Add a Sitemap source

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

Members with the required privileges can use a Sitemap source to make the content of webpages listed in a sitemap file or sitemap index file searchable.

A sitemap file can be added to a website and is required when using a Sitemap source. The file contains a list of the website’s URLs along with their respective metadata which include the LMD (last-modified-date). This enables the Sitemap source to perform refresh updates, which the Web source doesn’t support. For this reason, although a Sitemap source requires the extra step of adding a sitemap file, it offers better performance than the Web source.

Source key characteristics

The following table presents the main characteristics of a Sitemap source.

Features Supported Additional information

Indexable content

Webpages (URL)

Sitemap file format

  • XML

  • Text

  • RSS 2.0

  • Atom 1.0

  • HTML

  • GZ

Sitemap files and sitemap index files must respect the Sitemap protocol. Strict validations can be enforced by enabling the ParseSitemapInStrictMode option.

For a .gz sitemap file, the web server response Content-Type header must be application/gzip.

Content update operations

refresh

check

To be refreshed, an item in the sitemap file must have a last-modification date (for example, the lastmod element in an XML sitemap, or the updated element in an Atom sitemap) whose value is more recent than the last time the item was indexed.

The last-modification attribute must specify the modification time in W3C DateTime format, that is, YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss (see Date and Time Formats). Moreover, unless you specify a time zone, you must express the modification time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

A rescan or rebuild operation is required to take account of deleted and new sitemap entries.

rescan

check

Takes place every day by default.

rebuild

check

Content security options

Same users and groups as in your content system

x

Specific users and groups

check

Everyone

check

Authentication methods

Basic authentication

check

Supported HTTP authentication schemes:

  • Basic

  • Digest

  • NTLM

  • Negotiate/Kerberos

  • Form based

Form authentication

check

Crawling rules

check

A variety of basic and advanced rules may be used to ignore the webpages you don’t want to index.

metadata indexing for search

Automapping of metadata to a field with a matching name

Disabled by default. To enable, access the JSON configuration of your source, and set performFieldMappingUsingAllOrigins to true.

Automatically indexed metadata

Sample of autopopulated fields (no user-defined metadata required):

  • clickableuri

  • date

  • fileextension

  • filetype

  • language (autodetected from document content)

  • title
     

The author field will also be autopopulated if the content item contains an author metadata value.

After a content update operation, inspect your item field values in the Content Browser.

Collected indexable metadata

The source automatically collects the content attribute of <meta> tags when the tag is keyed with the name attribute.

For example, if the HTML of a page contains the following: <meta name="author" content="jsmith"/>, the Web source extracts jsmith as the author metadata.

After a rebuild, review the View and map metadata subpage for the list of indexed metadata and to index additional metadata from those available.

Custom metadata collection

Available using the following source features:

• XML sitemap file custom metadata extraction

• Webpage scraping

• Webpage JSON-LD metadata extraction

• Webpage metadata extraction using the IndexHtmlMetadata JSON configuration parameter

Web scraping

check

Exclude irrelevant sections in pages and extract metadata.

JavaScript content rendering

check

The Sitemap source crawler can execute JavaScript in a webpage to dynamically render content before indexing the page.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

check

Available at an extra charge. Contact Coveo Sales to add this feature to your Coveo organization license.

Limitations

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and CAPTCHA aren’t supported.

  • Indexing page permissions isn’t supported.

  • The Sitemap source doesn’t support robots.txt files.

  • Content in pop-up windows and page elements requiring interaction aren’t indexed.

  • The Coveo indexing pipeline can handle web pages up to 512 MB only. Larger pages are indexed by reference (that is, their content is ignored by the Coveo crawler, and only their metadata and path are searchable). Therefore, no search result Quick view is available for these larger items.

  • When the Execute JavaScript on pages option is enabled:

    • The Sitemap source doesn’t support sending AdditionalHeaders.

    • The Sitemap source doesn’t support the UseProxy parameter.

    • Basic authentication isn’t supported.

  • The UseProxy parameter can’t be used in combination with Form authentication.

  • When indexing content with the Crawling Module, ensure not to change space character encoding in your items' URIs, as Coveo uses these URIs to distinguish items.

    For example, an item whose URI would change from example.com/my first item to example.com/my%20first%20item wouldn’t be recognized as the same by Coveo. As a result, it would be indexed twice, and the older version wouldn’t be deleted.

