcategory and click the appropriate buttons to move the subcategory up, down, or to the first or last position in the category.