Inspect Items With the Content Browser

The Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page is a search interface that allows you to filter and inspect the content indexed in your Coveo organization. This page is particularly useful to validate changes made to your organization and to troubleshoot issues.

Note

Following a source build or rebuild operation, it may take several minutes before new or modified source content is visible and searchable in the Content Browser.

Example of Content browser view

The following actions and features are available to any Coveo Administration Console user with the required privileges.

Browse All the Content of Your Organization Index

By default, the Content Browser complies with item permissions to prevent the disclosure of potentially sensitive content. Therefore, you only see the source items that you’re allowed to see. See Content Security and Coveo Management of Security Identities and Item Permissions for details.

However, if you have the privilege to view all content, you can check the View all content check box. This allows you to access all the content indexed in your organization, including the content you’re not normally allowed to see, for troubleshooting purposes.

Alternatively, you can view the content visible to a specific security identity. See Impersonate an Identity.

Impersonate an Identity

In the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), you can impersonate a security identity from the Email Security Provider to view the content that they’re allowed to access through your search interface.

  1. Select the query pipeline you want to test.

  2. Click Settings Icon, and then Search as.

  3. In the panel that opens, enter the email address representing the desired security identity from the Email security identity provider.

Alternatively, you can impersonate an identity from the Security Identities (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page. This method allows you to select an identity from any security identity provider. See Search as an Identity for details.

Test a Query Pipeline

When a query is performed, the Content Browser uses the default query pipeline configuration. However, in the upper-right corner of the page, you can select a specific pipeline for the Content Browser to use to investigate issues or validate changes.

Conversely, if you want to test the search interface without using a pipeline, select Empty (for internal testing). This option can help you validate whether a specific pipeline is responsible for a search issue.

Should you rather need to test the Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML) Automatic Relevance Tuning (ART) and Query Suggestions (QS) models associated with a query pipeline, you can do so on the Model Testing (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page. See Testing Coveo Machine Learning models for details.

Narrow Search Results

On the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, use the search box and facets to find specific content. Only the items matching your filters will be displayed.

In addition, you can further refine your search results by selecting an index or creating a result filtering expression in the Content Browser preferences.

Note

Once you’re satisfied with your filters, you can bookmark the page or save its URL to come back to the Content Browser with the same filters enabled.

Facets

Select facet values to display only the matching items. Alternatively, you can exclude facet values to hide matching items. To do so, hover over the area to the left of the item number, and then click X.

Click X to exclude a facet value

Moreover, you can also click Facet Settings Icon to change how facet values are sorted. Among other things, you have the option to sort facet values by their relevance score. Facet values matching items that appear higher in the search results have a higher score. For example, a facet value matching the first result in the list has a better score than a facet value matching 100 items that appear after the first 1,000 results.

Note

If Content Browser facets aren’t displayed or show an abnormal behavior, the facet cache update may be delayed by a high-demanding index operation of greater priority, such as the indexing process or a backup. The facet should show a normal behavior within an hour; if not, contact the Coveo Support team.

Inspect Search Results

To inspect an item in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), click the desired item and then, click Properties in the Action bar. Switch tabs to display the item’s field values, permissions, and preview. See Review Item Properties for details.

In addition, when an item is selected, the More menu allows you to open an item in its original repository and to open the Log Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) to review the log entries associated with the selected item.

Debug Panel

Hold the Alt key (Option key on Mac) and double-click a Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) item to open a debug panel displaying additional information such as ranking information. See Use the JavaScript Search Debug Panel for details on this panel.

Share a Query

Should you need to share a problematic query with coworkers or Coveo representatives, click Settings Icon next to the search box, and then Share Query. The panel that opens displays the complete query last sent to Coveo, as well as a link to this query in your organization.

Export to Excel

The Export to Excel feature creates a spreadsheet (.xlsx) in which each row is a search result and each column is the content of a field. This format allows you to compare field values of the first 1,000 results of your search. You can also use this feature to quickly create lists of the values that can be searched for.

To export your search results to Excel, in the Action bar, click Export to Excel.

ResponseExceededMaximumSizeException Error

The ResponseExceededMaximumSizeException error is returned when the size of the export response is too large.

Causes

The size of the export response is affected by the:

  • Number of search results

  • Number of fields

  • Amount of data in the fields

  • Amount of debug information

Resolution

To reduce the size of the export response, try to:

  • Export fewer search results

  • Export results with a lower number of fields

  • Exclude from exports results with a significant amount of metadata

  • Disable debug mode in the Content Browser preferences

Content Browser Preferences

For additional Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) options, click Settings Icon, and then Preferences.

These preferences are saved in the local storage of your browser, so they still apply if you log out of the Coveo Administration Console or you switch organizations.

Options are the following:

Always Open Results in New Window

Check this box to open search results in a new browser tab. When this box isn’t checked, a search result that you click opens in the current browser tab, replacing the search interface.

Enable Debug Mode

On the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, debug mode is enabled by default. When it is enabled, your Excel exports contain a Debug tab showing information on the expressions and ranking expressions used.

Disable the debug mode if you encounter performance issues.

Moreover, if you need to troubleshoot search issues (e.g., pipeline issues), you can display additional information in your browser developer tools by enabling debug mode.

Alternatively, the Debug Panel may also be helpful to obtain additional information on a search result.

Enable Debug Ranking Information Mode

On the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, debug ranking information mode is disabled by default. When it is enabled, your Excel exports contain a rankingInfo column detailing how the ranking weight of each item is calculated.

Index

In the Index drop-down menu, select the index of which you want to browse the content. Default value is Any index.

Result Filtering Expressions

The result filtering expressions you create permanently refine the search results, so that you don’t need to reselect the same facets every time you open the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au).

You can enter any query expression that you would use in a search box. See Query Syntax Reference for details.

To create a new filter:

  1. Click Create.

  2. Under Caption, enter a filter name.

  3. Under Expression, enter the desired filter expression.

  4. If applicable, in the Tab box, select the tab on which the filter should apply.

  5. Click the check mark on the right to save your filter.

Example

You always only want to look at search results from year 2014 or later.

Creating a result filtering expression

Required Privileges

The following table indicates the privileges required to use the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page and view associated pages (see Manage Privileges and Privilege Reference). No elements can be edited in the page. However, you need to have the Allowed access level on the Execute queries service to access the page.

Action Service - Domain Required access level
Use the Content Browser and view associated pages

Analytics - Analytics data

Analytics - Dimensions

Content - Fields

Content - Security identities

Content - Sources

Organization - Organization

View

Search - Execute queries

Search - View all content

Allowed