    Item URIs are displayed in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au). We recommend you check where these URIs come from before making changes that affect space character encoding. Depending on your source type, the URI may be an item’s URL, or it may be built out of pieces of metadata by your source mapping rules. For example, your item URIs may consist in the main site URL, plus the item filename, due to a mapping rule such as example.com/%[filename]. In such a case, changing space encoding in the item filename could impact the URI.

Leading practices

  • Ensure that you have the right to crawl the public content in the event where you aren’t the owner of the website. Crawling sites that you don’t own nor have the right to crawl could create reachability issues.

    Furthermore, certain sites may use security mechanisms that can impact Coveo’s ability to retrieve the content. If you’re unfamiliar with these mechanisms, we recommend investigating and learning about them beforehand. For example, one impact this type of software (for example, Akamai, Cloudflare) can have is detecting our crawler as an attack and blocking us from any further crawling.

  • Always try authenticating without a custom login sequence first. You should only start working on a custom login sequence when you’re sure your form authentication details (that is, login address, user credentials, confirmation method) are accurate and that the standard form authentication process doesn’t work.

  • It’s best to create or edit your source in your sandbox organization first. Once you have confirmed that it indexes the desired content, you can copy your source configuration to your production organization, either with a snapshot or manually.

    See About non-production organizations for more information and best practices regarding sandbox organizations.

  • The number of items that a source processes per hour (crawling speed) depends on various factors, such as network bandwidth and source configuration. See About Crawling Speed for information on what can impact crawling speed, as well as possible solutions.

  • Break down large sitemap files into multiple sitemap files.

  • Group your source and the other implementation resources together in a project. See Manage projects.

Add a Sitemap source

  1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click Add source.

  2. In the Add a source of content panel, click the Cloud (cloud-icon) or Crawling Module (crawlingmodule) tile, depending on your content retrieval context. With the latter, you must install the Crawling Module to make your source operational.

    Image of Sitemap cloud and Crawling Module tiles | Coveo

  3. In the Add a new Sitemap source / Add a new Crawling Module Sitemap source panel, fill in the following fields.

    Name: Use a short and descriptive name, using only letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). The source name can’t be modified once it’s saved.

    Sitemap URLs: Enter the direct sitemap URL, and not the sitemap website address. Otherwise, the source can interpret the URLs as HTML format sitemap files and crawl the links they contain.

    Examples of sitemap URLs

    • Public website sitemap: http://myorgwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

    • Public website sitemap compressed with GZIP: http://myorgwebsite.com/sitemap.xml.gz

    Notes

    • The Sitemap source only crawls pages listed in a sitemap file. It doesn’t crawl links in the listed web pages themselves.

    • The ParseSitemapInStrictMode JSON parameter dictates the extent of validation the Sitemap source applies on sitemap and sitemap index files, and on their referenced URLs.

    Crawling Module: If you’re creating a Crawling Module Sitemap source, select the installed Crawling Module instance.

    Project (available with the Enterprise edition): Specify the project(s) you want to associate your source with.

    Note

    After source creation, you can update your Coveo project selection under the Identification subtab.

  4. Click Next.

  5. Select who has permission to access the content through the search interface and click Add source.

    Note

    This information is editable later in the Content security tab.

  6. Configure your source.

Note

You can save your source settings at any time by clicking Save.

"Configuration" tab

The Configuration tab lets you manage the crawling rules, web scraping configurations, advanced settings, and authentication methods of your source. These configuration groups are presented in subtabs.

"Crawling rules" subtab

The Crawling rules subtab lets you define the specific pages to index.

Sitemap URLs

Enter the direct sitemap URL, and not the sitemap website address. Otherwise, the source can interpret the URLs as HTML format sitemap files and crawl the links they contain.

Examples of sitemap URLs

  • Public website sitemap: http://myorgwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

  • Public website sitemap compressed with GZIP: http://myorgwebsite.com/sitemap.xml.gz

Notes

  • The Sitemap source only crawls pages listed in a sitemap file. It doesn’t crawl links in the listed web pages themselves.

  • The ParseSitemapInStrictMode JSON parameter dictates the extent of validation the Sitemap source applies on sitemap and sitemap index files, and on their referenced URLs.
Exclusions and inclusions

Add exclusion and inclusion rules to crawl only specific items based on their URL.

Exclusions and inclusions user interface screenshot | Coveo

The following diagram illustrates how the Sitemap crawler applies the exclusion and inclusion rules. This flow applies to all pages, including the sitemap URLs. You must therefore pay attention to not filter out your sitemap URLs.

