Suggest search settings

Summary

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

• The search strategies allow manipulation of the queries or when suggestions should be returned.

• The field settings allow to influence which additional fields can be filtered and sorted.

Search settings is represented as an individual page tab for Suggest page:

Suggest Search strategies

Search strategies:

• can be used to manipulate the search queries.

• trigger Suggest queries linked to conditions.

• allows article numbers to be known to the Suggest.

• can easily break the Suggest, so extensive testing should be done and if in doubt an error tolerant strategy with devaluation should be added.

Search strategies allow a manipulation of the suggest queries. The following strategy types available:

• Starts with - Adds a * after each word entered. Example: bik tool → bik* tool*

• Ends with - Inserts a * before each word. Example:ike ols → *ike *ols

• Starts or ends with wordwise - Combines the two strategies above including all permutations to one. Example: bike tools → *bike *tools || *bike tools* || bike* *tools || bike* tools*

• Exact - Adds a + in front of each word. Example: bike tools → +bike +tools

• Phrase - Performs a search with the term in quotation marks. Example: bike tools → "bike tools"

• Error tolerant - The normal error tolerant search is used. The default case if no strategy is specified for a channel.

• Article Number - Instead of a normal search, a pattern is searched for in the specified search field. If a result is found using this pattern, the other strategies are not executed.

On any strategy its possible to specify the following optional conditions, if one of them is not satisfied the strategy will be ignored:

• Search Field - specifies that a certain search query of a strategy should only be executed inside a specific field. Depends on the strategy type. Article Number strategies require the field, for all others it is optional and may only be set to the fields "Name" or "Additional Search Content & Name".

• Min word count - the query must have equal or more words than the specified value.

• Max word count - the query must have equal or less words than the specified value.

• Min query length - the query length must be greater or equal than the specified value.

• Max query length - the query length must be less or equal than the specified value.

• Single word search - the query is split upon whitespaces, hyphens, semicolons and colons, and the resulting words are searched individually

• Reduction - The relevance of the results of the search strategies can be devaluated. If results are found using two search strategies, they will be sorted by relevance.

Suggest query is executed without strategies. Error tolerance takes effect, since Vaude is also found, although it is not searched for.

“Start with” search strategy is added:

Important

Once a search strategy is configured for a channel, the error-tolerant search does not work.
So, in case of doubt, it is recommended to add the fault-tolerant search as a fallback with a devaluation.

Example:

It is also possible to enable the Suggest to take effect only with longer queries. As an example, with the following strategy, a Suggest result will be obtained only with a query of minimum four characters:

This requires a suitable pattern that matches the article numbers and a specification in which field the pattern to be searched is available.

Suggest Fields settings

Usually only the standard fields like Name or Category are sortable and filterable in Suggest. This can be configured via the field settings.
The settings are divided into groups and the group names are not self-namable, but represent the Suggest Types defined on the Suggest general settings. In each group, each field may be configured only once.

The field settings can be used to:

• override default Suggest field settings for each type

• make attribute fields sortable and filterable

• transfer the filter and sort specifications from the requests to the suggest parameters

• overwrite the sorting parameters

The following settings can be made for a field within a suggestion type:

• Filterable - The field becomes filterable for this suggest type.

• Append filter to param - Adds filters for the field to the Suggest parameters.

• Sortable - The field becomes sortable for this suggest type.

• Append sort to param - Adds the sort value sent with the suggest request to the parameter list. If nothing was sent and "Override sort on param" is not active, it will be written to the params in descending order

• Override sort on param - Always overrides the sort value of the suggest query. Also overrides "Append sort to param" (this is possible to combine, but we wouldn't recommend it, since there is no significant benefit to be seen from it)

The Suggest search logic mode "Search with block response" has the advantage of processing your Suggest queries faster, because it makes the Suggest databases smaller.
This advantage has its necessity for particularly large data sets. With smaller data sets, this may result in less precise suggestions.

To allow set up of the fields, necessary settings (fields added) in the Suggest Import tab have to be made:

After adding fields in Suggest Import, they will be available in the Fields grid

Behavior can be tested with the help of the Swagger UI. As an example, set the filter "Price" so that only products with a price between 0 - 10 should be displayed. The term searched for in the example would be "Ring".

In the response products between 0 - 10 will be returned:

If filter is removed products without a price limit will be shown

Attention

Suggest search logic mode "Search with block response" cannot be used if Customer Specific Info module is used. See CSI