Export and import search collections

 

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The following are possible use cases for exporting and importing search collections:

  • You have verified the search collections on a test portal, and you want to move these collections to the production portal.

  • You have verified the search collections locally on a portal, and you want to move these collections to a configuration with remote search.

  • You have verified the portal search configuration and search collections on a single portal, and you want to move these collections to a portal cluster environment.

  • You are staging the portal to production by using the ReleaseBuilder.

To export and import the search collections, use the Import or Export Collection option of the Manage Search portlet. We can use that option for both exporting and importing.

  1. On the source portal export the search collections. This exports the configuration data and all document URLs of the search collections.

    Before you export a collection, verify the portal application process has write access to the target directory location. Otherwise you might get an error message, such as File not found.

  2. Document all of the following data:

    • The target file names and directory locations to which you export the collections.

    • The following configuration data of the collections:

      • The location, name, description, and language for each of the collections

      • The setting for the option Remove common words from queries for each collection.

  3. Create the search collections on the target portal. This task creates the empty shell for the search collection. Fill in the following data entry fields and select the following options according to the data that you documented:

    Location of Collection: Fill this in with the new collection location.
    Name of Collection: Fill this in with the collection name. The name can match the old setting, but does not have to match it.
    Description of Collection: Fill this in with the collection description. The description can match the old setting, but does not have to match it.
    Specify Collection Language: Select this to match the old setting.
    Select Categorizer: You do not need to select this option. the value will be overwritten by the import.
    Select Summarizer: You do not need to select this option. the value will be overwritten by the import.
    Remove common words from queries (e. g. in, of, on, etc.): Check or uncheck this to match the old setting.

    You do not have to add content sources or documents; that will be completed by the import task.

  4. Import the data of the search collections into the target portal. For the import source information use the documented file names and directory locations to which you exported the collections before the portal upgrade.

Additionally to exporting and importing the search collections, you have to configure Portal Search on the target portal. This depends on the requirements of the target portal environment and configuration.

For details about how to do this refer to the appropriate topics of the Portal Search documentation, such as Planning and preparing for Portal Search and Administering Portal Search.

Before you export a collection, verify the portal application process has write access to the target directory location. Otherwise you might get an error message, such as File not found.

Import collection data only into an empty collection. Do not import collection data into a target collection that has content sources or documents already.

When you import search collection data into a collection, most of the collection configuration data are also imported. For example, this includes the content sources, schedulers, filters, and language settings. If you configured such settings when creating the new collection, they are overwritten by the imported settings.

To migrate from one portal version to a higher version, delete the search collections between the export and the re-import. Follow the steps described under Migrating the search collections between portal versions.

When you import a portal site collection from a V5.1 portal to a V6 portal, the collection configuration data are imported, but not the documents. Therefore, to enable users to search the portal site collection on the target portal, we can either import the portal site collection and then start a crawl, or create the portal site collection new. This restriction does not apply if you export and import the portal site search collection between V6 portals.

When you import a collection, a background process fetches, crawls, and indexes all documents which are listed by URL in the previously exported file. Therefore be aware of the Memory required for crawls and the Time required for crawls and imports and availability of documents.

 

Parent topic:

Set up search collections