Troubleshooting the search index

If you are having problems with the ThoughtFarmer search index, check the Symptom section below. If you are experiencing one or more of these symptoms on your intranet, follow the solutions below to resolve the problem.

Symptom

• No results are displayed on search results pages
• Search results are incomplete or greatly inaccurate
• No results are displayed within the People Directory
• People or security groups are not populating Security or Following dialogs

Problem

The index has become corrupt or out-of-date. This may occur due to one or several of the following reasons:

• Indexing errors (e.g. index name is incorrect or missing)
• Elastic Search settings have been misconfigured
• Index files are being locked by anti-virus software.

Solution 1: Targeted reindexing

1. Note the title of the missing content. Also note down the URL, if possible e.g. intranet.domain.com/content/1234.
2. Visit the ThoughtFarmer Admin Panel: Search section > Search settings page > Index tab. Click the Reindex content button.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. In the Reindex content window, locate the content by entering the title in the search box and selecting it from the results.
   • If the content is either a News post or a user profile, we recommend searching for/selecting the parent page of the content. For a News post, this would be News page to which it was posted. For a user profile, this is the employee directory page (the URL for this page is always [site_URL]/People).
     
     
     
   • If the content is not found, try searching by the URL e.g. intranet.domain.com/People.
     
     
     
     
4. With the content selected, enable the Include Children checkbox and click Reindex.
   
   
   
   
5. Note the number of queued items under the Rebuild Search Index section and allow a few minutes for this number to reach zero. When complete, your content should display and be findable in search.
   
   

Solution 2: Rebuild the search index

If the steps under Solution 1: Targeted reindexing don't resolve the issue, try rebuilding the search index.

1. Check that the ElasticSearch Windows service is running if you are on-premise client​.
2. Rebuild the Search Index from the Admin panel: Search section > Search settings page, Index tab. You should see messages saying that indices are rebuilding successfully.
   
   
   
   
3. For self-hosted clients: If you see failures above please check the system logs for relevant messages and send them to the helpdesk. (Admin Panel: Logs & statistics section > System Logs page)