Sitecore Module FAQ

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SearchStax has compiled the following list of “frequent questions” about the SearchStax Studio Sitecore Module.

Index rebuild operation is failing after a few seconds. How to fix it?

This may be happening due to multiple reasons. You can follow these tips to help you troubleshoot this issue:

1. Always check the Sitecore logs for more information. Sometimes the error message will point you to exactly where the error is.
2. Temporarily disable all the custom computed fields and try again. If it works, there is a issue that must be fixed in one of your computed fields.
3. Make sure that the crawler root item exists in the target database (usually web).
4. Confirm that there are no firewall rules blocking your Sitecore instance from sending requests to SearchStax cloud endpoints.

Index rebuild operation in Sitecore is taking too long. What can I do to make it faster?

Indexing items in Sitecore is a heavy operation by definition, so the first thing you can do is make sure your crawlers have the most specific root item possible. For example, instead of indexing /sitecore/content/site, change it to /sitecore/content/site/home, since all we want to index are pages.

Another thing that might help with indexing performance is limiting the number and complexity of computed fields. Remember, each computed field is executed one time for every item you want to index.

I want to have the page rendering data sources as searchable content. How can I index them?

First, you don’t need to index those items individually. The package comes with a computed field called RenderedContent that indexes them as part of the page itself. All you have to do is to configure it properly. You can find more information at https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstudio/sitecore-module/#computed.

I have an exception message after adding a SXA rendering to my Sitecore page. How can I fix this?

SearchStax for Sitecore SXA search page requires a datasource item in order to work properly. Make sure you create it first and then add it in a proper placeholder. More information on https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstudio/searchstax-studio-sitecore-sxa/

When doing A/B Testing with Sitecore, multiple versions of the page are being published and available with Search. How can I fix this?

When doing A/B testing, Sitecore publishes multiple versions of the page which are available to different users. To exclude multiple versions from the search results, you can set a Global Exclusion filter to get only the latest version of the page in the search result. This is captured by the field ‘_latestversion‘ and as can be set as shown below.

Simply add this to the Global Filters and publish the model to exclude the duplicates from search.

Can I use the Sitecore ContentSearch API with the index created by the Sitecore Connector for Studio?

No, the index that is created by the connector is for indexing purposes only and will not work with the Content Search API.  Additionally, the index definition requires the master database, which is not available to Content Delivery servers.  Please utilize the Search API’s in order to query the SearchStax Studio collection.