Workplace Search Custom Connectors

What is a Workplace Search Custom Connector?

A Workplace Search Custom Connector (formerly known as Enterprise Search) is Interact's technology for allowing any documents to be added to the search index of your intranet. It allows you to develop your own custom in-house applications that will add documents from any other system into the Interact search engine by using Interact's Workplace Search Custom Connector APIs.

By adding documents using the APIs, they will be added to Interacts search database allowing them to be fully integrated into the central search experience (quick search, general search). The documents can be used within Interact's full feature set, allowing them to be surfaced in Content Widgets, Content Listing Blocks, Interact Suggests and be @mentioned - in exactly the same way as if it was a native document within Interact, which was manually added by a content author.

From a user’s perspective, the only difference between information stored in the intranet and information stored elsewhere is that clicking the result will take the user to the external system.

Getting Started

In order to use Workplace Search Custom Connectors within Interact, you will need to create your own Custom Connector. This Custom Connector will communicate with the Interact Workplace Search Custom Connector API. Using the API, you will then be able to choose what is pushed into the search index and when.

API Improvements

Recently, new Workplace Search Custom Connector APIs have been introduced to allow much more fine grained details about the documents being pushed to Interact, which allow for

• The Content Type to be defined per document (not just at the Custom Connector level)
• Breadcrumb information can now be defined per document. Each breadcrumb item can have its own text and distinct link url.
• Additional meta data (Taxonomy) can be included against each document for the purposes of
  • Allowing documents to be filtered in General Search by the additional meta data
  • Allowing documents to be filtered in the Content Widget and the Content Listing Block
• A list of External Identities that a user must have to be able to see the document within Interact

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The new APIs support all of the same functionality of the legacy APIs, and are the preferred APIs for adding documents to the search index.

Document Level Security and Permissions

For any document that is pushed to Interact using Workplace Search Custom Connectors, you can restrict access to the document 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 a specific document.

You can then use the Workplace Search Custom Connector APIs to specify which External Identities a particular user has, which would allow them to be able to see only documents accessible by those same External Identities within Interact.

This permissions system works completely separately to other groups, organisations or permissions that have been applied to a user within Interact - and allows for fine grained control of access which can be kept in sync with the external source system without conflicting with other permissions within interact.

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Workplace Search vs the REST API

It's worth pointing out that the Workplace Search API is completely distinct from the REST API.

You do not need to authenticate with the REST API in order to use Workplace Search