Troubleshooting the search index

If you are experiencing search abnormalities on your intranet, review the symptoms below to diagnose the issue and implement the appropriate remediation path.

Review this checklist to determine if your search index is malfunctioning:

• No results are displayed on search results pages.
• Search results are incomplete or highly inaccurate.
• No results are returned within the People Directory.
• Users or security groups are failing to populate in the "Security" or "Following" dialog boxes.

Root causes

A search index can become corrupt or out of date due to several environmental variables:

• Indexing configurations: The designated index name is incorrect or missing within the application settings.
• Service misconfiguration: Underlying Elasticsearch settings have been modified incorrectly.
• Security software interference: Active anti-virus or endpoint detection software is locking the index files on the host server.

Solution 1: Targeted reindexing

• Identify and document the title and exact URL of the missing content (e.g., intranet.domain.com/content/1234).
• Navigate to the Admin panel > Search > Search settings and select the Index tab. 
• Click the Reindex content button at the bottom of the page.
  
• In the configuration window, locate the target content by typing its title into the search field.
  
• Note: If the missing item is a news post or a user profile, we recommend searching for and selecting its parent page. 
  • For a news post, select the specific corporate news page where it was published. 
  • For a user profile, select the primary employee directory page (typically [site_URL]/People).
    
• If the asset cannot be found by title, execute the search using its absolute URL (e.g., intranet.domain.com/People).
• Once the content is selected, check the Include children box and click Reindex.
• Monitor the processing queue under the Rebuild search index section. Wait a few minutes for the total number of queued items to reach zero. Once cleared, verify that the content is searchable.
   

Solution 2: Rebuild the search index

If targeted reindexing fails to resolve the issue, or if the search failure is systemic across the entire intranet, a full index rebuild is required.

• For on-premise deployments: Open your server management console and verify that the Elasticsearch Windows service status is explicitly set to Running.
• Navigate to the Admin panel > Search > Search settings and open the Index tab.
• Click Rebuild index. 
  • The status dashboard should display processing confirmations indicating that the indices are rebuilding successfully.
    
• For on-premise deployments only: If the interface returns processing errors or fails to complete, navigate to Admin panel > Logs & statistics > System logs. Extract the relevant exception errors from the log files and escalate them to the ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk for support.