Basic Search Client Configurations

Search client configurations enable admins to customize the main search page. Features such as typeahead, search recommendations, and displaying a knowledge graph can be activated here. Each feature is explained in detail below.

Fig. A snapshot of the Configurations tab in Search Clients.

Enter Platform Name

Admins can edit the name of a search client to make it more descriptive. This is particularly helpful when the admin is managing multiple search clients.

Enter Base URL

The Base URL is the login page of your SearchUnify instance. It facilitates communication between the search client and content sources.

No. of Autocomplete Results

Typeahead helps users find what they’re looking for by providing search suggestions. Admins can use a dropdown menu to select the number of autocomplete suggestions displayed.

Fig. A snapshot of autocomplete at work on a search client.

Pre-Selection of Facets

Pre-selection of facets automatically applies filters to searches. These facets are selected based on admin-defined preferences (e.g., session identifiers) and user behavior (e.g., past facet selections).

Fig. A snapshot of the "Pre selection of facets" toggle in Search Clients Configurations.

Steps to Enable Pre-Selection of Facets:

  1. Toggle Pre-Selection of Facets to ON in the Configurations tab.

  2. Switch to the Search Clients > Edit > Content Sources tab, select a content source, and click the Settings icon under the Filters column.

  3. Define the minimum threshold for occurrence or enable the Include in Auto-Learning feature.

When Auto-Learning is enabled, users will see search results influenced by their past facet selections. Admins can manage filters for auto-learning or rely on manual facet selections if auto-learning is disabled.

Recommendations

Recommendations suggest related content in two contexts:

  • On Search Results Pages: Automatically enabled, this setting shows related content based on user searches. Recommendations are generated after users perform a few searches.

  • On Content Pages: When the On the Separate Widget setting is enabled, related articles based on title similarity are displayed on knowledge articles and community discussion pages.

Activate Recommendations on Search Results Pages

  1. Click Configurations.

  2. Of the two settings, On the search page is already turned on.

If you keep On the search page checked , then Recommendations will display related content on the search page, and nowhere else. A user has to perform a few searches before content can be recommended to the user.

Fig. The recommended articles on a search results page.

Activate Recommendations Widget on Content Pages

The widget is available for website search clients and as a component on Salesforce Communities search clients. Content on the knowledge article and community discussion pages is displayed using a widget.

  1. Check On the Separate Widget.

  2. Download the search client.

  3. The instructions to install a Recommendations Widget on a Salesforce Community are in the article Salesforce Communities > Recommendations.

    The instructions to install a Recommendations Widget on a Website search client are in the article Website > Recommendations.

The related articles are found after analyzing the text stored in the field title.

Fig. A snapshot of the Recommendations widget showing related articles on a Salesforce Community discussion page.

If the Recommendations widget is installed on the home page of a Salesforce Community or website, then the top five search results are displayed as related articles.

Preview Search Results

Preview search results without leaving the search page. A Preview Pane allows users to view a document in a small window.

Browse any result in preview mode. When it's on, users can click to view results in a small pane without leaving the search results page.

NOTE.

The preview pane works for content hosted on the same domain or subdomain as the search client, YouTube, or Vimeo.

For example, if the search client URL is https://help.domain.com/search.htm, previews will work for https://help.domain.com/, YouTube, and Vimeo content.

Fig. A snapshot of the Preview function on a website search client. The content source is YouTube.

Preview panes are available in Salesforce search clients.

Fig. A snapshot of the Preview function on a Salesforce Console search client. The content source is YouTube.

Steps to Enable:

  1. Open the search client for editing.

  2. Go to Configurations and toggle Preview Search Results to ON.

  3. Save the settings.

Repeat this for all the search clients for a uniform experience. Preview Search Results improves the Conversion rate because each preview is a conversion.

Recent Searches

This feature stores a history of search queries in the browser’s cache. Users can revisit past searches by selecting suggestions from the history.

Fig. A snapshot of recent searches on a search client.

Highlight Viewed Results

Change the color of visited links to help users avoid revisiting already viewed results. When enabled, clicked results change from black to blue.

Fig. A snapshot of a highlighted result that has already been viewed.

Browser Cache Durations for Highlighting Viewed Results:

  • Google Chrome: 90 days

  • Mozilla Firefox: 180 days

  • Apple Safari: 365 days

  • Microsoft Edge: 999 days

Similar Searches

This feature suggests keywords based on other users’ search behaviors. For instance, a search for “data repositories” might suggest “content sources” if that term is commonly associated with similar searches.

Key Points:

  • Similar Searches analyzes data from multiple users before suggesting a keyword.

  • Similar search suggestions work only when at least one document is available for a query.

  • Suggestions are based on sessions where at least two queries and two clicked results exist.

  • The order in which similar search suggestions are presented is based on the relevancy score.

  • The suggestions are stored in your browser's cache, so they might be different on the devices you use.

Fig. A snapshot of Similar Searches on a website search client.

SearchUnifyGPT™

SearchUnifyGPT™ is a generative AI widget that enhances the search experience by delivering highly relevant and informative results.

Key features:

  • Works with Salesforce Console, Khoros, Salesforce Communities, Zendesk, and all website search clients.

  • Includes hyperlinks to the sources used for generating answers, ensuring transparency.

Fig. A snapshot of a SearchUnifyGPT™-generated answer.

Steps to Enable:

  1. Connect SearchUnify to a Large Language Model (LLM) such as OpenAI. The instructions to connect SearchUnify with a third-party LLM are on Configure LLM Integrations.

  2. Toggle SearchUnifyGPT™ to ON in the Configurations tab.

  3. Select an LLM from the dropdown.

  4. Configure Query Length Limit using the slider:

    • Minimum query length: 1 word(default).

    • Maximum query length: 6 words (default).

    • Adjust these values as needed for your instance.

      Example: 

      If the minimum value is 5 and maximum value is 12, then SearchUnifyGPT™ will be triggered only when a search query is 5 words or longer but 12 words or shorter.

      For example, a query like[set up Salesforce content source] will display an answer in the SearchUnifyGPT™ widget but a query like[set up Salesforce] won’t return an answer.

      Stopwords are not ignored. It means that for SearchUnifyGPT™, a query like [salesforce is a content source] consists of 5 words.

Here's an example of SearchUnifyGPT™ on a Search Client:

Fig. SearchUnifyGPT™ on a search client.

Differences from Rich Snippets:

  • SearchUnifyGPT™ synthesizes information from multiple sources. Rich Snippets extract content from a single source.

  • Rich Snippets support multimedia; SearchUnifyGPT™ currently supports text-only answers.

Did You Mean?

This feature corrects misspelled queries and offers relevant suggestions. It includes a standard dictionary and can be trained to understand in-house terminology. For more details, see Implement Auto-Correct with Did You Mean.

Fig. A snapshot of a Did You Mean? suggestion on a website search client.

Redirection URL

The Redirection URL takes users from the search page on the home page to the search results page.