Crawling workflow diagram | Coveo
Tip
About the "Include all non-excluded pages" option
Crawling flow with the all-inclusive inclusion rule | Coveo

The Include all non-excluded pages option automatically adds an "include all" inclusion rule in the background. This ensures that all sitemap URLs meet the Does URL match at least one inclusion rule? condition and that all non-excluded pages get crawled.

You can use any of the six types of rules:

  • is and a URL that includes the protocol. For example, https://myfood.com/.

  • contains and a string found in the URL. For example, recipes.

  • begins with and a string found at the beginning of the URL and which includes the protocol. For example, https://myfood.

  • ends with and a string found at the end of the URL. For example, .pdf.

  • matches wilcard rule and a wildcard expression that matches the whole URL. For example, https://myfood.com/recipes*.

  • matches regex rule and a regex rule that matches the whole URL. For example, ^.*(company-(dev|staging)).*html.?$.

    Tip

    When using regex rules, make sure they match the desired URLs with a testing tool such as Regex101.

"Web scraping" subtab

The Web scraping subtab lists and lets you manage web scraping configurations for your source.

When the crawler is about to index a page, it checks whether it must apply web scraping configurations that have been defined. The crawler considers the Pages to target rules of each of your web scraping configurations, starting with the configuration at the top of your list. The crawler will either apply the first matching configuration or all matching configurations.

All new Sitemap sources are created with a default web scraping configuration that excludes typical repetitive elements found in web pages that shouldn’t be indexed.

Default web scraping configuration | Coveo

Existing Sitemap sources without a web scraping configuration prompt you to add the default configuration when you access the Web scraping subtab.

Apply the default web scraping configuration | Coveo
Important

When no web scraping configuration is defined:

Indexing irrelevant page sections and not extracting custom metadata reduces quality of search results.

The Sitemap source features two web scraping configuration management modes: UI-assisted mode and Edit with JSON mode.

UI-assisted mode
Adding and editing a web scraping configuration with the UI assistant | Coveo

You can add (1), edit (2), and delete (3) one web scraping configuration at a time with a user interface that makes many technical aspects transparent. UI-assisted mode is easier to use and more mistake-proof than Edit with JSON mode.

This is now the recommended mode for all web scraping configurations.

When you add or edit a web scraping configuration using UI-assisted mode, the Add/Edit a web scraping configuration panel is displayed. See Configurations in UI-assisted mode for more details.

Edit with JSON mode

The Edit with JSON button gives access to the aggregated web scraping JSON configuration of the source. Adding, editing, and deleting configurations directly in the JSON requires more technical skills than using UI-assisted mode.

Adding and editing a web scraping configuration with Edit with JSON
Edit a web scraping JSON configuration panel

When you add or edit a web scraping configuration in Edit with JSON mode, the Edit a web scraping JSON configuration panel is displayed. See Configurations in Edit with JSON mode for more details.

Single-match vs multi-match

The Sitemap source can apply web scraping configurations in two ways: single-match or multi-match.

In single-match mode, the crawler applies only the first matching web scraping configuration. In multi-match mode, the crawler applies all matching web scraping configurations.

The animation below demonstrates the application of three web scraping configurations on a culinary website featuring news articles and recipe pages, in single-match mode (left) and multi-match mode (right).

Animation showing the single-match and multi-match behaviors | Coveo

Sitemap sources created before mid-December 2023 were created in single-match mode. All new Sitemap sources are created in multi-match mode.

Coveo converted existing single-match sources containing zero or one web scraping configuration to multi-match mode. We recommend you convert any remaining single-match Sitemap source to multi-match mode.

If a Sitemap source is currently in single-match mode, the Web scraping subtab displays a banner prompting you to convert to multi-match mode.

Multimatch conversion banner | Coveo

To convert a Sitemap source to multi-match mode

  1. In the Web scraping subtab, click Switch to multi-match mode.

  2. Confirm you want to convert the source to multi-match mode.

    A green You’re currently in multi-match mode banner then appears.

  3. Click Save.

Once your source is fully converted, the Web scraping subtab no longer shows the green banner and the subtab description reflects the multi-match mode behavior.

Multimatch description | Coveo

"Advanced settings" subtab

The Advanced settings subtab lets you customize the Coveo crawler behavior. All advanced settings have default values, which are adequate in most use cases.

Content and images

If you want Coveo to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images, enable the appropriate option.

The extracted text is processed as item data, meaning that it’s fully searchable and will appear in the item Quick view. See Enable optical character recognition for details on this feature.

