TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
• Changes from v9.7.7
• Manage PIM Index Settings
• Add PIM Index
• Editing the Index Settings
• Delete PIM index
• Global Index Setting

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Introduction

Every Znode store includes a built-in product search that helps shoppers find the products easily. Product attributes can be configured to be used in search, giving merchants flexibility and control over the search experience. Once configured, an administrator simply has to publish the complete catalog to automatically create an index containing all the product data. Any new or updated products that are associated with the catalog will automatically be added to the index upon publishing.

On the Manage PIM Indexes page, administrators can see a list with the history of indexes created for each catalog published. There are two indexes created for each catalog, one for the Production URL and one for the Preview URL.

Administrators can also rebuild the indexes by clicking the "Create Index" button or scheduling this activity by using the "Create Schedule" function.

Changes from v9.7.7

The index creation process gets triggered multiple times manually via the Search Profile Publish, Synonyms Publish as well as Create Index features This causes the additional server load and elastic to stop. In order to eliminate this Znode has now the following changes from the v9.7.7

1. Whenever an index creation process starts related to a specific catalog,  Znode checks if there is any index creation in progress related to the same catalog
2. If a new index creation is initiated for a specific catalog, the system searches for any other index related to the same catalog and checks the status of those indexes. 
   1. If it is found that there is an index for that catalog with “Started” or “In Progress” status, then the system blocks the creation of another index for the same catalog.
   2. If an index is found by the system for the intended catalog but has a status as “Production” then the system allows creating the new index for the related catalog as the process is completed already. 

Notes:

1. The restrictions are only on the basis of a specific catalog
2. The administrator can still initiate processes that lead to index creation for other catalogs 

Manage PIM Index Settings

A new tab has been added as “PIM Index Setting”

Add PIM Index

Clicking on the "Add new" opens up the Add Search Index Settings page from where the administrator can set the PIM Index settings. To configure the new setting an administrator will have to specify:

1. Name of the catalog that will be a type-ahead search field similar to what we currently have on the add search profile page
   
2. Ngram Controller - The administrator will have to specify the searchable fields that can be added through the add new button, all the fields added in this area will depict that Ngram is enabled for the specified fields and the other fields will still be there but with other random tokenizers activated for them
    
3. Ngram Setting - The administrator will then have to specify the Ngram setting with two text boxes within it reading as ‘Min Gram’ and ‘Max  Gram’; both the fields will have text boxes to accept the values, and the admin will only have the option to add the numeric value here between 1 and 99. If the admin enters an input here apart from the numbers as well as if numbers are out of the specified range then it will give an error message just below the box reading as ‘A value between 1 and 99 is allowed’
    
4. Character Filter - An administrator will then have to specify the character filter which again will be a text area type field there are no such validations that can be put for the same, but will work only when proper input is provided here

For example, Let's suppose there is a product with the name T-Shirt, customers may search for this product with the term T-Shirt or with the term T-Shirt. In order to display both the results a character mapping can be defined where - (dash) can be replaced with empty space. 

Some characters cannot be directly defined in search profiles and therefore Unicode is required instead. The characters that cannot be directly defined and their Unicode can be referred to and used from the below table:

Character	Unicode
Space	\\u0020
“	\\u0022
\	\\u005C
,	\\u002C

The # (hash character) is not searchable by default.  If you want to use # in your search add a character filter to map # to a uncommon short string.  E.G. include this #=>XVC

Notes:

1. Empty string to any character mapping will not work but mapping of any character to an empty string ( ) can be possible.
2. The character Filter is case-sensitive.

Once all the above information is inserted, the admin will then have two options; 

1. One to save the index settings 
2. The other is to Publish the same.
   Save will result in just saving the inserted data wherein Publishing the same will lead to index creation for the chosen catalog with the specified index settings

Editing the Index Settings

1. The administrator will also have the option to edit the existing setting against the catalog by clicking on the edit icon on the grid page for that specific catalog
2. Editing will open up a new screen similar to the add new screen with all the prefilled data that was inserted earlier at the time of the creation of the index settings for that specific catalog
3. On this screen, the catalog selection tab will be disabled from this screen no changes can be made to the catalog selection. Still, apart from this field, every element within the page will be editable

Delete PIM index

1. Click on the Delete icon in the action
2. Click Yes on the pop-up 
3. The record is deleted.
4. The index setting for a specific catalog can be deleted by choosing the specific catalog entry from the grid then through the tools or through the action button deleting the same 
5. The Global Index Setting cannot be deleted.

Global Index Setting

1. As seen above, the admin will have the capability to create new index settings for the available catalogs
2. Apart from this, there will be a Global index setting for which the catalog name will be set all by default and will be prefilled with certain searchable fields with Ngram enabled, Min Gram and Max Gram values, and character filter
3. The default values for the Ngram controller will be Product Name and SKU, Min gram value = 1, Max Gram Value = 40, and character filter set to this =>,- =>
4. The admin will have the ability to edit the same but not the catalog name 
5. If there is no index setting defined for a specific catalog and a search profile is created for the same, then in that scenario, the index settings will be captured from the global index settings
6. The global index setting will apply to all the catalogs until an explicit index setting is created for the catalogs
7. The global index settings cannot be deleted
8. When the global index setting is published there will be a message reading as ‘System-defined index settings publish will be in effect once the applicable index has been recreated or after the catalog publish.’

Notes: 

1. The searchable fields that will be available here will only be the ones that are system defined and where the is used in the search is TRUE
2. If there are no index settings defined for a specific catalog then the global index settings will be applicable