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Kgastaldo
Kgastaldo
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 1, 2020
Solved

Federated Search with a Public Docs Website

  • October 1, 2020
  • 7 replies
  • 550 views

Hi All - Can someone direct me to documentation on this, if it exists? We’re looking to surface results from our public docs site within community search results. 

Is this something that can be done via API?

Thanks!

    Best answer by Julian

    Hey!

    I am afraid this will not be possible. We do not have a way to integrate federated search within the community - it would only work the other way around (so search community content on your public docs site). We currently only offer federated community search with a number of specific vendors, e.g. Zendesk.

    I am not sure what the limitation here is, but could be that the structure of the data needs to be in a certain format in order to be able to used for our community search. The least that I can do for you is to share your vision with the product team - maybe there will be a way to connect an external api for this purpose in the future then.

    7 replies

    Julian
    JulianAnswer
    Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    October 8, 2020

    Hey!

    I am afraid this will not be possible. We do not have a way to integrate federated search within the community - it would only work the other way around (so search community content on your public docs site). We currently only offer federated community search with a number of specific vendors, e.g. Zendesk.

    I am not sure what the limitation here is, but could be that the structure of the data needs to be in a certain format in order to be able to used for our community search. The least that I can do for you is to share your vision with the product team - maybe there will be a way to connect an external api for this purpose in the future then.

    I follow my nose, it always knows
    Kgastaldo
    KgastaldoAuthor
    Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    October 13, 2020

    Thanks for letting me know!

      triskaideka
      triskaideka
      Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
      June 14, 2021

      Is there any update from the product team on enabling federated search for generic repositories of information?  The exact same use case - federating search of online product documentation - is of interest to us also.

      Naively one would suppose that the federated site would need to:

      1. Provide a search URL into which the search term(s) can be inserted.
      2. Return search results in some format which can be enumerated by inSided’s search federation module.
        adam.ballhaussen
        adam.ballhaussen
        Helper ⭐️
        June 21, 2021

        I’m interested in understanding if this is possible as well. @Julian would it be possible to integrate a 3rd party federated search provider like Coveo in inSided? Essentially, we’d like to replace inSided’s search bar and search results page with a Coveo search bar + results page

        Adam B.
        M
        Marion Frecaut
        Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
        June 22, 2021

        Hello everyone! At the moment we are investigating different solution to have an easier to integrate external content into our federated search.

        Quick question for you: do the tools you would like to integrate in the federated search offer a public API?

         

          triskaideka
          triskaideka
          Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
          June 22, 2021

          In the case I’m currently interested in, we’re using the Sphinx sidebar which includes a search box.  That’s exposed as an HTML form (GET) with search results served back as a single HTML page.  Not sure whether Sphinx’s machinery offers alternative methods for accessing the same search, but it looks like we’re using it unadulterated.

          Ditte
          Ditte
          Helper ⭐️⭐️
          August 24, 2022

          This is an older topic, so I figured it would be of interest to other to know that this is now possible, with InSided’s new Federated Search API: 

           

          Currently rocking the Sonos Communities
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