|
|
|
Dovetail Seeker contains two major components: indexing and searching.
Before you can search for your data, you need to index it.
An index is a collection of searchable data organized into documents each having many fields of information. Every document in the index is a potential search result with each document's field potentially containing one or more searchable terms. Documents created by Dovetail Seeker are of the following types:
You may use either the Seeker Indexing Windows Service or Seeker Console to create and update your search index with data from your Dovetail CRM system or from files your organization commonly uses.
For example, you will likely wish to search for cases in Dovetail CRM. For each case in the system, the indexing application will add a dovetail document to the index containing details about that case. The document will contain at least an id, title, and case summary. Once a document for that case is present in the index it can be searched – the case id, title, and summary are available as search results.
Files can also be indexed. When the indexer encounters a CRM attachment or is told to index a directory a file document is added to the index with the text extracted from the file used as the summary searchable contents.
Testing
Seeker Console also provides a basic search interface to facilitate testing index contents.
Once your CRM and file content is indexed you need to expose your search index to the world. The Seeker web service is the workhorse here providing a search API for search clients written in whatever language you like to have access to your indexed content.
Seeker is a web application that allows you to search an index created with one of the indexing applications. Seeker runs as a stand alone web application that provides search capabilities to Dovetail CRM applications.
Search queries are submitted to the Seeker web service using a standard HTTP GET request. Search results are returned as JSON, a standard data format that can be consumed by cross platform applications.
Because Dovetail Seeker is exposed as its own web application, the search operations can be used for both Dovetail Agent and Dovetail SelfService.
Dovetail Seeker gives you access to your indexed CRM attachments and file system documents. It is recommended that you use the included file proxy to securely expose your file documents to public facing search clients.
Search results returned for files contain a download URL which can be given to the search user allowing them to download indexed files. The Seeker web service is responsible for fulfilling these download requests but usually is hosted behind a firewall.
To give public search users the ability to download indexed files we've included a proxying web application which the Seeker web service can be configured to use.
Our Dovetail Agent and Dovetail SelfService web applications are able to use Dovetail Seeker's search capabilities. Each application has its own search interface allowing users to search Dovetail CRM.
Here is an example of how Dovetail Agent executes a user's search:
GET http://<server>/search/search?query=Error {"SearchResults":[{"Score":1,"Domain":"case","Id":"7","Title":"Case with error in the title","Summary":"Case History"}], "TotalNumberOfResults":1, "StartResultIndex":0, "SearchQuery":"Error"}Dovetail Agent converts the JSON to a JavaScript object used to display search results to the user.
See Also |
Next |