About Search Indexing

Administrators can control which content is indexed and searchable on the Search Index page.

Note:

File-based datasets are indexed differently. Users who upload datasets decide how and when they're indexed through the dataset's Inspect dialog. See Make a Dataset's Data Available for Search.

Crawl results are added to the index in the languages that you specify. For example, if your company's headquarters are in the United States, and you have offices in Italy, then you can choose English and italiano to create an index in both English and Italian.

Data Model

When you select to index items in the data model, you can specify how the content is crawled using one of the following options for Crawl Status:

  • Index Metadata Only: Indexes only dimension and measure names. This is the default selection. For example, column names such as Product or Order, and metric names such as # of Orders. Always use this option if the column contains sensitive data values that you don’t want to expose to users when they search on the home page.

  • Index: Indexes metadata (dimension names and measure names) and data values. Applies only to dimension or attribute columns. For example, if you select this on a Product column, both the metadata for the Product column and its data values (such as iPad, iPod, iPhone ) are indexed.

    Indexing data values provides additional functionality for users who want to visualize data values from the search bar on the home page. Be aware that selecting this option can be costly because it indexes values for all of the columns in all subject areas of the semantic model.

    Note:

    When you index data, it's visible to all users who have access to that column. Take care not to index data for columns that contain sensitive data, as this will expose the sensitive data values on the home page.
  • Don’t Index: Use this selection to completely exclude subject areas, tables, or columns from the index.

Catalog Content

When you select to index objects in the catalog, you can specify how the content is crawled using one of the following options for Crawl Status:

  • Index: Use this option to include folders and items in the index.

  • Don’t Index: Use this selection to exclude folders and items from the index.

    Oracle recommends that you don't set the Crawl Status field to Don't Index as a way of hiding an item from users. Users won't see the item in search results or on the home page, but are still able to access the item. Instead, use permissions to apply the proper security to the item.

You should select only the items needed to create useful search results. Indexing all items yields too many similar search results.