Studio > Search Experience > Overview

SearchStax Studio has an easy-to-use interface for updating, enhancing and managing the site search experience for your website.

• Results Configuration – lets you manage the fields that will be displayed in your search results, select your search facets and define the options for sorting search results
• Basic Relevance – provides an interface to manage stopwords, synonyms and spellcheck for your search experience
• Relevance Modeling – lets you define a Relevance Model to set up the behavior of your search experience using the following features:
  • Search Fields – identify the fields that will be used to determine the search results
  • Global Filters – create Include and Exclude filters to partition your index and focus your search results on relevant results
  • Ranking – use the sliders to determine which fields or calculated fields are emphasized in the search results
  • Rules – modify the search results with Rules to finetune the search results
  • Promotions – create internal or external promotions to ‘promote’ specific content to the top of the search results and shape a better search experience for your users

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Studio > Search > Results Configuration

The Results Configuration screen helps you arrange the information that will appear on your search screen.

• Results and Display Tab – Choose the fields that will be displayed in the search results, and how the values will be assigned to pre-defined locations in each result card.
• Facets Tab – Choose the fields that will be consolidated into facet lists, and how the lists will be ordered on the search page.
• Sorting Tab – Define the options for sorting the search results.

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Studio > Search Experience > Results Configuration > Results and Display Tab

The Results and Display of the SearchStax Studio’s Results Configuration screen lets you configure two important features:

• It lets you choose which data fields Solr will return in the search results. (To choose which fields will be used to calculate the relevancy score, see the Relevance Modeling > Model Details > Search Fields Tab.)
• It also lets you assign returned field values to specific display areas on the search-results “card.” (To change the layout of the card itself, see the Theme Editor.)

Select a field from the Return Field droplist to add it to the display of search results. The Label is a human-friendly label to display beside the field value. Click the (X) button on the right to remove it. Note that you can also select a field and use the (+) and (-) buttons to position it in the results list.  

You may also map the field value into a pre-formatted position on the search-results card. For instance, you could assign the document type to the “Ribbon” field to display it in a label at the top of the card. Fields that are mapped to “Url” will be the destination of a results card once clicked. For fields that are set to use “No mapping”, these will be displayed in the results card after all the mapped fields in the order that it is set here.

Mapping a field that contains image URLs to “Thumbnail” will render the images within your results card.

To display the URL as a field value in your results card in addition to making it a destination, use the field once more and set it as a “No mapping”.

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in SearchStax Studio.

Scroll down a little to see the spin button that lets us adjust the number of result items to display in each page of the output. 

Finally, there is a Hit Highlighting checkbox. If checked, matching keywords will be <em>highlighted</em> whenever they appear in a search result. 

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Studio > Search Experience > Results Configuration > Faceting Tab

“Facets” are the lists of field values that appear on your application’s search page. The lists are populated from the set of matching items, and are used to “drill down” and better “focus” the search. 

The Faceting Tab of the Studio’s Results Configuration screen lets you choose which fields to use for facet generation. For each facet list, you can assign a user-friendly display label. Facet lists should be short, so you can limit the number of displayed values.

Choose an index field from the Facet Field droplist. Give it a human-readable Label. Set the Max Facet Values to show in the list. Decide whether to sort the values by Count or Alphabetical order. The (+) button on the right adds the new facet to the list of facets below. 

Select a facet and click the Move Up and Move Down buttons to control how the facets will be ordered on the search page. 

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in SearchStax Studio.

Save Draft stores your changes so you won’t lose them when you log out. The Publish button updates the search configuration to make the changes active. 

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Studio > Search Experience > Results Configuration > Sorting Tab

Search environments often let us sort the search results in multiple ways (such as by relevance, ratings, price, or recency).

The SearchStax Studio lets us take control of this feature and define the sort options offered by the current Relevance Model.

Navigate to the Studio > Search Experience > Results Configuration > Sorting Tab. This is one of the three tabs of the Results Configuration screen.

The checkbox on the left enables the sorting control. The Sort Field control lets you choose a field to sort the results by. The Sort Order control offers ascending or descending sort order. The Label is the text that the user will see in the sorting droplist. Use the (+) button to add the field to the sorting list. The Preview field on the right shows what the sorting control will look like on the search page.

