After you perform all of the configuration necessary to index your product catalog, create your facets in Merchandising, and deploy 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 documents and submits these documents to 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 Merchandising) in the refinement repository (/atg/search/repository/RefinementRepository) to generate the refinement configuration files that represent sets of facets, and submits these files to Search.

If you make any changes to your catalog, you need to redeploy your catalog repository. When you do this, the refinement repository is redeployed as well. You must then reindex your catalog and regenerate the refinement configuration files. For information about configuring automatic reloading and reindexing after a deployment, see the ATG Search Installation and Configuration Guide.