Creating Search Categories

This section contains an overview, and discusses:

• Specifying general search category settings.

• Selecting advanced search field settings.

• Selecting facet settings.

• Identifying custom search pages.

• Working with display fields.

Understanding Search Categories

Search Categories are essential for the Search Framework. Search categories:

• Organize search definitions into manageable, logical groups of data.

• Are required for searches. Search queries run only against search categories, not search definitions. A search definition must be a member of a search category before it can be searched.

• Enables users to focus searches to help refine results and restrict searches to a particular set of search indexes. For example, users can run searches against categories like Customers, Purchase Orders, or Products, rather than running a search against all indexes in the search engine.

• Allow users to search across several different groups of data simultaneously. For example if you were looking for a particular Item ID, with a Search category containing multiple Search Definitions, you can search across purchase order, sales orders and inventory at one time.

• Provide improved search performance and results by limiting the number of indexes searched.

Note. Search queries cannot be run directly against search definitions. Search queries can only be run against search categories.

Specifying General Search Category Settings

Access the General page by selecting PeopleTools, Search Framework, Designer, Search Categories.

Search Category Name	Displays the search category name. Important! Though any number of search definitions can be mapped to a search category, for each and every search definition, a search category of the same name must exist, and the search definition must belong to that search category. You can create search categories of a different name that are not associated with a single search definition. A search definition may belong to more than one search category, but it must belong to one with the same name. For example, search definition XYZ must belong to search category XYZ, but search definition XYZ can also belong to search category ABC. Search category ABC does not require a corresponding search definition of the same name, and it can contain multiple search definitions.
Description	Add any additional information to distinguish search categories. Note. If this search category becomes exposed through Application Search, then the description you enter may appear in the Application Search Bar. The description must be appropriate for end user viewing. Make the description as informative, concise, and intuitive as possible. Note. The description is translatable.
Search Group	Select to enable this search category to be available for context searching within Application Search.
Search Definition	Add all search definitions that belong to this search category.

Selecting Advanced Search Field Settings

Access the Advanced Search Fields page by selecting PeopleTools, Search Framework, Designer, Search Categories and selecting the Advanced Search Fields tab.

The Advanced Search Fields page enables you to view and modify attributes to show on the advanced search page during end user searches to add more criteria to the basic search mode.

When working with the advanced search page attributes, keep these items in mind:

• This configured list can be programmatically retrieved from the SearchCategory App Class in the PT_SEARCH Application Package using method GetConfiguredFilterAttributes.

• All the attributes associated with this category can be retrieved using the same App Class with the method GetAllAttributes.

• Attributes not appearing on the Advanced Search Fields page can be retrieved using GetNonConfiguredFilterAttributes. This method will provide a list of attributes defined in the related search definitions which have not been configured here.

Auto detect common fields

When selected, this flag will gather all fields which are common to all search definitions listed on the General page. This will allow for searching across all search definitions in the category. Select to avoid manually listing the common fields from the joined records. (default) Deselect to delete some or to add additional attributes which are not common to all search definitions. Note. When you select the Auto Detect flag, you must save the search category before the common fields will be properly displayed in the grid.

Sequence

Control the sequence in which the search attributes appear in the advanced search interface.

Selecting Facet Settings

Access the Facets page by selecting PeopleTools, Search Framework, Designer, Search Categories and selecting the Facets tab.

Auto detect facets

Select to detect common facets for all the search definitions belonging to the search category. When you save the search category, any facets that are common to all search definitions are displayed. This saves you from needing to discover which facets can be used to filter across all search definitions. Deselect this option if you wish to remove some facets or add ones that are not common to all search definitions (not recommended as this may distort facet counts).

Sequence

Control the sequence in which the faceted fields display for narrowing search results in an intuitive fashion for users. For example, perhaps you might want to ensure that these faceted fields display in this order: Country, State, County, City.

Keep in mind that this configured list of facets can be programmatically retrieved using the GetFacetFilters method in the SearchCategory App Class in the PT_SEARCH Application Package. The result, which is an array of PT_SEARCH:FacetFilter can be passed to the PT_SEARCH:SearchQuery class to get facet nodes in the search results.

Identifying Custom Search Pages

Oracle provides default search pages to use with most application purposes. If you need to do something more than this, then you must create custom search pages for custom applications or to provide additional search features.

To indicate for the system to use these custom pages when doing an Application Search, then you should specify that search page, as well as any custom search result or advanced search pages.

Note. This functionality is only available for Application Search, not keyword component-level search.

Access the Custom Search Page page by selecting PeopleTools, Search Framework, Designer, Search Categories and selecting the Custom Search Page tab.

Menu Name	Select the menu to which the search page belongs.
Component Name	Select the search page’s component name.
Market	Select the appropriate market.
Search results page	Select the search results page to use.
Advanced search page	Select the advanced search page to use.

Working With Display Fields

Access the Display Fields page by selecting PeopleTools, Search Framework, Designer, Search Categories and selecting the Display Fields tab.

Sequence	Use the Sequence edit box to specify the order in which the display fields appear.
Search Attribute	Select the search attribute from the dropdown list.