Execute JavaScript on pages

Only enable this option when some website content you want to consider for indexing is dynamically rendered by JavaScript. Enabling this option may significantly increase the time needed to crawl pages.

When Execute JavaScript on pages is enabled, specify the Add time for the crawler to wait before considering a page as fully rendered value. When you set this value to 0 (default), the crawler doesn’t wait after the page is loaded. If the JavaScript takes longer to execute than normal or makes asynchronous calls, consider increasing this value to ensure that the pages with the longest rendering time are indexed with all the dynamically rendered content.

Extract JSON-LD metadata

If you have JSON-LD metadata in your HTML pages that you want to index, enable the Extract JSON-LD metadata option.

When enabled, JSON-LD objects in the webpage are extracted, flattened, and represented in jsonld.parent.child metadata format in your Coveo organization.

Example

Given the following JSON-LD script tag in a webpage:

<script id="jsonld" type="application/ld+json">
   {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "NewsArticle",
      "url": "http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39324587",
      "publisher": {
          "@type": "Organization",
          "name": "BBC News",
          "logo": "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2015/newsspec_10857/bbc_news_logo.png?cb=1"
      },
      "headline": "Canada Strikes Gold in Olympic Hockey Final"
   }
</script>

On an indexing action, the Sitemap connector would extract BBC News as the value for the jsonld.publisher.name metadata. To index this metadata, you would therefore need to use %[jsonld.publisher.name] as the mapping rule for your field.

Time the crawler waits between requests to your server

Indicate the number of milliseconds between consecutive HTTP requests to the website server. The default value is 1000 milliseconds, which represents a crawling rate of one page per second.

"Authentication" subtab

The Authentication settings, used by the source crawler, emulate the behavior of a user authenticating to access restricted website content. If authentication is required, select the authentication type your website uses, whether Basic authentication or Form authentication. Then, provide the corresponding login details.

Warning

Whether you use Basic or Form authentication, limit your source crawling scope to one domain that you own. This reduces the risk of exposing your authentication credentials.
Note

Manual form authentication is now only available on legacy sources. We recommend you migrate existing Manual form authentication sources to Form authentication.
Basic authentication

When selecting Basic authentication, enter the credentials of an account on the website you’re making searchable. See Source credentials leading practices.

If your sitemap contains a link to a page of a different domain or subdomain that also requires basic authentication, the Sitemap source will provide the credentials you entered when challenged.

Important

To prevent exposing your credentials, provide username and password information only when the site uses a communication protocol secured with TLS or SSL (HTTPS). You are responsible for ensuring that your Sitemap links requiring basic authentication credentials use HTTPS for increased security. The basic authentication credentials you enter will be provided, regardless of whether the link requiring these credentials uses HTTP or HTTPS.
Form authentication

You can choose between two form authentication workflows:

Force authentication disabled (recommended)

With Force authentication disabled, the workflow typically goes as follows:

  1. Coveo’s crawler requests a protected page.

  2. The web server redirects the crawler to the Login page address.

  3. Using the configured Validation method, the crawler determines it’s not authenticated. This automatically triggers the next step.

  4. The crawler performs a standard login sequence using the provided Login details, or the Custom login sequence if one is configured.

  5. After successful authentication, the web server responds by redirecting back to the requested protected page and returning cookies.

  6. The crawler follows the server redirect to get the protected page and indexes that page.

  7. The crawler requests the other pages using the cookies.

This is the default and recommended workflow as it emulates human behavior the best and ensures crawler re-authentication, when needed.

Force authentication enabled

With Force authentication enabled, the workflow typically goes as follows:

  1. The crawler performs a standard login sequence using the provided Login details, or the Custom login sequence if one is configured.

  2. After successful authentication, the web server responds with cookies that the crawler will use to request other pages.

  3. The crawler requests the first URL from the web server using the cookies and indexes that page.

  4. The crawler requests other pages using the cookies.

If the crawler loses authentication at some point (for example, if a cookie expires), it has no way of knowing it must re-authenticate unless you have a proper authentication status validation method. As a result, you may notice at some point that your source has indexed some, but not all, protected pages.

Only use Force authentication when no reliable authentication status validation method can be configured.

Username and password

Enter the credentials required to access the secured content. See Source credentials leading practices.

Login page address

Enter the URL of the website login page where the username and password are to be used.

Loading delay

Enter the maximum time the crawler should allow for JavaScript to execute and go through the login sequence before timing out.

Validation method

The crawler uses the validation method after requesting a page from the web server to know if it’s authenticated or not. When the validation method reveals that the crawler isn’t authenticated, the crawler immediately tries to re-authenticate.

