Product documentation
This guide provides the steps that need to be taken to create a basic working set up for our Product Search solution. This can be helpful both to just quickly try out the solution without already diving deep into it, or to get to know the solution a little better, using it as a starting point to be able to better see how it could be tailored to your specific situation for example.
There are a couple of pre-requisites to be able to use this guide. Firstly the Product Search solution has to be loaded into the environment with a valid (temporary) license. Secondly there has to be an active Azure Search service description for which the name and key needs to be known/accessible
Lastly the environment needs to hold at least some Products (they can have attributes and values attached, but this is not necessary and setting this up will be explained at the end of this guide in an extra optional step) and at least one Category Hierarchy. The Microsoft Contoso Database already has this point covered and will also be the database used in this guide for the examples shown, but the steps can easily be applied to any business database that meets these requirements.
By following the steps below, setting up Product search to a basic working version for 1 company and with 1 Category Hierarchy can be done in about 10-15 minutes. After which alterations can be made easily to expand the setup.
Make sure to be in the relevant company (when using the Contoso database we recommend using USRT) and go to: Product information management > Setup > Product information management parameters and open the Advanced search tab. Set the ‘Enabled’ parameter from ‘Disabled’ to ‘Azure search’.
Go to Product information management > Setup > Categories and attributes > Category hierarchy role associations and create a new record, select ‘Product search’ as the Category hierarchy type and select the relevant hierarchy in the Category hierarchy column, as said, this guide will be using the Contoso Database, and will use the Retail product category hierarchy that is included in it.
Go to Product information management > Setup > Advanced search > Field search queries and click the ‘Load predefined queries’ button in the ribbon, then select all options on the pane that opens and click ‘OK’.
Go to Product information management > Setup > Advanced search > Search configuration and create a new record with the ‘New’ button in the ribbon. Give the Search configuration a name and fill the first 3 tabs as follows:
Click ‘Add’ to create a new record, select the desired language (main language you are working in is the best first choice), fill in the Azure search service name, the key to the service (it is possible to use Key vault, but to keep this guide as simple as possible we’re using the key here) and choose a Search index name. When all that is filled in, click the ‘Manage’ button and select ‘(Re)create index’. If all credentials were filled correctly, the index will have been created in the azure search service with some default Product search fields. (This can be double-checked in the Search service itself via the azure portal.)
Click ‘Add’ and select the relevant company (in the Contoso database example we’re using USRT).
Click ‘Add’ and select the Hierarchy that was linked to the Product search role in step 2 (which in this example is the Retail product category).
On the Search configuration, on the Category hierarchies tab either double-click the selected category hierarchy name or use the ‘Configure search hierarchy’ button to open the hierarchy. Note that this is the only way to open the hierarchy to create (all) the search related setup. Using other paths will not show (all) the relevant tabs for Product Search.
Setup on the Category Hierarchy is level-specific, but for the quick start purpose of this guide, the following setup will be made on the top node of the hierarchy.
A. Field search tab: Click ‘Load defaults’
B. Go back to the Search configuration, click the ‘Manage’ button on the indexes tab and select the ‘Update scheme’ option.
C. Open up the Hierarchy again and click ‘Load defaults’ on the Search layout, Search filters and Search sorting tabs (all with the top node selected).
D. Go to the Category tab in the ribbon and select ‘Update inheritance’. A new pane will open, set the ‘Inherit from parent’ to yes and select all tab pages, then click ‘OK’
A. Click ‘Load defaults’ on the Highlight fields tab, update search data, publish definition
B. Click the ‘Update search data’ button in the ribbon.
A new pane will open in which all default settings can be used, so simply click ‘OK’ to execute the update. How long this process takes, depends on the amount of data (in this scenario the products) in your database/hierarchy. For the Contoso DB this takes just a couple of minutes and runs in the background.
C. Click the ‘Publish definitions’ button in the ribbon.
A new pane will open in which again all the default settings can be used, so simply click ‘OK’ again to continue. This process only takes a few seconds.
And that’s it!
You can now open either the Products search form (Product information management > Products > Products search) or the Released products search form (Product information management > Products > Released products search) and use it to search through the (released) products that are attached to the hierarchy used in the setup. When using the Contoso Database with company USRT there will be about 1290 released products in the form, with a basic setup on the item cards and a couple of filters (defined by the provided ‘Load defaults’).
If you are using or planning on using attributes on the products and want those included in Product search, they can be included easily with just a couple more steps. This guide will use the already existing attributes and attribute groups from the Contoso database, but the same steps can be followed when using your own database. Just make sure that the attributes have already been created and check if they are already linked to the products via the Category Hierarchy that is being used for Search, or link them in the same way as done in step 7 below.
When using the Contoso Database, it’s very quick and easy to use the already existing attribute groups, so we’ll use one of those here.
A. Open the Search Hierarchy via the configuration (same as step 5) and navigate in the tree to the Dresses category under All > Fashion > Womenswear > Dresses.
B. Use the ‘Add’ button on the Product attribute groups tab to add the attribute group ‘Dresses’.
Using Attribute groups is the quickest way to add attributes during this setup, but single attributes added to the hierarchy are also supported, which could be especially good to know when working with your own existing database, which might already have these set up.
C. Go back to the search configuration and update the scheme (step 5B).
D. Return to the Search hierarchy (step 5), navigate to the Dresses node again (step 7A) and add some of the attributes from the dresses attribute group to the Search layout and Search filters tabs. Note that it’s possible to add them on both tabs, or on either one, depending on what you want. For now you can simply select the attributes from the dropdown and use all the default values for the other options on the records.
E. Update the search data (step 6B). You can choose to update it all again or in this case to just update for the ‘Dresses’ node as that is the only node that was changed. Using the Contoso database updating all will only take a couple of minutes, by only selecting the ‘Coats’ node the update is even quicker.
F. Publish the definitions again (step 6C)
When opening one of the Product search forms, you can now see that on any of the items that are linked to the Dresses category, the attributes added to the Search layout tab show up on the item card and the attributes added to the Search filters form appear as filters on the left hand side below the Hierarchy, as soon as the ‘Dresses’ node is selected.
More attributes can be added as wanted, on any level in the tree simply by repeating steps 7A through 7F. The same goes for the other data sources (Field search and Custom search), but using those might take a little more information and/or training than this guide provides. As said, this guide purely provides the steps to quickly get Product search up and running with a basic setup without needing a full training up front, to show how easily this can be done and to play around with it a bit to get a first feel.
Obviously the solution offers many more options and choices. More information about this can be found here in our online product documentation or feel free to enquire via innovationsupport@hso.com. We’re more than happy to answer any questions!