Designing for search in AEM
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The document outlines key considerations and solution options for designing search functionality in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), focusing on both author and publisher perspectives. It details necessary features like auto-suggestion, spell check, multi-lingual capabilities, and the importance of customization for search forms and indexes. Additionally, it emphasizes tracking user interaction with search and the need for caching strategies to enhance performance.
Designing for search in AEM
- 1. Ashokkumar T A 108-Apr-19 Designing for Search in AEM Aspects to consider and solution options for each aspect
- 2. Common Full site / Free text search Module specific search Assets Search Property / Field Based Features Faceted Auto suggest Spell check, Auto correction Search with- in search Results Sort order Filtering results Pagination Permission based Advanced Multi-lingual Caching results Popular & Promoted searches Favorites & ignored Others Search binaries (pdf, images,…) Results Scoring Inactive / historical content Tracking & Reporting Ashokkumar T A 208-Apr-19 Aspects to be considered *Identify all applicable aspects for your use cases
- 3. Ashokkumar T A 308-Apr-19 Author vs. Publisher
- 4. Ashokkumar T A 408-Apr-19 Remember they serve very different purposes Can have completely different set of requirements for search Typically have separate designs, different index configurations Search on Author integrates with Authoring UI Interfaces Search on Publisher integrates with published site UI
- 5. Ashokkumar T A 508-Apr-19 Typical activities in designing for search on Author Review the authoring search forms that would be used in the solution. Identify all the changes that would be required 1. Review search forms Plan to develop custom search predicates if the identified requirements could not be met with available OOB predicates 2. Create custom search predicates If any of the Authoring search forms requires change, make necessary changes## through the search forms editor available under Tools -> Operations 3. Customize search forms If required create new indexes and/or customize OOB indexes** to meet the requirements. For most cases OOB as-is or with minor customization would suffice for handling search on Author 4. Create / modify indexes ## The customized form gets saved under /apps/cq/gu`i/content which can be packaged and deployed across environments ** To customize, disable the OOB definition, take a copy, and make the necessa`ry customization on the copy`
- 6. Ashokkumar T A 608-Apr-19 Typical activities in designing for search on Publisher Collate all the search features needed – like free text search, auto-suggestion, spell check, … Each would require a different query and index. Take care to include all features required 1. Identify all features needed Analyze all touch points to identify all input conditions and output data. It could be centralized at global search or scattered across pages or a combination of boths 2. Cover all Integrations with search Once you have the features and integration points covered, list down the query for all the representative scenarios## 3. List down all representative queries From the listing of the queries, identify the different index types** and the index configuration required. Also identify the services needed to deliver all the search features 4. Identify indexes and services required ** The requirements might mandate one or more types of index to be used in the solution # Having this list would greatly help with deciding on the services to build with maximum reuse
- 7. Ashokkumar T A 708-Apr-19 A closer look at the features Following slides are presented from Publisher perspective. But some of the aspects discussed may apply for Author as well
- 8. Ashokkumar T A 808-Apr-19 Auto Suggestion – Prompting the search term Authored list of terms From Search History Based on AEM Content • Lucene index for suggestion • Values of one or more property can be configured to be used as suggested terms • Update frequency • Path specific auto-suggestions • Analyzers for more control on suggestions
- 9. Ashokkumar T A 908-Apr-19 Auto Correction – Original term has no result, search an alternate Spellcheck library Closest match to list (Authored or History) Based on AEM Content • Lucene index for spellchecking • Values of one or more property can be configured to be for spell check • Path specific spellcheck has limitations
- 10. Ashokkumar T A 1008-Apr-19 Search with-in search Filtering the results further by another term Perform new search with both terms in AND condition Client side logic? Full result set available + Ranking
- 11. Ashokkumar T A 1108-Apr-19 Handling the results
- 12. Ashokkumar T A 1208-Apr-19 Ordering the results Apply boost on properties Ranked on boost weightage Influence the ranking Based on value of property Multiple order by | asc / dsc Order by clause
- 13. Ashokkumar T A 1308-Apr-19 Filtering the results Applying additional conditions to query New search with all conditions included – Fresh results Apply filtering logic on client side | Full result set available?
- 14. Ashokkumar T A 1408-Apr-19 Paginate the result set – Can’t / Don’t fetch all the results More only if user navigates Total results count not accurate Fetch Content for 3 to 4 pages Cache on client, use from cache Set GuessTotal in query Check more flag in response Leverage API Features Use offset and limit params
- 15. Ashokkumar T A 1508-Apr-19 Results based on user permission Execute the query in the users JCR session Do not use service / administrative session Cached results could not be used if permissions are different
- 16. Ashokkumar T A 1608-Apr-19 Some Advanced aspects
- 17. Ashokkumar T A 1708-Apr-19 Popular and promoted search terms Tracking searches to identify popular search terms Promoted search terms – on a new product/service Pre-fetch and cache results for popular/promoted search terms
- 18. Ashokkumar T A 1808-Apr-19 Points on caching search results Where to build this cache? On Author vs. on Publisher Where to keep the cache? Publisher / Dispatcher / External Permission based results cache Design of services based on cache characteristics
- 19. Ashokkumar T A 1908-Apr-19 Favoring and ignoring specific results Results common | favored & ignored items user specific Storing favored, ignored results external to AEM UI logic to filter out ignored and prioritize favored results
- 20. Ashokkumar T A 2008-Apr-19 Multi-lingual in search Single language results vs. mixed results Language specific analyzers Content organization vs. language code in metadata
- 21. Ashokkumar T A 2108-Apr-19 Few other aspects
- 22. Ashokkumar T A 2208-Apr-19 Match based on content of binary files Workflow extracts text from binaries Extracted text included in indexing Not all binary types supported Apache Tika to support wider range of file types
- 23. Ashokkumar T A 2308-Apr-19 Scoring of results Aggregators, analyzers and index rules applied on content Set preferred properties -> Analyzed flag Define relative boost values on properties appropriately
- 24. Ashokkumar T A 2408-Apr-19 Promoting newer content If new content needs to show up before older content? Go for it if ordering by lastModified works Design content/properties appropriately to handle it otherwise
- 25. Ashokkumar T A 2508-Apr-19 Tracking usage of search Important to track what users are doing in any serious project Bringing in an analytics solution Reports from analytics provides insight for future roadmap
- 26. Ashokkumar T A 2608-Apr-19 Common perspectives
- 27. Ashokkumar T A 2708-Apr-19 When? A dangerous tool. Easily tempts to use it everywhere Look for other options. Use it only when absolutely needed Fits for full text search, searching a large tree,…
- 28. Ashokkumar T A 2808-Apr-19 When Not? Find content within a small sub-tree Like filtering under a node, fetch sub-menu items… Evaluate cost of tree traversal vs. using search
- 29. Ashokkumar T A 2908-Apr-19 How? Funnel all searches to come through a set well defined services Return only needed size of result set in simple json format. Build logic in UI to deal with formatting of search results
- 30. Ashokkumar T A 3008-Apr-19 How not? Do not make query builder calls from all over Do not format the results on the server Do not make it too chatty
- 31. Ashokkumar T A 3108-Apr-19 Other thoughts / Discussion
- 32. Ashokkumar T A 3208-Apr-19 Thankyou Feedback and suggestions welcome. Please write to ashokkumar_ta / ashokkumar.ta@gmail.com