Search in attachment of business objects using enterprise search

Is anyone puzzled that CRM enterprise search could not consider attachment in its search scope? The good news is, from CRM 7.0 Ehp3 SP02, attachment information such as content, name, description, file name could also be considered when executing ES, furthermore matched attachments are indicated on the search result view! Sound interesting, right? Now let me give you a brief introduction about this new feature and how to enable it.

1 Enterprise search in business object attachments, how it works

Besides other normal attributes of a business object, we now include its attachments in ES. Taking account simple search for example, if account A has several attachments, and some of their content contain the key word “kw_acc02”, when searching for accounts with key word “kw_acc02”, the account A could be searched out in result view, and an additional column “Matched Attachments” shows an icon indicating that there are attachments matching the search key word, with a tool tip indicating the exact number of matched attachments.

If there are no matched attachment, the column “Matched Attachments” would be empty. The new feature does not affect original ES functionality.

Matched Attachments can be opened directly by clicking the icon. If there are more than one attachment, a list of them would be popped up.

Not only attachment content is supported in the search, but also its name, description and file name are supported too. Please note that for binary attachment such as video, audio and picture, only its name, description and file name are supported. Attachment content search is supported for most of common text based format such as .txt, .doc, .pdf, .xls, .ppt and etc.

2 How to enable search in attachment for standard supported business objects

Search in attachment is available for  the following business objects: accounts, contacts, activities, opportunities and installed bases in standard delivery.

The overall feature can be switched on/off by BF CRM_ES_BY_ATTACHMENT. Besides this, enabling is also supported on individual business object type level. Following configuration path: Customer Relationship Management->UI Framework->Enterprise Search Integration->Enable Search in Business Object Attachments, you can enable a specific object type by checking the “Searchable” field.

Upon saving after you change the “Searchable” field, you will be prompted to schedule a full indexing job for the corresponding application model connectors in Connector Administration Cockpit, this is to make attachment data indexed on TREX side. Another important point is that, matched attachments display on ES result view is based on virtual model which is a special kind of ES model, therefore you must also create a corresponding virtual model connector in the Connector Administration Cockpit as well. For detail information, you could refer to its IMG activity documentation.

3 How to enable search in attachment for other business objects

Customer is capable to enhance other business objects to support search in attachment other than the objects listed above on its own business need. Note 1950354 provides guide for this enhancement, and from Note 1949699 you can get the list of business objects that can be enabled with the search in attachment function. Additionally, enablement for ICM case is described separately in note 1944566, and that of product and individual object is in note 1960753.

That’s the main functions of this feature, if you are interested, you can start with note 1977197. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

Your questions and suggestions are always welcome!^-^

Best Regard

Song