Configuration - General Options - Search Settings

When using the Accord LMS, hovering over information icons displays helpful tips.

Introduction

This article will briefly describe how to access Configuration - Search Settings and lists the available settings and features.

Purpose behind the Search Settings

Search Settings will allow for certain configurations for the Search Index.

To Access Search Settings

• After logging-in with LMS Admin credentials, click on the Catalog tab.
• Ensure the proper Current Team is selected. Menu located lower-left of screen.
• Expand the Advanced tab and select Configuration.
• Click on GENERAL OPTIONS.

The General Options panel will display.

• Scroll down and click heading for Search to display further features and settings.

Search Settings

The Search section will allow for a certain configuration for your Accord LMS Search Index.

The Search Index includes all Learning Element metadata such as: name, summary, details, tags, LEID and custom Education Activity names. It will also include words and phrases contained within the LE source, including SCORM (HTML), File (including HTML, PDF and all Office documents), Pages, PDF Templates or URLs (both onsite and offsite).

The updated Search feature will be implemented for all Accord LMS search results and affect both Learner and Admin UI.

The Search Index is a common data store utilized by all LMS Admin Modules across the DNN codebase. 

Search results are limited to authorized Learning Elements, for both Learners and LMS Admins.*

*All Search settings are global, except the Search Index Portal Alias; which is unique to each LMS Administration Module.

• Minimum Word Length: Enter the minimum word size to be included in the index. Default value is 3.

• Maximum Word Length: Enter the maximum word size to be included in the index. Default value is 255.

• Maximum Crawl Depth (onsite): Enter the Maximum Crawl Depth to Index 'on-site' HTML pages. This setting only applies to htm(l) files referenced via the File or URL Element Source type. A value of '0' will only index the root level HTML page without any children.

• Maximum Crawl Depth (offsite): Enter the Maximum Crawl Depth to Index 'offsite' HTML pages. This setting only applies to htm(l) files referenced via the File or URL Element Source type. A value of '0' will only index the root level HTML page without any children. Note; off-site indexing has been limited to '0' - no off-site child HTML content will be indexed.

• Files Types to Index: A comma separated list of file extensions such as; doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, txt, rtf, htm, html for which direct or iFilter parsing and indexing should be attempted.

• Textual extensions like html and txt are parsed directly. Docx files are natively parsed, without needing any external component. Binary files (pdf, doc, dot, rtf, csv, xlt, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, etc.) are parsed via IFilters, therefore the proper IFilter parser needs to be installed on the webserver.

• IFilter Prerequisites: IFilters require the webserver to be in full trust mode (or the IFilter component must be installed in the Global Assembly Cache).

• Windows search service must be running.

• To index PDF files the system must have Adobe IFilter installed; To Install IFilter.

• To index MS Office files, the system must have MS office filter packs installed (not required for doc,docx files); Microsoft Download Center.

• XML, CHM, PostScript and many other file types can also be indexed using commercially available IFilters; IFilter Shop.

For more information on IFilters please see; IFilter - Wikipedia.

• File Type Portal Alias: Select any valid portal alias for the current portal. The dropdown will only present portal aliases associated with the current PortalID. The selected Portal Alias will be used by the indexing engine to access Event Source File types via URL for indexing.

• Search Index Path: The location where the Search Index is stored. By default it is /App_data/LMSSearch. This location can be manually changed by creating a Host Setting LmsSearch_IndexFolder in the database. It is advised to stop the App Pool prior to making this change. Whenever customizing, the specified path must be absolute, not relative. Content of an old folder must be manually copied to a new location or a manual Rebuild Index must be triggered.

• Index Title: The search will index by Learning Element Title. 

• Index Tags: The search will index by Learning Element Tags.

• Index Description: The search will index by Learning Element description.

• Index Body: The search will index by Learning Element content in your html and url’s.

• Exact Match: When checked, only exact matching items will return. If unchecked, will return close-match items.

• Get More Information: When clicked, adds to the page details about the index.

• Compact Index: Enables an internal flag telling the search indexer to optimize the index on its next run. The optimization will rearrange internal index files and purge some (but maybe not all) deleted items. Compacting the index reclaims space from deleted items in the index Store. It is recommended only when there are many Deleted Documents in index Store. Compacting may require twice the size of current index Store during processing. If only a few items delete, nothing will change.

• Re-indexing: Enables an internal flag telling the search indexer to start from scratch. All current index items will be deleted and each Learning Element in the Catalog will be indexed. The normal operation of the search indexed is to include only any Learning Elements created or updated after the prior-run. Re-Indexing deletes existing content from the index Store and re-indexes everything.

Note: Both Compacting and Re-indexing are conducted through the Learning Elements Search Crawler scheduled job.

Search Criteria

One or more words can be specified if intended to obtain search results containing Learning Elements with either the first term or any of the other terms.

In the example below, the term 'communicating' was entered into the search field, resulting in 2 SCORM presentations displayed inside the LEARNING CONTENT field.

Additional Search Tips: If a complete word is not known, or more than one Learning Element containing certain specific information needs to be located, an asterisk (*) wild card can be used to match words starting with, or ending with, a specific character. Wild card and non-wild card terms can be mixed within the same search.

Phrases can also be specified using double-quoted text. Quoted and non-quoted terms can be used within the same search.

In Conclusion

The Search Settings features will allow for certain configurations related to the Search index.

Related Articles

For help documentation relating to the Enrollment Log, please see the following article at; Configuration - General Options - Enrollment Log.

Direct Links to closely related articles are listed at upper right.