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Enabling the External Source in Sitecore

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In this article
Note

This page assumes that you have already indexed an external source in the Coveo Enterprise Search (CES) Administration Tool. For more information on how to do that, see Configuring an External Source.

After having indexed your external source in the CES Administration Tool, you need to enable it in Sitecore.

Note

This page assumes that you have already indexed an external source in the Cloud Coveo Platform. For more information on how to do that, see Configuring an External Source.

After having indexed your external source in the Coveo Platform, you need to enable it in Sitecore.

To enable the source that you have just created

  1. Access your Coveo-Powered Search Page item.

    Note

    To learn how to create a Coveo-Powered Search Page, see Inserting and Customizing a Search Interface Component or Inserting Coveo Search Components to an Existing Item.

  2. On the Publish tab, select the Experience Editor.

  3. Open the Coveo Search box by clicking the page.

  4. Click Edit Properties. It should be the first option.

    It should be the first option | Coveo for Sitecore 4

  5. In the Control Properties panel, in Results scope, under Filter expression rules, add the rule or where syssource field is equal to <name of your source>.

    Important

    The Rule Set Editor is only available to Enterprise edition users. To learn how to add a filter expression rule programmatically, see Setting Up External Sources Programmatically.
    To learn how to add a filter expression rule programmatically see Setting Up External Sources Programmatically | Coveo for Sitecore 4

  6. Scroll to External Content, and type in the name of your source.

    Scroll to External Content and type in the name of your source | Coveo for Sitecore 4

  7. Click OK. The page should refresh, showing you results coming from Sitecore and your external source.

    The page should refresh showing you results coming from Sitecore and your external source | Coveo for Sitecore 4

To enable the external source

  1. Open your Coveo-powered search page (or search results page, if you’re redirecting searches from a global search box) in the Sitecore Experience Editor.

  2. Select the Coveo Search Interface component.

  3. In the floating toolbar, select Edit the rendering’s data source. It should be the leftmost option in the toolbar.

  4. In the External Content section, type the name of your external source.

    In the External Content section type the name of your external source | Coveo for Sitecore 4

  5. Click OK.

  6. Save and publish your item.

  7. Only if you’re using the April 2016 release of Coveo for Sitecore, add the following pipeline in your Coveo.CloudPlatformClient.Custom.config file, in the sitecore node.

    <pipelines>
   <getSearchUserIdentities>
   <!-- The AddAnonymousEmailUserIdentity allows to retrieve the public documents from the external sources. -->
      <processor name="AddAnonymousEmailUserIdentity" type="Coveo.CloudPlatformClient.Processors.GetSearchUserIdentities.AddAnonymousEmailUserIdentity, Coveo.CloudPlatformClient" />
   </getSearchUserIdentities>
</pipelines>

Your external source is now enabled.

Important

Depending on the filtering you have set up (for example, in the Coveo Search Interface component data source, in the Coveo Tab component data sources, or in a targeted Query Pipeline), documents from your external source may or may not appear in search results.

Example

In the Coveo Search Interface component data source, you have added a where the item has layout query filter rule. Because this rule pertains specifically to Sitecore items, external content items don’t meet that rule and are filtered out of the search results.

If all your external source documents are being filtered out of the search results unwantedly, you need to adjust your filtering rules (see Adjusting Filtering Rules to Include External Content in Search Results).

Adjusting Filtering Rules to Include External Content in Search Results

You might face a situation where your external content documents are unwantedly being filtered out of search results. You might also need to specify only one or a few external sources to be included in your search results. In both cases, you need to adjust your filtering to include a rule that uses the Coveo for Sitecore syssource field.

Example

Documents from an external source aren’t appearing in your search results when viewing a tab you labeled All Content, in your search page. You want your search results to include external source documents. You have an Enterprise Cloud Coveo for Sitecore license and have isolated the issue to be the where the item has layout query filter rule set on the All Content tab data source.

To display external source documents in your All Content tab search results

  1. In the Experience Editor, select the All Content tab component.

  2. In the floating toolbar of the selected component, select Edit the rendering’s data source. It should be the leftmost option in the toolbar.

  3. In the Query Filter section, under Filter expression rules, add the rule or where syssource field is equal to <NAME_OF_YOUR_EXTERNAL_SOURCE>.

    In the Query Filter section under Filter expression rules add the rule or where syssource field is equal to…​ | Coveo for Sitecore 4

  4. Save your changes.

  5. Open your Coveo.SearchProvider.Custom.config file in a text editor.

  6. Locate the /fieldMap/externalFields element.

  7. Within this element, add the following patch to change the isSourceSpecific attribute value on the syssource field name to false.

    <fieldType fieldName="syssource" >
  <patch:attribute name="isSourceSpecific" value="false" />
</fieldType>
    Note

    If you don’t set the syssource field name to isSourceSpecific="false", the field name syssource you specified in your filtering rule is translated in the advanced query (aq) parameter of the search API call, as illustrated below.

    If you don’t set the syssource field name to isSourceSpecific="false" the field name syssource you specified in your…​ | Coveo for Sitecore 4

    Having the field name you specified translated this way makes your or filtering rule ineffective.

  8. Refresh your search page in the Experience Editor. When viewing the All Content tab, you should now have results coming from your external source.

  9. Publish your search page.

Filtering on External Collection Instead of Source

If you have many external sources in the same collection, you may want to filter them directly on the external collection instead. Filtering on the external collection shows all the documents in the sources contained in the collection.

Instead of specifying an external source name, you can choose to filter by collection in the Coveo Search component properties.

Instead of specifying an external source name you can choose to filter by collection in the Coveo Search component properties | Coveo for Sitecore 4

What’s next?

Now that your content is searchable in your Sitecore instance, you may want to proceed to Using External Content in Sitecore Facets.