Custom connectors
Note: Workplace Search was previously called Enterprise Search; you may still see the old name in some URLs.
Overview
A Workplace Search custom connector is Interact's technology for adding any documents to the search index of your intranet. You develop your own in-house applications that add documents from any other system into the Interact search engine using Interact's Workplace Search custom connector APIs.
Documents added using the APIs are added to Interact's search database and integrated into the central search experience (quick search, general search). They can be used within Interact's full feature set, surfaced in content widgets, Content Listing Blocks, and Interact Suggests, and @-mentioned, in the same way as a native document added manually by a content author.
From a user's perspective, the only difference between information stored in the intranet and information stored elsewhere is that selecting the result takes the user to the external system.
Getting started
To use custom connectors within Interact, create your own custom connector. The connector communicates with the Interact Workplace Search custom connector API. Using the API, you choose what is pushed into the search index and when. See Set up a custom connector.
API improvements
New custom connector APIs provide more fine-grained detail about the documents pushed to Interact, allowing for:
- The content type to be defined per document, not just at the connector level.
- Breadcrumb information to be defined per document. Each breadcrumb item can have its own text and distinct link URL.
- Additional metadata (taxonomy) to be included against each document, so that documents can be filtered in general search and in the Content Widget and Content Listing Block by that metadata.
- A list of external identities that a user must have to see the document within Interact.
Note: The new APIs support all the functionality of the legacy APIs and are the preferred APIs for adding documents to the search index. See Custom connector API.
Document-level security and permissions
For any document pushed to Interact using a custom connector, you can restrict access via the external identities mechanism. This restriction applies across all of Interact, including quick search, general search, content widgets, Content Listing Blocks, and @-mentioning.
When pushing a document to Interact, you can specify a list of external identities associated with that document. You can then use the custom connector APIs to specify which external identities a particular user has, so they can only see documents accessible by those same external identities within Interact.
This permissions system works separately from other groups, organisations, or permissions applied to a user within Interact. It allows fine-grained control of access that can be kept in sync with the external source system without conflicting with other permissions within Interact.
Note: The Workplace Search API is distinct from the REST API. You do not need to authenticate with the REST API to use Workplace Search.