Boosting documents from the Search UI

Owned by Julien Massiera
Last updated: 14 Mar, 2024 by Cedric
6 min read

Valid from 5.3

1. Activate the graphical tool

To be able to use the graphical tool to boost documents from the UI, you will need first to activate it through the admin UI, in the "Search Engine Configuration / Document Boost" tab:

image-20240314-153538.png

The graphical tool can only be enabled if the Search Aggregator is NOT ENABLED !

The reason is that in search aggregation mode, the search results are composed of documents that may be remote documents, as the doc boost is a Solr feature that is linked to the local cluster, trying to boost a remote document may result in strange behavior or even errors in the search results.

When the Search Aggregator is enabled, the button to enable the graphical tool is therefore disabled and a warning message is displayed:

image-20240314-153734.png

2. How to use it 

To see the feature described below in the search view of Datafari, you must be connected to Datafari with a user having either the "SearchExpert" or the "SearchAdministrator" role. Refer to the Types of users for more details.

Once you are connected as a "SearchExpert" or a "SearchAdministrator", if you perform a search in Datafari with the legacy UI mode, you will notice new icons at the right of each result:

These icons are used to elevate, drop or remove an elevate boost of the associated document for the current query:

: is used to elevate the associated document. It will add a boost to the document for the current query, that will make it appear in the firsts results.
When you click on this button, Datafari modifies the elevate.xml file located in [Datafari_Home]/solr/solr_home/FileShare/conf to either add the document to the list of the elevated docs for this query if it is not already in, or to raise it one step up. 
If you elevate several documents with this method, notice that each added document will be inserted at the end of the list.

: Is used to drop an elevated document one step down in the list.

: Is used to remove an elevated document from the list.

: Indicates that the corresponding document is already in the list of elevated documents for the current query. The displayed number indicates the position of the document in the list, it is refreshed in real time when the user adds, raises, downgrades or removes documents from the elevated docs.

The elevated documents will appear as the first documents of the search, in the order they are stored in the list. You can change the order through the search UI thanks to the  and  buttons, or through the documents boosting admin UI. 

The elevations will be taking place immediatly (the reload of the solr core may cause some lagging for a few seconds or minutes depending on the solr index size).

NB : The feature has been re-enabled since Datafari 4.2.

1. Activate the graphical tool

To be able to use the graphical tool to boost documents from the UI, you will need first to activate it through the admin UI, in the "Search Engine Configuration / Document Boost" tab:

2. How to use it 

Once you are connected as a "SearchExpert" or a "SearchAdministrator", if you perform a search in Datafari, you will notice new icons at the right of each result:

These icons are used to elevate, drop or remove an elevate boost of the associated document for the current query:

: is used to elevate the associated document. It will add a boost to the document for the current query, that will make it appear in the firsts results.
When you click on this button, Datafari modifies the elevate.xml file located in [Datafari_Home]/solr/solr_home/FileShare/conf to either add the document to the list of the elevated docs for this query if it is not already in, or to raise it one step up. 
If you elevate several documents with this method, notice that each added document will be inserted at the end of the list.

: Is used to drop an elevated document one step down in the list.

: Is used to remove an elevated document from the list.

: Indicates that the corresponding document is already in the list of elevated documents for the current query. The displayed number indicates the position of the document in the list, it is refreshed in real time when the user adds, raises, downgrades or removes documents from the elevated docs.

The elevated documents will appear as the first documents of the search, in the order they are stored in the list. You can change the order through the search UI thanks to the  and  buttons, or through the documents boosting admin UI. 

To avoid ressource consumption and interruption of service, every doc elevation that a user performs thank to this search UI, will only be applied to the elevate.xml file. But the file will not be automatically uploaded to the zookeeper nodes and the Solr core will not be realoaded. It means that the elevations will not take effect until the configuration is manually uploaded to the zookeeper nodes and the Solr core is reloaded !
To do this, two ways are available:

  • Use the documents boosting admin UI to select the query on which documents have been boosted and click on the confirm button. It will automatically upload the elevate.xml file to the Zookeeper nodes and reloaded the Solr core. But be careful ! The process will disable any searches on Datafari, from a few seconds for an index with less than 100k documents up to several minutes for an index of more than 1M docs. The more documents the index contains, the more time the process will last.

  • Manually upload the Solr configuration to the Zookeeper nodes and reload the Solr core thanks to the Zookeeper admin UI. As for the first option, be careful !The process will disable any searches on Datafari, from a few seconds for an index with less than 100k documents up to several minutes for an index of more than 1M docs. The more documents the index contains, the more time the process will last.