The following are the tasks involved in the onboarding process of Acquia Search powered by SearchStax:

Accessing SearchStax account¶

To start the onboarding process, you must have access to the SearchStax Dashboard. When your subscription is activated, an email with an invitation link is sent to you.

To access the SearchStax Dashboard:

1. Open your inbox and check the email with an invitation link.

   If you do not see the email in your inbox, check your spam folder.

2. Click the invitation link to create your password.

   If the link expires, contact Support to request a new one.

3. After accessing the account, invite others by clicking the Account dropdown in the top right corner and selecting the Access Management tab.

   For more details on adding users with different roles, visit User management.

   If your invitation link expires, visit SearchStudio SearchStax and click the Forget Password? hyperlink to set your user credentials.

Creating a Search app¶

To integrate your Drupal site, copy API endpoints and access tokens from a Search app into the Drupal module, which you must install in the next step.

If you manage multiple Drupal sites, visit Search app to determine the appropriate number of Search apps needed for isolating or sharing between sites. For multi-site or Site Factory use cases, visit Managing Search app for multi-site or Site Factory.

To create a Search app in your organization’s account if one does not exist:

1.  Complete the fields to deploy the Search app based on your preferred region, environment type, and Drupal schema.

   

   Search app creation can take up to 5 minutes.

2. After the App is created, navigate to the App Settings tab in the left-hand panel and select the All APIs sub-tab.

3. Refer to the APIs for Select Endpoint and Update Endpoint:

   

4. Refer to the token value listed for an enabled Read & Write entry:

   

   These tokens are non-expiring. However, you can manage, rotate, and delete them based on your requirements.

Indexing data into SearchStax¶

With your Search app's endpoints and access tokens obtained, you are prepared to install the SearchStax Drupal Module. For information about how to install SearchStax Drupal Module, visit this page.

This module enhances Drupal by enabling it to:

• Index data to Search apps using token authentication instead of a basic username and password.
• Specify that a Drupal View uses the Search app for providing search services.
• Track search events for analytics purposes.

Understanding a Search app in the context of Search API¶

A Search app serves as the equivalent of a Solr core when connecting with Drupal, allowing it to be shared among multiple Drupal sites. This concept is explained in the context of Search API and Search API Solr as follows:

Each Drupal site features its own configuration and functionality as follows:

• A Search API Server represents the Solr connection.
• One or more Search API Index represents the content sets to be indexed.
• All sites must point to the same Search app but use unique index IDs such as a prefix with the site name or UUID. This helps to avoid data collision.
• In Solr, although a single Search app or core is used, data is namespaced by index ID, allowing safe storage of data from multiple Drupal sites if configured properly.

Migrating to an existing site¶

The SearchStax Drupal Module includes an optional sub-module to migrate server and index configurations from an Acquia Search index to a Search app. On completion, index the data and switch your Drupal View to point between Acquia Search and your new Search app to enable migration without downtime. For information about how to run this migration sub-module, visit Migrating to Acquia Search powered by SearchStax.

Making non-Drupal content searchable¶

For information about how to add data to a Search app from external data sources, visit Ingesting data from non-Drupal data sources.

Configuring your first search¶

The purpose of this task is to validate the accuracy of your newly indexed data and available indexed data fields, and add new data fields. These fields can be displayed as results fields to end users or analyzed by the search engine to determine document relevance for the user’s search.

Mapping results fields¶

1. Select the Configuration dropdown in the left-hand navigation.

2. Choose the Basic Configuration sub-dropdown and click the Results Fields tab.

   To assign common Drupal fields for display purposes, visit this page.

   Configuring these fields helps to set up your first search and verify results in the SearchStax dashboard. If you use a Drupal View, changes to displayed fields will not affect the search experience.

Configuring search fields¶

1. In the Basic Configuration sub-dropdown, navigate to the Search Fields tab.

2. Determine which indexed fields must be used in the relevancy algorithm.

   Adjustments can be made later. Although data varies based on content and business needs, it is a best practice to include fields such as a title (tm_X3b_en_title) or body text (tm_X3b_en_body), along with header or description fields.

   This step configures the Search app to provide initial results. Later, refine relevancy by boosting or adding weight to certain fields.

Test your search¶

1. Click the Preview button and run queries to ensure common searches perform as expected.

2. Verify that the data fields returned in the display include what you intend to show to end users.

   

   If some searches do not return the expected results, consider additional fine-tuning for relevancy.

   Faceting can also be tested in the Preview screen if you plan to use search facets and want to visualize them for design purposes. For more information about managing faceting, visit this page.

Building a search page¶

After completion of you first search, you can visualize data returned to users for each search result. Once you finalize the fields for indexing, displaying, and querying, style and position the UI components on the page to meet your design requirements. Find more resources on different implementation options, visit Search experience development.

To share your initial search experience from a data structure perspective with stakeholders, generate a hosted search page.

1. Select the Search UI dropdown in the left-hand navigation.

2. Select the Hosted Search Experience tab.

   

3. Access the URL for your unstyled search experience to view and share it.

   You can also create a new page in Drupal and copy the HTML from the page’s source code to quickly deploy a search experience with pre-embedded API integrations.