Controlling automatic indexing when content changes

This article describes how to temporarily stop the automatic indexing process.

Why stop the automatic indexing process?

When content is changed (for example, published, moved to trash, and so on), by default, Episerver CMS sends a request to Episerver Search & Navigation (formerly Find) to save the change. At this point, an automatic index process indexes the changed item only, not the entire website. However, if a CMS user is editing an entire website or importing content, this process can create a large number of requests and jam the automatic indexing. In this case, you should disable automatic indexing until the editing is done, then reindex the website.

Disabling automatic indexing

Prerequisites

Episerver Search & Navigation is installed with following packages:
- Find
- Find.CMS
Access to and authorization to edit the website’s web.config file

To disable the automatic indexing process, follow these steps.

In the website’s web.config file, insert the following code under the <configuration><configSections> element:

<section name="episerver.find.cms" type="EPiServer.Find.Cms.Configuration, EPiServer.Find.Cms" requirePermission="false" />

Insert the following code under the <configuration> element:
```
<episerver.find.cms disableEventedIndexing="true" />
```

Re-enabling automatic indexing

To re-enable automatic indexing, set disableEventedIndexing to false.

Sample web.config file

Here is a sample of the web.config file, focusing on the Episerver Search & Navigation configuration. (Some parts are omitted for ease of review.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="episerver.find" type="EPiServer.Find.Configuration, EPiServer.Find" requirePermission="false" />
    <section name="episerver.find.cms" type="EPiServer.Find.Cms.Configuration, EPiServer.Find.Cms" requirePermission="false" />
    <section name="episerver.find.ui" type="EPiServer.Find.UI.FindUIConfiguration, EPiServer.Find.UI" requirePermission="false" />
  </configSections>
  <episerver.find.cms disableEventedIndexing="false" />
  <episerver.find serviceUrl="http://changethis.com" defaultIndex="changethis" />
  <episerver.find.ui clientSideResourceBaseUrl="http://changethis.com" />
</configuration>

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Last updated: May 14, 2019