Jan
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Written by:
howto
1/1/2011 9:46 PM
Actravia provides advanced integration capabilities with the Dotnetnuke search indexer. Presentation of the Dotnetnuke search results is completely configurable. Direct links to bookable events can be produced.
This functionality is available independent of the advanced search and super category extensions available for Actravia.
Search Results
Search results are configured on a per module basis. This means that if you have multiple instances of Actravia on your website, the search results can be customized for a module.
The search results are generated per event type and included all scheduled instances for an individual event type. Here is an example of search results from the demonstration site:
Figure 1: Sample Search Results
Search Settings
There are several items that need to be configured to generate the search results.
Search item title
The title for the search item can be generated from a tokenized value.
Link Alias
The search index works using the DNN scheduler which does not have a web context for the indexing. Therefore Actravia needs to force the scheduler to use a particular site alias to generate links. Use this setting to specify which portal alias should be used.
Search, No Scheduled Items
This is the html template to display when there are no scheduled events for an event descriptor.
Search Results Header, Item and Footer
The search results contain a header and footer with an item generated for each scheduled event. The example below demonstrates a table structure used to generate the results above. The tokens can be used to customize the results set.
Figure 2: Module Settings for Search Configuration
Running the Search Indexer
You can run the search indexer by choosing the DNN menu item Host->search admin. This method does provide a web context so is not an accurate simulation of the results expected with the scheduled search indexer. Later versions of DNN can run the scheduler for the search indexer in the Host->Scheduler section.
The Actravia search indexer relies on tokens. Tokens will be explained in more detail in a subsequent article.