Refinement & Searching
Tagged With: Refiners, Search
Last Updated: July 2024
Directory Plus allows you to configure refiners to facilitate metadata-based filtering of users in your directory. A common use case is for a corporate directory is the need to find an employee in a certain office, with a certain specialization, that speaks a certain language. Refiners facilitate this type of content-specific searching.
To configure refiners, edit the Directory Plus web part, navigate to page 3 of the web part properties pane, and click the “Refiners” button.
NOTE: If your refiners will rely on metadata from custom attributes, configure the mapping of your custom attributes first.
Creating Refiners
Click the “New Refiner” button and select the field to be used for refinement. Only text and list data types can be refined.
Select whether users should be able to select multiple values for the refiner.
Select whether the refiner should be displayed as a dropdown menu, or as an inline list of all choices. For fields with lots of choices, a dropdown is recommended.
Ordering Refiners
Refiners are shown in the wizard in the same order they will be shown to users when using the web part. Reorder refiners by clicking the up and down arrows.
Deleting Refiners
To delete a refiner, click the trash can icon, and then confirm that you wish to delete the refiner.
Using Refiners
When the Directory Plus web part initially loads, all refiners will be unset. The values available for refinement will automatically be set by the values available on the loaded users. This is to say that the refiner will never show a value that doesn’t exist.
The images below show an example using refiners to filter 130 users down to a specific user, in Perth, that speaks either German or Italian, that is also a Certified Scrum Master.
Keyword Search
If the Feature Bar and Keyword Search are both enabled, keyword searching can be used to further filter the pool of users displayed by the directory. Keyword searching matches any displayed value that has been added to either the Directory View or Profile View.