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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 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.
Influencing relevancy for keyword search
Relevancy for keyword search applies as a shopper searches the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for keyword search by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in search results, and the order in which they appear. Search relevancy helps present relevant search results in the storefront to suit your shopper's needs.
Search relevancy
Search relevancy determines the products and the order that those products are displayed on the search results page. Relevant useful results are dependent upon several factors: descriptive product descriptions, properly indexed data, and the implementation of search features appropriate to the business. Search relevancy directly affects the store's revenue and conversion rate, as shoppers are more likely to purchase products that they are looking for.

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 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.
        Influencing relevancy for keyword search
        Relevancy for keyword search applies as a shopper searches the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for keyword search by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in search results, and the order in which they appear. Search relevancy helps present relevant search results in the storefront to suit your shopper's needs.
        Search relevancy
        Search relevancy determines the products and the order that those products are displayed on the search results page. Relevant useful results are dependent upon several factors: descriptive product descriptions, properly indexed data, and the implementation of search features appropriate to the business. Search relevancy directly affects the store's revenue and conversion rate, as shoppers are more likely to purchase products that they are looking for.
        Relevancy scores
        Whether you tune search results for search relevancy or search merchandising purposes, you are working with their relevancy scores.
        Search relevancy and merchandising features in the Management Center
        Business users can manage product information and search term associations to influence search relevancy in the storefront. Business users can manage search rules, analyze search results, and filter the catalog to influence search merchandising in the storefront.
        Minimum match and phrase slop
        Influence search relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop.
        Auto suggestions menu
        The Automatic Suggestion menu, which is displayed before a shopper submits a search, suggests keywords, categories, brands, site content, and search history. If the store uses contracts, the Automatic Suggestion menu displays products that the shopper is entitled to purchase.
        Automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction
        The search results page displays results that match the shopper's search query. If there are no matching results, the search results page shows possible spelling corrections and search results for the closest matching search term.
        Wildcard searching
        To increase the number of search results, search queries can include a wildcard character (*) in the middle, or at the end of the search query. The wildcard indicates that all items that contain partial search term must be returned in search results. For example, the search query coff* returns search results for all items that contain the term coff, such as coffee or coffee maker.
        Changing the default search type
        The search type controls the search scope of different catalog entry types to be searched and displayed in the storefront. It also controls the search operation that is used for multiple keyword search terms such as the AND operator, OR operator, and exact match.
        Changing the relevancy of search index fields
        Depending on your store catalog, some search index fields might be more relevant than others for when shoppers search in the store. You can fine-tune the relevancy of search index fields to improve search results that are based on your store catalog. The relevancy can be scoped to either the site level or to the category level.
        Tuning multiple-word search result relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop
        Tune multi-keyword search relevancy by using minimum match and phrase slop when ALL or EXACT search types are too restrictive, or when ANY search types return too many results.
        Combining minimum match and search term associations
        You can enable minimum match with search term associations by using the Solr synonym expansion algorithm, or the query-time expansion algorithm. You cannot use the default search algorithm that is provided by Commerce+ to combine minimum match with search term associations.
        Product grouping
        The Solr product grouping feature enables grouping parent catalog entries with their underlying SKUs at query time. Products can be chosen to represent the group that is returned in search results to provide visual relevancy.
        Hero product image
        The Elasticsearch Hero product image feature enables grouping all SKUs of the product at query time. This topic describes how the Hero product image works. If you want to learn how to set up the Hero product image, refer to search-migration/refs/zkp_setting_HeroProduct_Image.html
        Managing keyword suggestions
        Manage keyword suggestions so that you can change the scope and types of keyword suggestions that appear in the storefront search field.
        Managing spell correction
        Spell correction is automatically triggered when a shopper searches for misspelled words. When a query with misspelled words returns no results, a second query that contains the top suggested terms is run by default.
        Limiting search terms and characters from the search query
        You can limit search terms and characters from the search query, such as unimportant words, stemming, or disabling wildcards and other characters.
        Making the expansion of search term associations case-sensitive
        Search term association expansion is not case-sensitive by default. You can make the expansion case-sensitive by adding a column to the SRCHTERM table and modifying an attribute in the Solr schema.xml file of each core.
        Influencing relevancy for site navigation (search merchandising)
        Relevancy for site navigation applies as a shopper navigates the store. Site administrators and business users can influence relevancy for site navigation by controlling which products are returned to shoppers in store pages, and the order in which they appear. Search merchandising promotes, boosts, and sorts products in the storefront to suit your business needs.
        Enabling custom facet value sequencing
        You can order facet values based on the browsed category. For example, you can ensure that one computer manufacturer’s products top the search results list when the customer searches under Electronics. When the same customer does the same search under the Baby/Kids category, a different manufacturer can top that list.
    - 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 relevancy

Search relevancy determines the products and the order that those products are displayed on the search results page. Relevant useful results are dependent upon several factors: descriptive product descriptions, properly indexed data, and the implementation of search features appropriate to the business. Search relevancy directly affects the store's revenue and conversion rate, as shoppers are more likely to purchase products that they are looking for.