Configure search collections and scopes

WebSphere Portal provides two search collections and a search scope. A search collection contains a number of content sources the portal search service indexes. A search scope allows us to partition or organize the search collections. As a result the site visitors can limit their search to specific areas. Defined scopes are visible to visitors from the search dialog.

The search collections that are immediately available are Default Search Collection and JCRCollection1. A schedule for crawling and indexing is defined for each collection. We might want to review the schedule and verify the schedule time is appropriate for the site. For performance, do not run the crawler during peak times.

In addition to the scheduled time, we can also start the crawler manually. If we publish a large set of content, we might want to manually start the crawler to index the new content sooner.

Access the administration portlet.

1. Click...
   Administration > Search Administration | Manage Search | Search Collections

   Review the schedules for the content sources for each collection.

2. Click Default Search Collection in the collection list. You see the content sources included in the search collection. We can also see status information about the collection.

3. Click the clock icon to see when the crawler is scheduled to run. We can enable and disable the schedule from this panel, but we cannot configure it.

Set up a schedule for the search crawler

1. In the breadcrumb, click Default Search Collection.

2. For Portal Content Source, click the pencil icon to open the scheduler.

3. Review each tab on the panel to get familiar with the user interface.

4. Click Schedulers to modify the schedule as needed.

5. If needed, do the same procedure for the WCM Content Source and the JCRCollection1 content source, which is named JCRSource.

Results

Search scopes can be defined at anytime. As the site grows, adding scopes help the visitors target areas of the site to search.

Parent Search Center

Next topic: Add External Search Results to the Search Center