Summary

The settings on this page allow to configure two different aspects of the Suggest module:

managing suggestion types and display
managing Suggest logic

General settings is represented as an individual page tab for Suggest page.

Suggest types and display

Suggest types and display section allows to manage different types of suggestions and set up how suggestions are displayed:

Create product suggestions from. Product suggestions can either be created using the Suggest Database or the Product Database.

Suggestions from the Suggest Database are usually quicker to generate, however, the suggested products may differ strongly from the search result. Product suggestions from the Product Database are closer to the actual search result for the same search term. The modules Customer Specific Info and Geo require the Product Database to work. For most use cases, it is recommended to use the Product Database.

Maximum number of suggestions - defines the maximum number of results the Suggest can output.

Available Suggestion types and it’s attributes are shown in the grid:

Name - The name of the suggest type.

Max. number of suggestions - maximum number of suggestions to be displayed for this type in Suggest. To hide a type, set the number to 0.

Max. number of records in database - maximum number of suggestions the database can hold for each type

Search params type - allows to select the type of the search parameter among product, filter, category, query and query with filter.

Display preview images - allows to display the preview image

Calculate exact number of results - allows to enable the exact calculation of the number of search results. Enabling can increase the time needed for the search import significantly.

Ignore missing images - Enabling this property can decrease the time needed for the search import significantly, if many images are missing.

Remove no match suggestions - allows not to show suggestions leading to empty results page

Fallback Image URL - URL to an image that is to be used if no preview image is available for the suggested image.

The following actions available in the grid:

Add new type
Search for specific suggestion type
Show all suggestion types that are deleted in current transaction
Edit suggestion type properties directly in the grid
Delete single or multiple selected suggestion types
Clone single or multiple selected suggestion types to another channel.

Edit configuration mode should be entered to add, edit, clone or delete entries.

Any new or changed entry will be marked it as locked and require saving the transaction.

Warning
Both the activation of the determination of exact hit numbers and the preview images is very computationally intensive during the suggest import process. That's why a suggest import with one of these features enabled should not be started at times when many users search for products in the shop!

Suggest logic

Suggest logic section allows to manage some additional behavior for Suggest.

The options Use Thesaurus , Use stop words and Use Preprocessor ensure that the settings made for the normal search logic are also used for the suggestion search.
The Maximum database size - indicates the maximum number of entries that can be in the suggest database.
This limit is in place for performance reasons. The larger the database, the longer the search can take. Since the number and content of the fields affect the database size, only fields that are actually needed should be imported.
Deduplication mode : allows to select if suggestion with the same name or name ant type should be removed. This is useful, for example, to prevent all variants of the same article in different colors from being listed when searching for the term "trousers"

Suggest and Geo

For Geo and Suggest to work together, the following settings must be made:

The value for “create product suggestions from” must be set to "Product Database".
The suggest type productNamemust be configured.
To create a geo field a new source field should be added on the Suggest Import page

In this example, Department Stock field added with the local stock levels to the productName suggestion type. Selecting the field as Additional Return Data display the local stock levels in the suggestion result.

Suggest follows the same rules as Geo, ie it follows e.g. market selection and distance rules.

Suggest and Ranking rules

Ranking rules can also be applied to suggestions, using the Scope property of a rule:

To use a ranking rule for a suggest type , the type must be linked to all fields that are set for the rule under 'Triggers and Effects'.

Generic Integration topics