Once you have performed all of the configuration necessary to index your product catalog (as described in the Repository Indexing chapter), created your facets in ATG Merchandising, and deployed your catalog and refinement data to your target site, you should initiate a bulk loading operation. When you do this, the ATG platform transforms the catalog data into XHTML files and submits these files to ATG Search, which builds a complete index. As part of this process, the ATG platform also uses the refineElement items (which define the facets created in ATG Merchandising) in the refinement repository to generate the refinement configuration files used for dynamic navigation.
If you make any changes to your catalog, including any changes to your facets, you need to redeploy your catalog repository. When you do this, the refinement repository is redeployed as well. To make sure the catalog is reindexed completely and the refinement configuration files are regenerated, you should run a bulk load after each deployment. You can do this manually, or you could configure a message sink in Patch Bay to listen for deployment events and trigger bulk loading in response.
For more information about indexing and loading catalog data, see the Repository Indexing chapter.
