Although not complex, the amount of setup (in different places) may seem a little overwhelming when first getting started with Advanced Search. This topic hopes to alleviate some of the possible confusion by providing a little background information, prerequisites and a recommended setup order.

Terminology

Dynamics Advanced Search, in short Advanced Search or even just Search, is basically a flexible solution that makes data searchable. A fully functioning ready-to-use implementation of the solution based on Products is sold as Dynamics Product Search (or just Product Search for short). When referencing the solution in these topics, Advanced Search, Search and Product Search are used interchangeably to keep the documentation as straightforward as possible. 

If the Advanced Search solution is used for a different object than products, the documentation is 99% the same with basically only the navigation paths being slightly different: the main menu module will be the one the Search object resides in (instead of Product information management for Product Search). If for example Search is used for Rental objects, the Rental module will be the starting point for the Search configuration etc.  

Prerequisites

 The following prerequisites are needed/assumed for a successful setup of Azure Advanced Search:

• The Azure Cognitive Search Service has been created within the Azure tenant (https://portal.azure.com). There is no need to create an index, this will be done from within Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations when setting up the Search Configuration. If no service has been setup yet, it needs to be created by the Azure tenant administrator: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-create-service-portal, choose connect via key-based authentication. For more information about Azure Cognitive Search Service check this link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search/
• A Category hierarchy with categories, linked products and attributes (via attribute groups) has already been setup. Although this step is not a true prerequisite and can be done during the setup, having this setup in place beforehand makes setting up Azure Advanced Search a lot easier as the results of the setup can be used and viewed with data. More information on how to set this up can be found here. Note that changes and additions can easily be made of course after Azure Advanced Search has been set up.   

Recommended order of setup

As mentioned the amount of setup (in different places) may seem a little overwhelming when first getting started with Advanced Search. Therefore we recommend to follow this order when first setting up to get going and at the same time get a feel for the solution, which should help later on when making changes/additions.

0) Make sure the Azure Search Service is up and running and that you have (access to) the key. (Ideally access to the search service via the Azure portal.)

1) Create a plan of the structure and information you want to access via Advanced Search*

1a. Have a Category hierarchy tree set up including linked products

1b. Have attributes and attribute groups set up (if using them as a data source)

1c. Have a list of the (product) related fields to be included in search (if using them as a data source). Check if (some of) these are already available as part of the predefined queries, otherwise create (some of) the needed queries. 

2) Create the Search configuration including the index.

3) Configure the Search hierarchy - part 1 (the data to be uploaded)

4) Update the scheme of the index (Manage button on the index tab on the Search configuration)

5) Configure the Search hierarchy - part 2 (layout, filters and sorting)

6) Publish the definitions (this way the system knows which setup was made in step 5)

7) Update the search data

*If multiple languages, hierarchies and/or companies are required, start with a single one and expand to the multiple languages/hierarchies/companies once a base setup is up and running. It is easier to expand once setup exists, than to try and excompass everything at initial setup when multiples are involved. The same is valid if there are a lot of system fields to be used as a data source (especialy if the relationships for some are very complex). Creating the full plan from the start is great, but (also) having a 'start' plan with some basic fields only, to simply get Search up and running and a feel for the solution is recommended when still learning the solution. Changing/expanding on the setup is easy, so make use of the solution's flexibility.