Search service

The Search service presents different colors and messages depending on the health of the search engine. See below possible statuses related to engine health:

In an on-premise environment with Elasticsearch managed by SoftExpert Suite (automanaged), it is possible to perform actions such as restarting and configuring the Elasticsearch memory. This option is also valid to deploy the search service again in case it is not responding.

Indexing

What is it meant for?

In order for Elasticsearch to operate correctly, it must have its indexes created. With the indexing process, the engine indexes all files within its scope, thus creating the indexes.

How long can it take?

The indexing length is directly related to the number of records and files to be indexed; in some cases, it may take days for the indexing to complete.

Which file extensions can be indexed?

Only the txt, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, pdf, eml, odt, ods, ppt, pptx, xml, rtf, and odp extensions can be indexed.

What is the maximum size of the files to be indexed?

The maximum size of a single file to be indexed is 30 MB.

Default relevance values

To adjust the value of the relevance criteria, use the slider control to define the desired value, or fill in the field available next to the control. It is possible to set a value from 0 to 50.

How does relevance work?

Elasticsearch results are sorted through a similarity score via an Okapi BM25 algorithm. In this algorithm, the following factors are considered for score calculation:

1. Frequency of the searched token in each of the indexed fields.
2. Size of each indexed field containing the token.
3. Number of documents with the token.

A mathematical calculation uniting these three factors is then performed. For example, a document with the "bucket" token appearing twice, and with a size of 1,000 words, is more relevant than a document with the "bucket" token appearing three times among 10,000 words.

That is because, in a text with a smaller number of characters, the size of the document may happen to be more relevant than the frequency. Obviously, if the token frequency increases, the analysis will be reconsidered, as it is a sum of the three factors.

However, if a text has a high frequency of a word, especially when it comes to smaller texts, the relevance of this token will be smaller for this document, as the algorithm considers it a "common token" for that document.

Moreover, once the algorithm score is obtained, it is multiplied by the value of the field previously defined in the relevances.

Thus, it is important to check if there are any attributes containing the token in the searched document, since they will also increase the search score.

In this tab, it is possible to configure a list of up to 10 attributes that will be available as filters to refine the search. These attributes allow the user to raise the number of side filters to be displayed.

When full-text search is used, they will appear in the left side panel, in the Attributes section.

The attributes that can be selected are the same as those that can be filled out during the creation of a document, for example.

In this tab, it is possible to create synonym groups to be used in a full-text search.

When creating a synonym group, it is possible to inform the search system that all words contained in the group have the same meaning. This will allow searches done within SoftExpert Suite to bring customized results that meet the company's needs.

For example, if a synonym group containing the words "Collaborator", "Employee", and "User" is created, whenever "Collaborator" is searched for, the system will also show any records containing the words "Employee" and "User".

To add a synonym group, follow the steps below:

1. Access the Synonyms tab.

2. Click on the Add button.

3. Enter the group name.

4. Enter the desired synonym and click on the Add button. Repeat the process until adding all synonyms to the group.

5. Click on the Save button.