Configure the Experiences in AI Search
After the content is indexed, you can make the search available to users and configure how the search interaction looks and behaves for different applications (Portal, Mobile, VA, etc.). Configure Search Sources, Search Profiles and Search Application to make AI Search meets your needs.
We'll cover the steps for Search Experience
Each application that can use AI Search requires four pieces:
- A Search source
- A Search profile
- A Search application Configuration
- A Link to the experience application (Portal, etc.)
Search Source
Search sources make indexed content available to a user when they use AI search.
A Search Source is essentially a reference to one Indexed Source with a filter. For example, the search for Catalog Items for Employee Center (available Out of the Box) filters out items not visible on the portal.
Search Sources can be reused across different experiences. For example, the catalog items for an employee portal can be the same as for a mobile app; they can use the same search source.
You can have multiple search sources for a given indexed source. For example, the knowledge bases for a customer-facing portal are different from the knowledge bases for an employee portal: you need two Search Sources based on the same Indexed Source.
Search Profile
One or more Search Sources are then linked to a Search Profile. A Search Profile has one or more Search Sources to retrieve results from. It also contains additional parameters to tailor the experience, such as synonym dictionaries, stop words dictionaries, rules for typo handling, genius results, and result improvement rules.
We’ll go through the parameters in detail in one of the next steps.
For example, the Out-Of-the-Box (OOB) Search Profile for Employee Center uses 5 Search Sources, the default synonym and stop words dictionaries, has 3 Genius Results but only one is active and has no result improvement rule.
Search Application Configuration
The final piece is the Search Application Configuration. One Search Application Configuration has one reference to a Search Profile.
Additional parameters define the search and Genius Results limits and enable typo handling.
Facets, Navigation Tabs, Autocomplete Suggestions, Search Scripted Post-processors, and Sort options can be configured from the related lists.
- Facets allow the search results to be filtered on the result page on Portal.
- Navigation Tabs allow further separation of search results on the top horizontal bar of the search results to display data in different buckets, for example, Catalog and Knowledge.
Note that the facets and navigation tabs are not available for all experiences. For example, Virtual Agent uses neither of those.
- Search Scripted Post-processors are scripts that post-processes search results or genius results. By default, there is a script to transform dates into a user-friendly format.
- Sort options allow adding sorting options on the result page.
Autocomplete Suggestions display intelligent suggestions in the search input field, helping users formulate their searches or jump directly to relevant results. There are 4 Suggestion Types available:
- Recent Search Reader Group: Suggestions based on what queries the user has executed in the past.
- Popular Search Reader Group: Suggestions based on the most commonly executed queries across all users.
- Suggested Queries: A combination of suggestions from both the user's history and generally popular queries. The currently typed query is prepended to this list.
- Suggested Result Reader Group: Suggestions for specific search results that the user has clicked on in the past.
Link to an Application
Finally, once the Search Application Configuration is done, it can be made available to the users through the dedicated application. To use AI Search in the Service Portal, Now Mobile, and Virtual Agent applications, see Enabling and configuring AI Search in Now Platform applications.
To use AI Search with UI Builder pages, customize the display of search results and Genius Results with EVAM definitions or configure AI Search Assist for record producers, see Integrating AI Search into other Now Platform applications.
You can also watch these expert-led sessions about AI Search for specific applications:
- Employee Center Academy: Search Configurations (AI Search + Zing).
- Mobile App Academy: Personalizing your Mobile search experience with AI Search.
- Virtual Agent Academy: Using AI Search and other search tools with Virtual Agent.
What's next?
Finding results is great, driving action is even better, make your experiences even better with Genius Results.
Go back to the Quick Start Guide.
References
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