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Documentation
This Help Center provides documentation on all aspects of the HCL Commerce+ product, from installation and deployment to operating and customization.
Extending
Using Commerce+'s xC programming model, you can use HCL-provided extension points to extend existing Commerce logic. You can implement these extensions with the xC Customization toolkit provided by HCL. Commerce+ also provides Packaged Business Capability integrations that extend the product's reach and functionality.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize Commerce+.
Search
Commerce+ comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in Commerce+ provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. The Commerce Search Elasticsearch microservices manage indexing and other crucial tasks, with no performance impact on the storefront or transaction server.
Solr-based solution
In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine and the Elasticsearch search engine. The indexing pipeline is a more open, flexible and scalable and is tightly integrated with the data service. Using the underlying dataflow technology and architecture, you can easily customize the pipelines. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.
Search services and interactions
Commerce Search includes several key services and interaction areas, including the search interface, programming model, and its interactions with other Commerce components.
Search-based navigation
Search-based navigation enhances starter stores by performing searches against categories when you browse a storefront catalog. All immediate categories and products are returned in the results, and can also include subcategories to increase its scope.

Documentation
This Help Center provides documentation on all aspects of the HCL Commerce+ product, from installation and deployment to operating and customization.
- Overview
  Welcome to the HCL Commerce+ overview. Explore these feature overviews to learn how Commerce+ operates. Refer to the related links listed at the end of each topic to access expanded product documentation.
- Deploying
  This section provides details on deploying HCL Commerce+. It explains how to download the Docker images and Git bundles that comprise the product, how to create a minimal environment, and how to plan for a full deployment. It details supported software versions, patches, and configurations to ensure the platform performs well.
- Migrating
  The following topics show how to migrate an existing HCL Commerce Version 9.1 environment to Commerce+. The process consists of an initial migration of your database contents. This is followed by a code migration. Both are fully described.
- Operating
  The topics in this section focus on tasks that are performed by business users, marketers, and customer support representatives to connect with partners and attract and satisfy customers.
- Administering
  The site administrator performs the tasks needed to support day to day operations of the Commerce+ site.
- Extending
  Using Commerce+'s xC programming model, you can use HCL-provided extension points to extend existing Commerce logic. You can implement these extensions with the xC Customization toolkit provided by HCL. Commerce+ also provides Packaged Business Capability integrations that extend the product's reach and functionality.
  - Customizing
    The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize Commerce+.
    - Search
      Commerce+ comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in Commerce+ provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. The Commerce Search Elasticsearch microservices manage indexing and other crucial tasks, with no performance impact on the storefront or transaction server.
      - Search terminology
        Commerce+ Search uses a number of specialized terms. A concise list of the most commonly used terms is provided to get you started.
      - Elasticsearch-based solution
        The topics in this section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize the Elasticsearch-based search solution. You can extend the search-migration/tutorials/concepts/csdelasticsearch.html and Query Service to meet your business requirements.
      - Solr-based solution
        In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine and the Elasticsearch search engine. The indexing pipeline is a more open, flexible and scalable and is tightly integrated with the data service. Using the underlying dataflow technology and architecture, you can easily customize the pipelines. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.
        Search customization for server containers
        The product Search server runs in its own Linux-based container. The containers use Docker technology. All servers share workspaces in the Windows-based development environment, simplifying the development process. After you develop and test your code in the workspace, you can deploy it in new containers.
        URI and Query Parameters Encoding
        When working with Commerce Search APIs, it is important to understand how URI paths and query parameters are encoded. Proper encoding ensures that requests are interpreted correctly by the server and that special characters are handled consistently across systems. Incorrect and inconsistent encoding can lead to unexpected search results, misinterpreted query parameters, or request errors, especially when working with accented characters.
        Search services and interactions
        Commerce Search includes several key services and interaction areas, including the search interface, programming model, and its interactions with other Commerce components.
        Search interactions
        Commerce Search includes several key service areas, including the server architecture and programming model.
        Search interface
        The search interface on the Commerce Search server is made up of a set of search-related control parameters. These parameters are represented as an internal Java representation called the SearchCriteria object.
        Search profiles
        Commerce Search uses search profiles to control the storefront search experience at a page-level. Search profiles group sets of search runtime parameters such as search index name, search index fields, expression providers, paging and sorting. The profile also controls search feature configurations such as text highlighting, facets, and spelling correction. Search profiles are defined in the Commerce Search configuration file (wc-search.xml).
        Search-based navigation
        Search-based navigation enhances starter stores by performing searches against categories when you browse a storefront catalog. All immediate categories and products are returned in the results, and can also include subcategories to increase its scope.
        Search index
        The Commerce Search index is built from temporary tables that read from a search index schema, and build structured and unstructured site content.
        Search configuration
        Commerce Search is configured using several files. These files contains properties that control certain search features, and can be extended to meet your business requirements.
        Extension points and customization tasks
        Commerce Search contains extension points that can be used for customization. If you are migrating from a previous version of the product, there are mandatory and optional areas to work with, depending on your existing customizations. In the following topics the available customization points are described, and you are given detailed instructions on customizing each.
        Search relevancy and merchandising
        Search relevancy and merchandising is the process of controlling the search results that are returned to shoppers in the storefront, and the order in which they appear. There are several techniques that can be used to influence search relevancy, which lets you return products in the order that best suits your business needs.
    - Customizing with xC
      Commerce+ service includes access to an externalized customization server that runs your custom Connectors and any functional extensions you may write. The xC service uses an Open Liberty server on OpenJDK, with webapplications executed via Spring Boot 3.x for development.
  - Developing stores
    Commerce+ offers customizable features for storefronts using the Next.js framework. Commerce+ supports headless commerce to use any front end storefront.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of Commerce+ and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of Commerce+ site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with Commerce+, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the Commerce+ reference documentation.

Search-based navigation

Search-based navigation enhances starter stores by performing searches against categories when you browse a storefront catalog. All immediate categories and products are returned in the results, and can also include subcategories to increase its scope. With search-based navigation enabled, the storefront benefits include improved search performance and accuracy, search rules, and faceted navigation. As a result, the storefront delivers a perception of a personalized browsing experience in starter stores.

Shoppers can navigate the storefront catalog in the following ways:

Quick search

A search field with auto-suggest functions, integrated into the store's header at the top of the page. Shoppers can perform quick searches from any store page within the site.

The auto-suggest menu contains suggested keywords, categories, brands, site content, and search history.

Category-based navigation

A category-based navigation technique, which is driven by the header's top navigation menu. Effective when the shopper knows exactly which category their wanted products are located.

Faceted navigation

A process of browsing information by filtering a set of topics by progressively selecting from only valid values of a faceted classification system, which is a predefined collection of facets.

Catalog entries must contain multiple facets to be effective in the storefront. Therefore, facets are not shown in the storefront by default for those catalog entries that contain only one facet.

Advanced search

A variation of quick search, but allows for more detailed searching criteria to be specified. Useful when the shopper knows their range of criteria or conditions to be used to narrow the scope of search results.