Configuring Fields to Improve Search Relevance in SAS Visual Investigator
Visual Investigator is a versatile solution platform used for a wide variety of industries and business needs. Data objects in Visual Investigator are highly configurable, and there are several ways in which administrators can configure entity fields to improve search relevance, indexing, and performance. We'll explore several of them in this post.
Fielded searches and free text searches
There are two types of searches in Visual Investigator: fielded searches, and free text searches.
Field text searches specify one or more fields in addition to query terms. For example, when a user performs an Advanced Search in the Investigate and Search interface and selects an entity type and the appropriate fields, they are conducting a fielded search.
An Advanced Search on the Home Claim entity, using the Policy Owner Name field
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In contrast, a free text search searches for the query terms in any and all fields that are configured for free text searching. This is equivalent to a basic search in Investigate and Search.
a basic search in Visual Investigator for "Sebastian"
When creating and configuring entities to represent data, you should take data types into account and whether or not a particular field's data might be searched as part of a free text, or fielded search. This can ensure search results are more relevant.
Note that the index size increases when fields are included in free text searching. It is advantageous to be selective about which fields are configured for free text searching. This is especially true for entities with many child objects and fields, because free-text searching consumes a lot of indexing resources.
The default in Visual Investigator is to determine whether or not the field should be included in free text searching according to the field type. In Environment Manager, you can set which types to be included by default with the includeInAllFieldTypes setting.
You can also override this type-specific setting by choosing to include or exclude the field in free text searching on an individual field basis. For example, even if you were to exclude numeric data by default, if you configure a numeric field such that "True" is selected for "Include in free text searches", it will override the default from includeInAllFieldTypes.
Analyze for Search
If Analyze for Search is checked, then a searcher can use partial matching, fuzzy searching, and search for phrases that do not exactly match that field. You can select which analyzer you would like to use for the field text if you do not want to use the default. The default is dependent on the locale and is tailored to the relevant language of the field.
A fielded search on Claim Type using an exact match for the field: "Theft: Home"
Some fields will only be searched as part of a free text search. In this case, you might want to conserve index resources and configure the field so that Analyze for Search is not selected. If users perform a fielded search on a field where the analyzer is not applied to the data in that field when it is indexed, then they will not get a match unless the query matches the data exactly or a wildcard is used.
Empty search results for a fielded search on Claim Type, query: "theft"
Display Text Snippets in the Detail View
An administrator can configure the entity under Detail View to configure how the snippet text is displayed under the search results. While this is the default for basic searches, you can configure the snippet text configuration for fielded searches.
In addition to choosing which fields to include snippets from, you can configure the number of sections to display and the character length of the snippet.
Notice the difference between these fielded searches on the claim description field. In the first example, two claims are returned, but the user does not have any context for why each entity was returned in the search, or even which field the search term was found in if multiple fields are specified in the search.
Results from a fielded search on Claim Description for "smoke"
In the second example, the text snippet has been configured under the Detail View, so the description of the claim is displayed as a text snippet in the fielded search results.
Fielded Search on Claim Description for "smoke" with a text snippet displayed for the field that provides
more context on the query. The second snippet reads: "Candle left burning knocked over by
policyholder's cat ignited a small fire that left smoke damage throughout the home"
the search result snippet provided more context
for the query
This is just the beginning of configuring entities and searching in Visual Investigator.
For more information on using and configuring the solution, see the Visual Investigator Administrators Guide, the Users Guide, and the Communities.
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