Enhanced global search

This extension replace the standard global search with a faster and more accurate search.

• Users can improve results accuracy by specifying required, optional and denied words.
• Administrator can fine-tune the results relevance, by changing configuration parameters.
• It uses MySQL fulltext feature to perform the global search.

• This extension relies on MySQL full-text feature.
• It uses the main database configured for iTop.
• It doesn't search in archived object (N°4135)

• MySQL 5.6 or above
• Mariadb 10.0.5 or above
• iTop 2.5.0 or above

Use the Standard installation process for this extension.

After a first install or an upgrade of the extension from an incompatible one (for example upgrading from 1.2.8 or before to 2.0.0 or after) the search index will be erased. You'll have to re-synchronize the entries in the global search management screen or populate the index using a script.

array(
  'Organization' = 20,
  'Contact' = 15,
  'Location' = 1.2,
  'Ticket' = 1.0,
  'FunctionalCI' = 0.8,
)

configuration example 1

'combodo-fulltext-search' => array(
    'object_weight_factor' => array(
        'Organization' => 2.0,
        'Person' => 1.5,
        'Location' => 1.2,
        'SLT' => 0.8,
    ),
    'excluded_classes' => array(
       'Attachment',
    ),
),

configuration example 2

'combodo-fulltext-search' => array (
   'object_weight_factor' => array (
      'Organization' => 2.0,
      'Person' => 5.0,
      'Location' => 1.2,
      'SLT' => 0.8,
   ),
   'sentence_weight_factor' => 10.0,
   'mandatory_weight_factor' => 2.0,
   'start_with_weight_factor' => 0.5,
 
   // Max delay to re-index in realtime, 
   // above this it flags index entries as out of date,
   // they will be computed by the background task
   'max_interactive_index_update_time_in_sec' => 5,
   // Background task periodicity, should be more than iTop cron periodicity 
   'background_index_refresh_period_in_min' => 5,
   // Background task max time per run
   'background_max_indexation_time_in_min' => 1,  
 ),

• All the strings from an object will be indexed excepted:
  • External keys
  • External fields
  • Words less than 3 characters
• The friendly name of an object is indexed even if it depends on external fields
• IP Addresses are indexed and can be searched completely or partially (starts with)
  • Example: 10.10.0.255 will be indexed and can be searched using 10.10.0.255 or 10.10.0.*
• Email addresses are indexed:
  1. Fully (e.g. pablo.picasso@combodo.com)
  2. By name (e.g. pablo.picasso)
  3. By domain (e.g. combodo.com)
• HTML fields will be converted to text before indexing (the HTML tags and attributes won't be indexed)

Create, update or delete object

When ever a user create, update or delete an object in iTop, the extension will recompute the fulltext search indexes. If it cannot do it within max_interactive_index_update_time_in_sec second, it flags out-of-date indexes and they will be processed by the itop-cron using a background task.

You may see that warning message when you change an organization name for example, as it is present in most iTop objects, so a lot of indexes will have to be updated, more than what can be processed in a user acceptable delay

Searching for one word When searching for a single word (example: demo) the following searches are done:

1. The word: demo
2. The words starting with the search: demo*

Searching for multiple words

When searching for multiple words, (example: user-level lock) the following searches are done:

1. The exact sentence entered: “user_level lock”
2. All the words are present: +user_level +lock
3. At least one word is present: user_level lock

As - is a keyword to exclude a word, it is replaced by _ which is another keyword to represent any single character.

Computing weight

Each search is bringing points calculated by MySQL fulltext search, which are then weighted with the configuration parameters set.

To ensure that the search will be efficient within your iTop, there are additional actions for Administrator users:

• Global search management action which allow to rebuild the indexes after a change of configuration parameter: object_weight_factor.
• Debug action which display details on how the result ordering is generated, based on weight.

• user_level lock has a MySQL provided weight
• “user_level lock” has the above weight * sentence_weight_factor
• Total Score is the sum of the various scores * object_weight_factor

There is an administrator menu, which allow to

• see on-going status of re-indexation processing
• run re-indexation task
  • All the objects not indexed will be added to the search index
  • All the removed objects will be removed from the search index
  • All the existing entries will be re-indexed
  • The re-indexation process will be done in background task (launched by the CRON system)

During the indexation process, the current class being indexed is displayed on the screen.

Another alternative to using this administrative page within iTop, is to run in CLI the below scripts located in:

<itop_path>/env-production/combodo-fulltext-search/script

1. It puts your iTop under maintenance
2. Recreate the index table in database
3. Reopen access to your iTop (also global search will not respond)
4. Rebuild the fulltext index table

To prevent situation where the script and the cron would both try to recompute indexes at the same time, we have used a MySQL lock feature available (not Galera). If your database does not have the Lock support, you'll have to stop the CRON system during the full indexation.

Some distribution, overwrite the default MySQL/MariaDB value for the wait_timeout parameter and put 600 (seconds). That delay is not enough to populate indexes for a big database, as a result, the script will return “MySQL has gone away” which is the answer to the unlock request done by the script when it finishes. In reality, the work was done, indexes have been recomputed, the error is misleading, it's just the lock which could not be released, because after wait_timeout seconds of inactivity on that session, MySQL/MariaDB has decided it was useless to wait more, and released the lock.
⇒ To get rid of that error, just restore default value for wait_timeout (28 800).

• It does not put iTop under maintenance
• It takes every existing index, and re-index them one by one
• Missing index are created. So the script is adequate for an existing database on which you just installed the extension.
• It is useful to remove entries corresponding to recently archived objects

Just type the words in the global search field, then enter or click on the magnifier icon to get the result :

By default the search searchs on all Classes with category searchable, including abstract classes, such as Ticket, Contact or FunctionalCI.

Restrict previous search to a single class	Expend back to all classes

FunctionalCI:combodo

The class name can be the internal name (like FunctionalCI) of the display name in the current language used (like CI fonctionnel).

A menu allow to display some of the fields which have matched the requested pattern

On each returned object, you can request related objects:

1. How to give access to the Global Search Management screen ?
   • You can give access in Write mode to the resource : ResourceGlobalSearchManagement to give access to the menu and management screen