Index Storage

[samwoo]

Hi all,

Hope all is well, I haven't been as active on the forums as I would have liked... Just posting here and there every now and then. Very busy end of financial year!

Query 1 
Can you advise on how often we should re-index storage and why we should do it? I've just updated the Service Manager (haven't done so for a while now as very busy) and one of the things advised due to one of the updates was to re-index the hornbillitsm storage. This is for the feature that would allow us to search owners and customers of a request.

Query 2
Would not having ever done the re-indexing be the reason why the search function to search for a request is... wrong often? For example when I search for a specific keyword to find a request, particularly in the last few months, we've been getting results not even related to the search, even when narrowing the search to services and request type. Here's hoping that re-indexing will fix this, as well as allowing the new feature to be used.

When i ran it, i had the option to choose New and All. I used All, but now I am not sure if I should have done or not. At least i'm doing it out of hours.

I went to look on the wiki just to be safe: https://wiki.hornbill.com/index.php/Index_Storage but there is no information even though there is a couple of links on the wiki to this page.

Request
Can someone update this page on Hornbill and/or explain about re-indexing the storage, why we should do it, which ones we should do it for and how often we should do it? Also is there a way to monitor it so we can see when the re-indexing is completed?

Many thanks,

Samuel

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Samuel

Thanks for your questions.  Re-indexing is something that you shouldn't normally need to do.  Occasionally we do add a new feature related to searching so now and again you will see a mention that a re-index is needed.  The recent feature that you mention was the addition of customer and organisation in the Search Tools for the Global Search.There is a wiki page on the Global Search for Requests.  Also some nice advanced search options described there.

If you get some strange search results, or more likely the case you don't see a result that you are expecting then a re-index might help.  

You are right by using the All option in this case.  The 'All'' can take a long time so it is recommend to do out of hours.  The New option will just index new records that are missing from the index since the last index.

Great to hear that you are looking on the wiki and my apologies for this very empty looking page that you mention above.  I will look to get this updated and post back here once done.

[samwoo]

1 hour ago, James Ainsworth said:

Hi Samuel

Thanks for your questions.  Re-indexing is something that you shouldn't normally need to do.  Occasionally we do add a new feature related to searching so now and again you will see a mention that a re-index is needed.  The recent feature that you mention was the addition of customer and organisation in the Search Tools for the Global Search.There is a wiki page on the Global Search for Requests.  Also some nice advanced search options described there.

If you get some strange search results, or more likely the case you don't see a result that you are expecting then a re-index might help.  

You are right by using the All option in this case.  The 'All'' can take a long time so it is recommend to do out of hours.  The New option will just index new records that are missing from the index since the last index.

Great to hear that you are looking on the wiki and my apologies for this very empty looking page that you mention above.  I will look to get this updated and post back here once done.

Hi James,

Brilliant thank you for the response. It's great that when a new feature like this is released that you do mention that we will need to re-index in the change log, but I did get a bit confused with All and New, so I used All as it sounds just right for the new feature as well as the odd search results we get. Thankfully I did the right one - cheer for confirming .

I will keep an eye on the search results from time to time, but since it's been quite a while since we turned on Hornbill, and that we've never had to re-index, then it's likely that I wont need to worry about using this for quite some time unless you specify in your change logs.

Looking forward to the Wiki getting updated. It's my primary source of info if I need to find something quickly, and of course so is the forum.

Many thanks,

Samuel

[James Ainsworth]

Samuel,

I've added some of this content to the wiki page listed here. 

Regards,

James

[samwoo]

15 hours ago, James Ainsworth said:

Samuel,

I've added some of this content to the wiki page listed here. 

Regards,

James

Hi @James Ainsworth,

Many thanks for taking the time to do this on the Wiki. The information on there is very clear, and I now know what each of the different things that can be indexed are.

When I ran the indexing the other night (the same night i posted on here), users were saying that the search results have definitely improved when searching for a request, however there was some searches that were not being picked up.

For example, a request was raised approximately a month ago by a co-worker, and the request title had something along the lines of "Request for Balanced Transactions report".

When my colleague tried to search for this request multiple times, using the keyword "Balance" and "Balanced" and narrowing the search down to the user who raised the request (great feature by the way), nothing was showing. She then used a view in the Request list to narrow the visible requests raised to ones by this user and had to look for the one titled Balanaced Transaction report, she found it.

Is it likely we will need to run the Index again?

Many thanks,

Samuel

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Samuel,

That is good news that your search results have improved and that you like the new options for searching by customer.  

Regarding the one request, I would have thought that the re-index that you performed would have included this request if it had been raised over a month ago.  I'm not sure if another re-index would help here.  It would be interesting to understand what association your colleague had with this particular request.  Was she on the same team that the request was assigned to?  Was she on a team that supports the service that the request was assigned to?  Or was she added as a member of the request and wasn't part of the team or service support.  Without creating a View, she should have also been able to find this using the Filter at the top of the request list.

Regards,

James