Use Higher Logic Vanilla as a Content Source

Higher Logic Vanilla (formerly Vanilla Forums) is a popular cloud-based online community platform. If your online community is hosted on Higher Logic Vanilla, SearchUnify provides a connector for using it as a content source.

Permissions

  • While adding Higher Logic Vanilla in SearchUnify, make sure you have admin privileges in Higher Logic. Only admins can generate a Personal Access Token, which is required for authentication in SearchUnify.

  • Role-based permissions are respected in Higher Logic Vanilla. It means that users can see the content that has been assigned to their roles. For the Groups object, content searchability works on Public, Private, and Secret-based permissions.

  • Permissions on indexed data are updated every 15 minutes.

Establish a Connection

  1. Navigate to Content Sources and click Add New Content Sources.

  1. Find Higher Logic Vanilla and click Add.

  2. Enter the following details for authentication:

    Name. Give your content source a name.

    Client URL. Enter the URL of your community instance.

    Language. Select the community language.

    Username. Enter either your email address or your community username.

    Personal Access Token. Enter the personal access token of your Higher Logic Vanilla community.

    Refer to the following doc for instructions on how to generate a personal access token: Generate an Access Token in Higher Logic Vanilla

  3. Click Connect after you have entered all the required details,

Once the connection has been set up successfully, you will be prompted to the next action - Set Frequency.

Re-Connect

The Authentication screen is displayed when an already-created Content Source is opened for editing. An admin can edit a Content Source for multiple reasons, including:

  • To reauthenticate

  • To fix a crawl error

  • To change frequency

  • To add or remove an object or a field for crawling

When a Content Source is edited, either a Connect or a Re-Connect button is displayed.

Case 1: When the Connect button is displayed:

When the Connect button is displayed if the Content Source authentication is successful. Along with the button, a message is displayed There are no crawl errors and the Content Source authentication is valid.

Fig. The Connect button is displayed on the Authentication tab.

Case 2: When the Re-connect button is displayed:

The Re-connect button is displayed when the authentication details change or the authentication fails for any reason.

In both cases, the Content Source connection must be authenticated again. To reauthenticate a Content Source, enter the authentication details, and click Re-Connect.

Fig. The Re-Connect button is displayed on the Authentication tab.

Set Up Crawl Frequency

The first crawl is always performed manually after configuring the content source. Click Set.

Fig. The Frequency tab when "Frequency" is set to "Never".

Select Content Types and Fields for Indexing

Currently, two space types–Category and Knowledge Base–are supported out of the box. Each object has several fields, which you can add and remove the existing fields that come pre-configured.

  1. Under the Rules tab, By Content Type is the selected subtab.

  2. You can see the discussions, articles, events, and groups are already added. Click on the edit button from the Actions column to view and edit the pre-configured fields.

    NOTE. It is not recommended for users other than Admins to make any changes in the fields.

  3. Switch to By Categories subtab. Use the alphabetical index to find Categories and Knowledge Base. Those alphabets are highlighted in blue which have a category under it.

    For example, Community (Knowledge Base) is shown under alphabet C.

  4. Use the checkbox to select the categories for indexing. Click Save once done.

You have successfully added Higher Logic Vanilla as a content source in SearchUnify. Perform a manual crawl to start indexing data in SearchUnify.

Related

Difference between Manual and Frequency Crawls

Find and Replace

Users on the Q2 '24 release or a later version will notice a new button next to each object on the Rules screen. It resembles a magnifying glass and is labeled "Find and Replace." You can use this feature to find and replace values in a single field or across all fields. The changes will occur in the search index and not in your content source.

Fig. The "Find and Replace" button on the Rules tab in the Actions column.

Find and Replace proves valuable in various scenarios. A common use case is when a product name is altered. Suppose your product name has changed from "SearchUnify" to "SUnify," and you wish for the search result titles to immediately reflect this change.

  1. To make the change, click .

  2. Now, choose either "All" or a specific content source field from the "Enter Name" dropdown. When "All" is selected, any value in the "Find" column is replaced with the corresponding value in the "Replace" column across all content source fields. If a particular field is chosen, the old value is replaced with the new value solely within the selected field.

  3. Enter the value to be replaced in the Find column and the new value in the Replace column. Both columns accept regular expressions.

    Fig. Snapshot of Find and Replace.

  4. Click Add. You will see a warning if you are replacing a value in all fields.

  5. Click Save to apply settings

  6. Run a crawl for the updated values to reflect in the search results.

After the First Crawl

Return to the Content Sources screen and click in Actions. The number of indexed documents is updated after the crawl is complete. You can view crawl progress in in Actions. Documentation on crawl progress is in View Crawl Logs.

Once the first crawl is complete, click in Actions to open the content source for editing, and set a crawl frequency.

  1. Leave the Choose a Date field unchanged. For this content source, all data is crawled from the scratch during each crawl. This is a limitation for this content source.

  2. The following options are available for the Frequency field:

    • When Never is selected, the content source is not crawled until an admin opts for a manual crawl on the Content Sources screen.

    • When Minutes is selected, a new dropdown appears where the admin can choose between three values: 15, 20, and 30. Picking 20 means that the content source crawling starts every 20 minutes.

    • When Hours is selected, a new dropdown is displayed where the admin can choose between eight values between 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24. Selecting 8 initiates content crawling every 8 hours.

    • When Daily is selected, a new dropdown is displayed where the admin can pick a value between 0 and 23. If 15 is selected, the content source crawling starts at 3:00 p.m. (1500 hours) each day.

    • When Day of Week is selected, a new dropdown is displayed where the admin can pick a day of the week. If Tuesday is chosen, then content source crawling starts at 0000 hours on every Tuesday.

    • When Day of Month is selected, a new dropdown appears where the admin can select a value between 1 and 30. If 20 is chosen, then content source crawling starts on the 20th of each month.

      It is recommended to pick a date between the 1st and 28th of the month. If 30 is chosen, then the crawler may throw an error in February. The error will be “Chosen date will not work for this month.”

    • When Yearly is selected, the content source crawling starts at midnight on 1 January each year.

    Fig. The content source crawling starts at 00:00 on each Tuesday.

  3. Click Set to save the crawl frequency settings.

  4. Click Save.

The frequency crawl currently runs as manual crawl for Higher Logic Vanillla as the whole data is re-crawled from scratch.

NOTE.

The Frequency should be set to 30 minutes or higher to avoid frequency crawl failures.

Higher Logic Vanilla Webhook

Webhooks help SearchUnify receive update APIs from Higher Logic Vanilla and thus, updating the crawled data. This helps end users find the latest content and not the archived content. Also, the webhook helps update Group-level permissions.

The steps to creating a webhook in Higher Logic Vanilla are mentioned in this doc: Add Webhook in Higher Logic Vanilla.

For Delivery URL, contact your CSM. It's a unique URL that will be provided by the SearchUnify tea. And select all Events from Which events should trigger this webhook? section.