Faceted Search Enhancements

Summary

The following enhancements to STEP's faceted-search functionality have been made as part of the 2023.3 release and are described in the Details section:

  • Elasticsearch version support update.

  • Elasticsearch now supports entities, making the solution more consistent across various solutions.

  • Elasticsearch now supports data container data for products and entities. In addition, the Web UI search screen has been optimized for displaying data container data.

Details

Elasticsearch version support update with required upgrade

STEP now supports Elasticsearch version 8.8.2 and higher. Improvements made in this version will make it easier to maintain for future enhancements.

For more information, refer to the Initial Setup for Elasticsearch topic in the Web User Interfaces documentation and the 2023.3 (11.3) Upgrade Guide.

Added support for entities in Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch can now display entity data. Such as with other available object super types, entity object types can now be selected during configuration, indexed by Elasticsearch, and the resulting data can then be displayed on a search screen in Web UI. Previously, only product, classification, and asset data could be used with Elasticsearch.

For more information, refer to the Creating an Elasticsearch Configuration topic in the Web User Interfaces documentation.

Added support for data containers in Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch can now display data container data for products and entities. The attributes and reference attributes of a data container can be selected during configuration and indexed by Elasticsearch. The resulting data can then be displayed on a search screen in Web UI, which now includes additional configuration options for displaying data container attributes and references.

For more information, refer to the Creating an Elasticsearch Configuration topic in the Web User Interfaces documentation.

Once a set of data container attributes have been configured as facets on a search screen, users will be able to search for entities based on these attribute values. To account for the inclusion of data containers, the Web UI Search Screen has received cosmetic adjustments, including a dividing line that should help the user differentiate between attributes that belong to different data containers.

For more information, refer to the Search Screen Search Configuration topic in the Web User Interfaces documentation.

For additional information on faceted search updates related to entities and data containers, view the video below: