About

• Search Appliance
• Searchable Content

Guides and Tips

• for Web Authors
• for Server Admins
• for Search Managers

Contact

• Apply for a Custom Search Page
• Make a Request or Report a Problem
• Support Team

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Guides for Search Managers

If you have been designated as a search manager for your organization, you will log in to the Admin Console of the Search Appliance to manage the front end and collection belonging to your custom search page. The Admin Console provides context-sensitive Help links for nearly every Search Appliance feature available to you. Please check those built-in Help documents first if you are having trouble.

Front End

A front end is the interface your web visitors will use when searching over your collection. The front end consists of a logo for your organization, search parameters, KeyMatch phrases to promote specific pages, Synonyms to catch common misspellings, and filters to limit search results.

• Designing your front end format and appearance
• Limiting the search results returned by your front end

Collection

A collection is a subset of all pages indexed by the Search Appliance. You configure your collection to include URL patterns matching all Web pages within your organization. URL patterns make it easy to include entire Web sites and sections of Web sites in one step. Note that it may take several hours for the Search Appliance to populate your collection with documents from the main index after you add new URL patterns.

• Using advanced URL patterns, inclusion and exclusion

Search Forms

You may want to include a small search box on your Web site's pages, which, when submitted, goes to your front end and searches over your collection. The alternative would be to provide a search link on your Web site that would take visitors directly to your front end to enter their search terms.

• Searching against your front end and collection

Database-driven Web Pages

Do you have several Web pages that are served by a single template script? The Search Appliance may not find and index all of the pages if they are not all linked from other crawled pages.

• Indexing database-driven Web pages

Status and Reports

• Finding problematic URLs in the crawl diagnostics

Your Account

If you change your password on the Search Appliance, please make sure that it is a strong password (difficult to guess) and that it is not the same as your U of M Internet password or Enterprise password.

• Choosing a Good Password (OIT Security)