Introducing Optimizely Graph indexing modes for CMS Content properties
In the current release of Optimizely Graph CMS integration packages, we introduced a new feature called indexing modes for CMS content properties, you can read how to configure the indexing modes for individual properties here.
The indexing modes can be set to a property in a typed content model by adding a C# attribute to the property. At the time of this writing, only typed models are supported and support for untyped models may come in the future.
The two available indexing modes at the moment are
- OutputOnly: the property will be stored in the content in Optimizely Graph, however it cannot be used to filter contents, it will not be possible to find the content by the values of the property using fulltext search, either (AKA not searchable).
- Default: the property can be retrieved, can be used to filter contents (using where), but not searchable.
An example of such configuration is
[GraphProperty(PropertyIndexingMode.OutputOnly)]
[Searchable]
public virtual string Title { get; set; }Notice how the property is set to be searchable by the attribute [Searchable] in CMS, however the indexing mode will override the [Searchable] attribute and the Title property ends up not searchable and not filterable.
What is the motivation for these indexing modes?
By default, most properties are searchable and filterable when indexed to Optimizely Graph, however for most of the properties in contents, being able to filter or search by them is not necessary. To make properties filterable and searchable, extra processing and data need to be handled by Optimizely Graph, this affects performance and costs.
So as a CMS/Optimizely Graph customer, it is of your interest to set most of your properties to OutputOnly mode, so that the values can be retrieved and displayed, while reducing load in Optimizely Graph and as a result improving the performance in both indexing and querying operations. Optimizely Graph also has some limitations on the maximum number of properties that are searchable and indexable, so if you run into this issue setting most of your properties to OutputOnly will solve it.
The feature should be available in Optimizely Graph CMS integration package version 3.6.0. Please check it out.
what about for headless implementations with no strongly typed content types.
For the time being we are supporting typed models and no support for untyped models is available yet.
If you don't run into issues with the limit of maximum number of filterable fields, then it's still fine to have most fields filterable at the moment. We may have support for untyped models in the future.