Portlets for working with Search

Get an overview of the portal search portlets.

The portal search portlets are briefly described in the following sections:

• Overview of Portal Search portlets
• Search administration portlet Manage Search
• Search Center portlet for search by users

For more details about enhancements to the search portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal v8.0, refer to Portal Search.

Overview of Portal Search portlets

The following portlets are all installed and deployed as part of the default portal installation:

• For use by administrators: Manage Search
• For users: Search Center

To use the other search-related portlets in the portal, you have to install them and configure them according to your requirements. Here is an overview of the Portal Search administration and user portlets:

Administration portlet	Installation status
Manage Search	Installed and deployed

User portlets	Installation status
Search Center	Installed and deployed
Suggested Links	Installed and deployed
External Search Results	Installed and deployed

We can install additional copies of the Suggested Links and External Search Results portlets and apply special configurations. For details refer to the topics about adding and configuring these portlets and about customizing the Search Center.

Portal Search portlets are not compatible with WSRP

The Portal Search portlets cannot be provided as WSRP services, as some additional and more advanced WebSphere Portal concepts and features are not yet reflected by the current WSRP standard, including the Portal Search portlets Manage Search and the Search Center.

Search administration portlet Manage Search

Manage Search is the Portal Search administration portlet. It has three main sections:

• Search Services: Manage search services.
• Search Collections: Manage search collections and their content sources.
• Search Scopes: Manage search scopes and custom links to web search locations.

We can use the Manage Search portlet to perform the following administrative tasks:

1. Manage search services. We can use the search services provided with portal, or we can add one or more search services to Portal Search.

   For example, this is required in scenarios where you set up remote search or the portal is set up in a cluster.

2. Manage search collections. We can define one or more search collections for a search service.

3. Manage the content sources of search collections. We can combine content sources of different types in one search collection.

4. Perform administrative tasks required as preparatory steps for the search feature, such as indexing.

5. Manage search scopes. We can define search scopes to limit search results to specific content locations and specific document types. This enables users to target their searches better.

6. Manage custom links. We can add custom links with web link shortcuts to search locations. This enables users to do direct searches to popular web search engines, such as Google or Yahoo!

7. Search and browse a search collection. Manage Search provides a user interface with administrative tasks for search collections.

   For example, we can edit documents, or we can select documents that you do not want to make available to users for search and delete them.

For detailed information about how to use the Manage Search portlet, refer to the portlet help. Depending on the requirements, we might have to perform other administrative tasks for Portal Search.

For example, we can prepare security for Portal Search, or configure remote search or search in a portal cluster. For more information about the Manage Search portlet and other administrative tasks related to search, refer to the other topics in the Portal Search section.

Search Center portlet for search by users

The Search Center portlet provides a central starting point to all searchable content sources made available to the Portal. Users can use the Search Center to search documents and content. The default search scope is All Sources. This searches through all search collections available to the user by the access permission rights. We can allow more focused searches by providing additional search scopes. Refer to Search scopes for more information.

The Search Center portlet is installed as part of the default portal installation. Note that it is deployed and placed on a hidden portal page. The portal takes users to the Search Center when they enter a search using the portal Search Box.

Start with v8 of WebSphere Portal the Search and Browse portlet provided with earlier portal versions is no longer available. The Search Center has been enhanced with advanced search options previously available in the Search and Browse portlet. Categorization and taxonomy are no longer available.

By default both the Search Center portlet and the Search box are available only to authenticated userso that is for users who have logged on with a user ID and password. Anonymous userso that is users who access the portal without logging in, cannot use the Search Center or the search box. For more information about how to use the search portlets on anonymous pages refer to Enable anonymous users to search public pages of the portal.

For more details about the Search Center portlet, refer to the following information:

• For more information about how to work with the Search Center, refer to the portlet help.

• For hints about using the Search Center for remote search on web sites with different languages, refer to Tips for using Portal Search.

Parent: Portal Search
Related:
Administer Portal Search
Manage search scopes and custom links
Enable anonymous users to search public pages of the portal
Customize the Search Center
Configure the Suggested Links view
Configure the External Search Results portlet
Related reference:
Tips for using Portal Search