The list at the bottom of the screen reflects the sort options. Select an option and click the Move Up and Move Down buttons to control how the options will be ordered on the sorting control. 

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in SearchStax Studio.

Save Draft stores your changes so you won’t lose them when you log out. The Publish button updates the search configuration to make the changes active. 

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Studio > Search > Basic Relevance

SearchStax Studio‘s Basic Relevance lets the Business User influence incoming search queries by applying stopwords, synonyms, and spelling correction.

• Stopwords Tab
• Synonyms Tab
• Spell Check Tab

There is one Relevance Configuration for each App. It applies to all Relevance Models equally. 

Publishing a Relevance Configuration stops and restarts your Solr deployment. It is best to batch up the changes and then PUBLISH them in one event. SAVE DRAFT lets you accumulate changes from one session to another before publishing. 

Note that logging out without saving discards the current batch of changes. 

A blue spot appears on tabs that have unsaved changes. 

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Studio > Relevance > Basic Relevance > Stopwords Tab

Stopwords are terms that degrade the keyword search, such as “and,” “the,” “of,” and so forth. There is no point in searching the index for them because they appear in almost every document.

The Stopwords Tab of the SearchStax Studio’s Basic Relevance screen lets you build a list one word at a time, or upload a list. Any word on the list will be automatically removed from subsequent queries. It accepts .TXT and .CSV files. The words may be delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (including newlines). 

Type a stopword into the Word field and click the (+) button. This adds the word to the list. 

You can highlight a word in the list and click the trash button to delete it. The Upload button lets you select a local file and upload it to the Studio. When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. Duplicate entries are ignored.

The cloud icon on the right is the Download List feature.

A stopword file may be up to 10MB in size. Note that there is a button at the bottom of the screen that lets you discard your changes and revert to the previously-saved list. 

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Studio > Relevance > Basic Relevance > Synonyms Tab

The Synonyms Tab of SearchStax Studio’s Basic Relevance screen lets the Business User edit the list of keyword synonyms.

You can upload a synonym list using the Browse button. When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. Duplicate entries are ignored.  

Some synonyms are one-way (this word implies that synonym), while others are symmetrical (each word implies the other). For example, when the user types in “William,” also search for “Bill” at the same time. (But when they type in “Bill”, don’t search for “William”. It might be a phone bill.)

When the user types in either “lose” or “loose”, search for both. 

When they type “Tom”, search for multiple alternatives.

The (+) button on the right adds the synonym to the list of synonyms. 

Highlight an item in the list and click the trash can button to delete it. Use the cloud icon on the right to download the list of synonyms. 

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Studio > Relevance > Basic Relevance > Spell Check Tab

The Spell Check Tab of the SearchStax Studio’s Basic Relevance screen lets us take a search keyword and apply a closeness algorithm to locate similar-looking words in the index (Data Driven) or in a custom list (Dictionary Driven). 

When a query returns zero results, the Spell Check feature suggests an alternate spelling. The following image shows a spelling correction from the Search Preview screen.

Spellcheck may be Data Driven, or it may be Dictionary Driven, or both Data+Dictionary Driven. If data-driven, the Studio consults the contents of a field pre-selected by the user. When a query returns zero results, the Studio attempts to find a word in that field that resembles the user’s current input. 

If dictionary-driven, the Studio uses a spellcheck dictionary that you provide. 

You can build the dictionary one word at a time, or you can upload a .CSV or .TXT file. Individual words should be separated by a comma or by whitespace (such as newline). When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. Duplicate entries are ignored.  

Spelling checking of queries is applied automatically by the Search Preview screen.

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Studio > Search > Relevance Modeling

Relevance Models are named configurations that determine which text fields will be included in keyword matching, and how much a match in each field will affect the relevance score of the content object. A Relevance Model can also place specific items at the top of the search results. 

The Relevance Modeling screen displays a list of current relevance models. You may open one to modify it, or click the Create a Model button. 

If you create a new model, you’ll need to enter a unique model name.

Either selecting a model or creating one will take you to the Model Details screen.

The default model is the one that the Search Preview page opens to. Only one model can be the default.  

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