To configure the validation method

  1. In the dropdown menu, select your preferred authentication status validation method.

  2. In the Value(s) field, specify the corresponding URL, regex or text.

    • For Cookie not found (recommended):

      Enter the name of the cookie returned by the server after successful authentication. If this cookie isn’t found, the crawler will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

      Example

      ASP.NET_SessionId

    • For Redirection to URL (recommended):

      Enter the URL where users trying to access protected content on the website are redirected to when they’re not authenticated. If the crawler is redirected to this URL, it will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

      Example

      https://mycompany.com/login/failed.html

    • For Text not found in page [1]:

      Enter the text that appears on the page after successful authentication. If this text isn’t found on the page, the crawler will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

      Example

      When a user successfully logs in, the page shows a "Hello, <USERNAME>!" greeting text. If the login username you specified was jsmith@mycompany.com, the text to enter would be:

      Hello, jsmith@mycompany.com!

      Example

      Log out

    • For Text found in page [1]:

      Enter the text that appears on the page when a user isn’t authenticated. If this text is found on the page, the crawler will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

      Examples

      • An error has occurred.

      • Your username or password is invalid.

    • For URL matches regex [1]:

      Enter a regex rule that matches the URL where users trying to access protected content are redirected to when they’re not authenticated. If the crawler is redirected to a URL that matches this regex, it will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

      Example

      .+Account\/Login.*

    • For URL doesn’t match regex [1]:

      Enter a regex rule that matches the URL where users trying to access protected content are redirected to after successful authentication. If the crawler isn’t redirected to a URL that matches this regex, it will immediately authenticate (or re-authenticate).

Force authentication

Select this option if you want Coveo’s first request to be for authentication, regardless of whether it is actually required.

Important

You should only force authentication if you have no reliable authentication status validation method.
Custom login sequence

If the web page requires specific actions during the login process, you might have to configure a custom login sequence.

Important

The standard source login sequence can handle various third-party login pages (for example, OneLogin, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft), and will try to automatically detect and log in on first-party login forms. Ensure that the standard source login sequence fails before configuring a custom login sequence.

"Crawling Module" subtab

If your source is a Crawling Module source, and if you have more than one Crawling Module linked to this organization, select the one with which you want to pair your source. If you change the Crawling Module instance paired with your source, a successful rebuild is required for your change to apply.

"Identification" subtab

The Identification subtab contains general information about the source.

Name

The source name. It can’t be modified once it’s saved.

Project

If you have the Enterprise edition, use the Project selector to associate your source with one or multiple Coveo projects.

"Content security" tab

Select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content security.

"Access" tab

In the Access tab, specify whether each group (and API key, if applicable) in your Coveo organization can view or edit the current source.

For example, when creating a new source, you could decide that members of Group A can edit its configuration, while Group B can only view it.

For more information, see Custom access level.

Completion

  1. Finish adding or editing your source:

    • When you want to save your source configuration changes without starting a build/rebuild, such as when you know you want to do other changes soon, click Add source/Save.

    • When you’re done editing the source and want to make changes effective, click Add and build source/Save and rebuild source.

      Note

      On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you must click Launch build or Start required rebuild in the source Status column to add the source content or to make your changes effective, respectively.

      Back on the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, you can follow the progress of your source addition or modification.

      Once the source is built or rebuilt, you can review its content in the Content Browser.

  2. Once your source is done building or rebuilding, review the metadata Coveo is retrieving from your content.

    1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click More > View and map metadata in the Action bar.

    2. If you want to use a currently not indexed metadata in a facet or result template, map it to a field.

      1. Click the metadata and then, at the top right, click Add to Index.

      2. In the Apply a mapping on all item types of a source panel, select the field you want to map the metadata to, or add a new field if none of the existing fields are appropriate.

        Notes

        • For details on configuring a new field, see Add or edit a field.

        • For advanced mapping configurations, like applying a mapping to a specific item type, see Manage mappings.

      3. Click Apply mapping.

    3. Depending on the source type you use, you may be able to extract additional metadata from your content. You can then map that metadata to a field, just like you did for the default metadata.

      More on custom metadata extraction and indexing

      Some source types let you define rules to extract metadata beyond the default metadata Coveo discovers during the initial source build.

      For example:

      Source type Custom metadata extraction methods

      Push API

      Define metadata key-value pairs in the addOrUpdate section of the PUT request payload used to upload push operations to an Amazon S3 file container.

