Add or Edit an OpenText Content Server Source

An OpenText Content Server (OTCS) source allows members of the Administrators and Content Managers built-in groups to retrieve and make searchable the content of a local OpenText Content Server via the Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module (see Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module).

As a member of one of these groups, you can add the content of an OpenText Content Server to a Coveo organization. In a Coveo-powered search interface, the source content is accessible to either everyone, the source creator only, or specific users as determined by source permissions (see Content Security).

Source Key Characteristics

Add or Edit an OTCS Source

Ensure that the Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module is installed on a server that has access to the server of which you want to retrieve the content. Both servers must use the same time zone to prevent indexing timing issues.

When adding a source, select the OpenText Content Server option.

To edit a source, on the Sources page, click the desired source, and then, in the Action bar, click Edit.

“Configuration” Tab

On the Add/Edit an OpenText Content Server Source subpage, the Configuration tab is selected by default. It contains your source’s general and authentication information, as well as other parameters.

If you have not already installed the Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module on a server that has access to the server of which you want to retrieve the content, click Download Crawling Module to do so.

General Information

Source Name

Enter a name for your source.

Web Service URL

Enter the URL of the OpenText Content Server Web Service used to communicate with the server.

Content Server URL

Enter your content server URL.

Paired Crawling Module

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.

Character Optical Recognition (OCR)

Check this box if you want Coveo Cloud to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images. OCR-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.

Index

When adding a source, if you have more than one logical (non-Elasticsearch) index in your organization, select the index in which the retrieved content will be stored (see Leverage Many Coveo Indexes). If your organization only has one index, this drop-down menu isn’t visible and you have no decision to make.

“Authentication” Section

Enter the Server username and Server password of a dedicated account that has access to the content you want to make searchable. See Source Credentials Leading Practices.

“Content to Include” Section

Starting Point ID

Enter the ID of the item or folder (node) whose content you want to index. If you don’t provide a starting point ID, [Default Root Node ID] will be used.

Retrieve Full Note Data

Clear this box if you don’t want to retrieve the full node data. Although retrieving this data reduces performances, we recommend it, as it makes additional, potentially useful metadata available for search.

Include OpenText User Object Type

Check this box to index OTCS user profiles.

Only Include Files Modified After

Check this box to restrict the indexing process to recently modified files, and then select a date. Only items modified after this date will be made searchable.

Active Directory Permissions

When you check this box and provide the required Active Directory information in the fields that appear, Active Directory permissions are indexed and replicated in your search interface.

For this option to be enforced, you must also select the Determined by source permissions option in the Content Security tab.

Active Directory Username and Active Directory Password

Enter credentials to grant Coveo Cloud access to your Active Directory.

Expand Well-Known SIDs

Check this box if you want the users included in your Active Directory well-known security identifiers to be granted access to the indexed content. Expect an increase in the duration of the security identity provider refresh operation. Supported well-known SIDs are: Everyone, Authenticated Users, Domain Admins, Domain Users, and Anonymous Users.

Enable TLS

Check this box to use a TLS protocol to retrieve your security identities. If you do, we strongly recommend selecting StartTLS if you can. Since LDAPS is a much older protocol, you should only select this value if StartTLS is incompatible with your environment.

Email Attributes

By default, Coveo Cloud retrieves the email address associated to each security identity from the mail attribute. Optionally, you can specify additional or different attributes to check. Should an attribute contain more than one value, Coveo Cloud uses the first one.

“Refresh” Section

This section contains parameters that impact the source refresh operations.

Database Connection String

Optionally provide an OTCS database connection string to allow Coveo Cloud to index the content that has been added, changed, or removed. Providing a database connection string is recommended.

If you choose not to provide one, only created and modified documents will be taken into account during the source refresh operation, whereas deleted, purged, and restored documents will be ignored.

Typical database connection strings are formatted as follows: Driver={[driver-name]};Server=[your-server-name];Database=[your-database-name];Uid=@uid;Pwd=@pwd. However, the connection string syntax differs from one database type to another, so review Connection Strings documentation to write your own.

See also Getting the Available Drivers for an ODBC Source for a list of available drivers.

Use Other Credentials Than Those of the Server

Should your database require different crawling account credentials than those of your server, check this box, and then enter the database credentials.

“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, determine whether each group and API key can view or edit the source configuration (see Resource Access):

1. In the Access Level column, select View or Edit for each available group.

2. On the left-hand side of the tab, if available, click Groups or API Keys to switch lists.

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.

     To add the source content or to make your changes effective, on the Sources page, you must click Start initial build or Start required rebuild in the source Status column.

     OR

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

     Back on the Sources page, you can review 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. Optionally, consider editing or adding mappings.

   You can only manage mapping rules once you build the source (see Refresh, Rescan, or Rebuild Sources).

3. If the crawling module is running in a different time zone than the database, you must modify the source JSON configuration from the Coveo Administration Console by adding the TzdbTimeZoneId parameter.

   The time zone of the crawled system is America/New_York; therefore you add the following to the source JSON configuration:

    "TzdbTimeZoneId": {
    "sensitive": false,
    "value": "America/New_York"
    }
   

For more information on the source JSON configuration, see Edit a Source JSON Configuration.

What’s Next?

• Adapt the source update schedule to your needs.

• Consider subscribing to deactivation notifications to receive an alert when a Crawling Module component becomes obsolete and stops the content crawling process.