Implementer training - search result filters (faceted navigation)

Log in to the search dashboard where you are doing your training.

Locate the silent films search package.

Load the results page management screen for the silent films search results page.

Open the faceted navigation editor by selecting customize faceted navigation from the customize panel.

Create a new facet by clicking on the add new button. A facet is a filter that will be returned with the search results.

The new facet screen allows you to choose from 6 different types of facets. Hovering over the images provides some immediate feedback on how the facet behaves. Click on the filter on a single category tile.

Enter Director as the name for the facet.

The category source then needs to be selected by choosing an item from the drop-down that appears beneath the category values heading. Select predefined values contained in a metadata or XML field (metadata) from the list and select director (the metadata class name that you defined in the data source metadata mappings) as the value for the metadata field. If there are many fields defined you may need to start typing the name of the class you are looking for then select it from the items returned. Note that metadata field names are case-sensitive and must exactly match the class name that is defined in the mappings. Click the add button.

The facet listing screen updates to display the director facet. Observe that the facet is currently unpublished and there is a button available to publish the facet definition.

Add a second facet called Release year that sources the metadata values from the year metadata class. This time click the add and publish button.

Run a search for !showall against the live version of the silent films search results page and observe that there is one facet (Release year) and the values returned for each facet are the individual values that are defined for the metadata fields. Observe that the Director facet is not displaying. This is because the facet has not been published. If you repeat the query on the preview version of the search you will see both facets.

Return to the faceted navigation editor and click the publish button for the director facet. Repeat the live search above and observe that both facets now display.

Click unpublish on the release year facet and rerun the live search observing that the director facet is now the only facet returned.

Faceted navigation counts the different values it finds - so for a facet to be effective you need to make sure your metadata field is populated with consistent values - where the same values are used on many items (such as a controlled list of keywords).

Observe that the facet categories presented are all lower case - this is because Funnelback treats the keywords as case-insensitive when counting the facets (i.e. Hitchcock = hitchcock). The capitalization can be preserved to match the metadata field values, but be aware that you may start to see duplicate terms if the capitalization of the keywords doesn’t match for all pages. A display option (-rmc_sensitive) must be set to make the facet categories case-sensitive. In the results page configuration add an additional display option to the query processor options. Add -rmc_sensitive=true to the list values and then click the save button.

Reload the search results page and observe that all the categories are now case-sensitive.

Log in to the search dashboard where you are doing your training.

Locate the silent films search package.

Load the management screen for the silent films search results page.

Open the faceted navigation editor by selecting customize faceted navigation from the customize panel.

Create a new filter on single category facet by clicking on the add facet button then selecting the filter on single category tile. The two metadata facets from the previous example will be displayed in the editor.

Enter Director (query) as the name for the facet and select documents which match a particular query from the category values are sourced from dropdown. Enter "charlie chaplin" (including the double quotes) into the query field and Charlie Chaplin into the label field. The double quotes ensure that the query is run as a phrase. The value inside the label field is what the user will see as a choice to click on.

Add a second category by clicking the + button next to the Director (query) facet. Enter a second item for Buster Keaton using "buster keaton" as the query and Buster Keaton as the label.

Then select add and publish from the dropdown on the add button.

Switch to the silent films - website data source and run an advanced update. Rebuild the index by running the re-apply gscopes to the live view option. This is required to generate the generalized scopes that underpin the categories for the query-based facets. Running a re-index of the live view will also regenerate the facets but may take longer as a number of other operations are run as part of the re-index.

Run a search for !showall against the silent films search results page and observe that there is an additional facet Director (query) and the values returned for each facet are the two categories that you just defined. Faceted navigation for query categories (and predefined URL set/gscope based categories) requires a separate entry for each category that will counted. The counts refer to the number of items in the result set that match the query defined in the facet configuration. This differs from metadata facets that count all the unique metadata values that appear within a metadata field. For this reason query and gscope facets are more difficult for an administrator to maintain as the faceted navigation configuration must be updated every time a new category is added. For metadata based facets new categories that are added to an existing metadata field will automatically appear.