      REST API
      and
      GraphQL API

      In the JSON configuration (REST API | GraphQL API) of the source, define metadata names (REST API | GraphQL API) and specify where to locate the metadata values in the JSON API response Coveo receives.

      Database

      Add <CustomField> elements in the XML configuration. Each element defines a metadata name and the database field to use to populate the metadata with.

      Web

      Sitemap

      Some source types automatically map metadata to default or user created fields, making the mapping process unnecessary. Some source types automatically create mappings and fields for you when you configure metadata extraction.

      See your source type documentation for more details.

    4. When you’re done reviewing and mapping metadata, return to the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page.

    5. To reindex your source with your new mappings, click Launch rebuild in the source Status column.

    6. Once the source is rebuilt, you can review its content in the Content Browser.

Troubleshooting

After a rebuild, you may notice that your source isn’t indexing as expected. For example, there may be missing or extra items, or the values of some fields may not meet your requirements.

To help you troubleshoot, refer to the list of common issues and solutions when using the Sitemap source.

Required privileges

You can assign privileges to allow access to specific tools in the Coveo Administration Console. The following table indicates the privileges required to view or edit elements of the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page and associated panels. See Manage privileges and Privilege reference for more information.

Note

The Edit all privilege isn’t required to create sources. When granting privileges for the Sources domain, you can grant a group or API key the View all or Custom access level, instead of Edit all, and then select the Can Create checkbox to allow users to create sources. See Can Create ability dependence for more information.
Actions Service Domain Required access level

View sources, view source update schedules, and subscribe to source notifications

Content

Fields

View

Sources

Organization

Organization

Edit sources, edit source update schedules, and edit source mappings

Organization

Organization

View

Content

Fields

Edit

Sources

View and map metadata

Content

Source metadata

View

Fields

Organization

Organization

Content

Sources

Edit

Migrate from manual form authentication

If you’re using manual form authentication, you’ll see a "Manual form authentication deprecation" warning when viewing the Authentication subtab. You’ll want to migrate to form authentication. To do so, we recommend you create a duplicate of your source and configure form authentication on the duplicate. When the duplicate is configured and fully tested, you can copy its configuration to the original source.

If you’re using a sandbox organization and a snapshot-based phased rollout, the alternative is to copy your original source and related resources configurations to your sandbox using the resource snapshots feature. Once your sandbox source authentication configurations updated and fully tested, you can use a snapshot to apply your changes to your production organization source.

Though the following procedure uses the source duplicate method, steps 3 to 8 inclusively are common to both methods.

To migrate from manual form authentication to form authentication

  1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your source, and then click More > Duplicate in the Action bar.

  2. Name your duplicate.

  3. Click your duplicate source, and then click Edit in the Action bar.

  4. Select the Authentication subtab.

  5. Select the Form authentication radio button.

    The following fields will be populated automatically using your existing manual form authentication settings: Username, Password, Login page address, Validation method and Value(s), Force authentication.

  6. Rebuild your duplicate source.

  7. Make sure that your duplicate source contains properly indexed content. Things you should check for:

    • Your duplicate source contains the same number of items as the original source.

    • For pages that are authentication protected in your website, make sure the Quick view of the corresponding items in your duplicate source shows the content of the actual website page. If form authentication fails, the item Quick view may display the content of your form authentication login page instead of the actual website page.

  8. If form authentication is failing, consider making the following adjustments to your duplicate source form authentication configuration:

    Contact Coveo Support if you need help.

  9. When you’re sure the authentication configuration on your duplicate source works, apply the changes to the original source.

    1. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your duplicate source, and then click More > Edit configuration with JSON in the Action bar.

    2. Copy the FormAuthenticationConfiguration JSON object. The object looks like the following:

      "FormAuthenticationConfiguration": {
  "sensitive": false,
  "value": "{\"authenticationFailed\":{\"method\":\"RedirectedToUrl\",\"values\":[\"https://something.com/Account/Login\"]},\"inputs\":[],
  \"formUrl\":\"https://something.com/Account/Login\",\"enableJavaScript\":true,\"forceLogin\":false,\"javaScriptLoadingDelayInMilliseconds\":2000,\"customLoginSequence\":{}}"
}

    3. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, click your original source, and then click More > Edit configuration with JSON in the Action bar.

    4. Replace the FormAuthenticationConfiguration object with the one from your duplicate source.

    5. Click Save.

What’s next?

1. Less reliable than the recommended validation methods. Can result in false positives, making form authentication issues harder to troubleshoot.