Defining on-line form indexes

On-line form indexes allow you to search through the data that website visitors submit through forms.

Note: Form indexes are only available as locally stored indexes (not as Azure Search indexes).

Adding forms to indexes

After you create an on-line form index in the Smart search application, define which forms the index includes:

  1. Assign the index to one or more websites on the Sites tab of the index editing interface.

  2. Open the Indexed content tab and click Add on-line form.

    1. Select the Site that contains the required form (if the index is assigned to multiple websites).
    2. Select the On-line form.
    3. (Optional) Set a Where condition for the queries that the system uses to load the form’s data when building the index. Allows you to limit which form records are included in the search index.
    4. Click Save.

You can add any number of forms to a single on-line form index.

  1. Switch to the General tab and Rebuild the index.

Adding a form to a search index

Configuring search settings for form fields

Each form has a different set of fields and stores different types of data. You can configure exactly how the system searches through the fields of individual forms and how the form data appears in the search results. We recommend indexing only necessary fields to keep your indexes as small (and fast) as possible.

  1. Open the Forms application.

  2. Edit () the form that you want to configure.

  3. Open the Search tab.

  4. Make sure that the Search is enabled option is selected.

  5. In the Field mapping for search results section, specify how the system displays the form’s records in search results. See Mapping fields for search results for detailed information.

    Note: The final appearance of the results always depends on your site’s search interface implementation.

  6. Configure how the smart search indexes the form’s fields. You can set the following options for individual fields:

    Content

    If selected, the content of the field is indexed and searchable in the standard way. Within search indexes, the values of all fields with the Content option enabled are combined into a system field named _content (this field is used to find or filter matching search items, but is NOT suitable for reading and displaying human-readable information such as search result extracts).

    For the purposes of standard search, Content fields are automatically tokenized by the analyzer of the used search index.

    Searchable

    If selected, the field is stored separately within indexes and its content can be searched using expressions in format:

    <field code name>:<searched phrase>

    See Smart search syntax for more information about field searches.

    Fields must be set as Searchable to be usable in search result filtering or ordering conditions.

    Tokenized

    Relevant for Searchable fields. Indicates if the content of the field is processed by the analyzer when indexing. This allows the search to find results that match individual tokens (subsets) of the field’s value. If disabled, the search only returns items if the full value of the field exactly matches the search expression.

    If a field has both the Content and Searchable options enabled, the Tokenized option only affects the content used for field searches (content is always automatically tokenized for the purposes of standard search).

    Custom search name

    Relevant for Searchable fields. The specified value is used as a substitute for the field code name in <field code name>:<searched phrase> search expressions.

    Note: If you enter a Custom search name value, the original field name cannot be used.

  7. Click Save.

  8. Rebuild all indexes that contain the given form.

When running searches using on-line form indexes, the system returns results according to the field search settings of individual forms.