Hello @Sakshi Lambat,
Good news here: native Global Search and Employee Center portal search don't share the same plumbing, so you can pull sc_cat_item out of one without touching the other. In Next Experience, the top-nav Global Search bar filters results based on the search sources tied to a specific record in the Search Application Configuration table (sys_search_context_config), not the old Text Search Groups, those only govern classic UI/UI15 and don't apply once Polaris/Next Experience is on. Employee Center's own search, whether it's still running on the legacy Service Portal search widgets or has been moved to AI Search (ais_search_profile), resolves against a completely different configuration, so trimming a source out of the Global Search context has no bearing on it.
Here's the path to make the change:
- Open sys_search_context_config and find the record backing native Global Search (the default global application config, not anything portal scoped).
- From that record, open the related list of sources. That relationship actually lives on m2m_search_context_config_search_source, which links sys_search_context_config to sys_search_source.
- Find the source pointing at the sc_cat_item table (usually labeled "Catalog") and remove just that association from this context.
- Do not deactivate the underlying sys_search_source record itself unless you've confirmed nothing else references it, doing that would strip catalog items from every context using that source, not just native Global Search.
- Run cache.do and retest in an incognito window so you're not reading stale indexed results.
One thing worth confirming before you touch anything: is Employee Center on this instance still on the classic portal search widgets (Faceted/Typeahead Search) or has it been switched to AI Search? If it's AI Search, you're already fully isolated since that engine never reads sys_search_source, and this whole change is effectively zero risk to the portal.
Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC
