Server indexing page

Server indexing

This page lets you trigger the indexing on the whole server or individual projects when it is convenient or appropriate to do so.

Large PageSeeder instances might contain millions of documents and comments, so they might take a long time to re-index. As this operation might be disruptive and affect APIs that rely on it, this page lets administrators choose the scale and timing of the re-index.

When must you re-index?

After a PageSeeder upgrade, some index definitions are updated and the index engine might be using a new version. To take advantage of these updates and ensure that search results are consistent, individual indexes must be kept up to date.

PageSeeder doesn’t automatically re-index, allowing you to control when the groups are re-indexed. Depending on the number of objects in the index a full re-indexing may mean that users can’t use search functions for some time.

What must you re-index?

It’s easiest just to re-index everything, however the groups that require re-indexing are marked as obsolete or old.

Obsolete groups must be re-indexed, as the index format is no longer compatible with PageSeeder and the index for these groups is no longer usable. If you have any obsolete index, select the checkbox and click Start indexing as soon as possible.

Old groups are still compatible, but they are obsolete in future versions of PageSeeder. We also recommend that you select the checkbox and click Start indexing as soon as it is convenient.

If you have a large server, you can index project by project instead.

Index inspector

The index inspector lets you browse the contents of your index by field, so you can see precisely which terms are indexed and how. It is helpful to understand how the search behaves, and in particular, if it fails to return results as expected.

Index listing

The table lists all PageSeeder indexes except for personal groups.

Each row shows:

• The name of the index in the Index column, which might be either the group name for group index, or the internal PageSeeder indexes for URLs or the built-in help.
• The last time the index was updated, either by a change in the group or by manually triggering an index from this page, in the Last updated column.
• The number of indexed items (documents, urls, folders, comments, tasks, and workflows), in the Items column.

Use the icons in the table headers to sort the columns.

If all indexes could not be loaded at once, a Load more button is available in the table footer. Click the Load more button to load more indexes.

Click a row to open the details about the corresponding index.

Index details

When you select an index, PageSeeder indicates how many fields and items the index includes.

The navigation on the left-hand side lists all the fields in the index in alphabetical order. The name displayed is the name of the field as recorded in the index. The number next to each field name is the number of index items in which the field is found.

Click a field to show the details of that field and list the terms for that field.

Field details

The field name as shown in the search interface is shown above the table to the left, and the field name as recorded in the index is shown on the top right of the table.

For group indexes, the index properties of the field are displayed in the table at the top. These are based on the index catalog that is specific to each project.

Stored

Yes Indicates that the terms as stored for each item and can be returned in the search results.

No indicates that this field can only be used for queries.

Sorted

Yes Indicates that the terms can be used to sort the results in the index.

No indicates that the terms cannot be sorted.

Tokenized

Yes Indicates that the text is tokenized based on white spaces and punctuation so that the terms for this field are generated from each word or consecutive characters found. Tokenization is required for full-text search.

No indicates that values are processed verbatim and queries must match the text exactly.

Type

Text – Text content.

Date – Dates usually recorded as UTC, allowing date range searches.

Numeric – Numbers are sorted differently and allow range searches.

Term filters

To help you find terms or check for anomalies, the following filters are provided: 

Term usage – Select an option to filter the terms based on how many items they are found in.

Term format – Select an option to filter terms that match a particular format:

Numbers – values matching only digits (0–9) and possibly a dot (.).

Letters (Latin) – values matching only letters from the Latin alphabet.

Letters (Unicode) – values matching only letters outside the Latin alphabet.

Empty – empty values (usually appear in fields which aren’t tokenized).

Other – any other format.

Term prefix – Enter a value to only show terms that start with that value

Click the button to reset the filters.

Terms table

The table lists all terms in the index for the selected field.

Each row shows:

• The raw value of the Term:
• If the term value is a date, it also includes the formatted date in your local timezone.
• If the value is empty, it includes “(empty)”.
• The number of Items that this term can be found in.
• A link to the group search page to view the results matching that term.

Use the table headers to sort the columns.