Ektron CMS400.Net Search

Over the years, and through many hours of swearing and gnashing of teeth, I have ammassed a substantial treasure-trove of wisdom dealing with the Ektron CMS400.net search. Therefore, I have decided to maintain this repository as a sort of "brain dump", primarily for my benefit in dealing with future issues that may arise, including but not limited to: system issues, programming issues, and cross platform issues.

Ektron Resoures

Before starting here, please read the search troubleshooting and online help for the catalogs and index files. You'll probably find something there to help you. Otherwise, feel free to continue.

Nuts and Bolts of Search

Ektron utilizes Windows Indexing Services for the bulk of its search. Key things to note: HTML and other text-based content are copied as TXT files with relevant searchable content to the [Assets] and [PrivateAssets] folders. Other asset types (PPT, DOC, XLS, PDF, etc) are parsed using ifilter technology and corresponding content and meta data are written to the actual file on upload and saved into the properties, comments and advanced properties of the document. Indexing Services then indexes all TXT and custom attributes of everything under the [Assets] and [PrivateAssets] folders.

Indexing Services

Verify Private/Public catalogs have been created for your site. Easiest way to regenerate everything from scratch, is to use the SearchConfigUI tool.

Also, make sure there are no orphaned catalogs lingering around in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Catalogs

Friendly Names

Ektron uses a friendly names mapping file (DefaultColumnFile) to map meta data keys, smart forms fields, and other search properties to index property names. The file is specified by the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndexCommon

Ektron [usually] registers their friendly names txt file under the following path.

Update - There is a template for the FriendlyNamesDefinitionFile.txt located in the "Utilities" folder for the specific version you are running.

C:\Windows\System32\FriendlyNamesDefinitionFile.txt

This file may not contain all meta data values for your CMS meta data. Verify all your meta data definitions have a record in this files (as well as the custom meta data search you are using.)

Learn more about the catalog and index files Ektron uses.

Metaconfig.doc

Ektron caches Microsoft Office document meta data definitions in the metaconfig.doc file. Confirm the necessary custom properties are defined in the metaconfig.doc. Also confirm that your assets actually have values for these properties saved internally.

Incidentally, I've noticed this file is the same for all sites being hosted on a single server. I imagine that has to due with the single friendly names file that aggregates all custom properties.

Conclusion

Like eSync, search, when functioning on all cylinders, is great (and speedy). However, if any one of these systems fail, you may be looking at hours of troubleshooting. Nine times out of ten, the SearchConfigUI tool will fix it. However, for those times where it does not, you can use this reference to dig into each system and verify everything is running smoothly.

Happy searching!