How to automatically exclude certain facet values in search?

[akaustav]

Hi,

We are converting a classic coveo-search-ui application to use @coveo/headless and @coveo/angular. In the original application (which used coveo-search-ui) there was requirements to:

1. not allow any manual filtering based on certain criteria:
   1. no UI checkboxes to select/deselect, and
   2. advanced keyword searches using special field operators was disabled.
2. filter out / exclude all PDF files from the result list every time the user searched for a specific word / phrase.

This was achieved by adding an aq field to the application/x-www-form-urlencoded request body on every search. For example, when searching for the term: hello, the request body would look like this (trimmed to show relevant fields and parsed into YAML format for better syntax highlighting):

q: hello
aq: (@filetype<>pdf)
enableQuerySyntax: false
...

Is there a way to achieve this exact requirement using @coveo/headless and @coveo/angular?
The sample application generated by @coveo/cli demonstrates how to get facet values and select a specific value, but we are unable to find an appropriate method to achieve facet value exclusions.

Ameet

[akaustav]

From what we have gathered so far, there's two approaches / thought processes:

1. Exclude PDFs while crawling the website - so that they are not indexed to begin with
2. Exclude PDFs using facets - but we don't know see a straightforward way to achieve facet value exclusions

Which approach would the coveo team suggest and why? Any code examples / samples would be appreciated.

[y-lakhdar]

Hi Ameet,

I recommend moving the filtering logic to your pipeline instead of defining the aq and enableQuerySyntax in the UI.

Moving logic to the pipeline will:

1. help you remove complexity from your front-end code
2. allow you to manipulate your search page results without having to re-deploy/edit your search page

As for the PDF exclusion, the suggestion depends on the intention.
If you don’t want to expose PDFs in your search page, I recommend excluding them during the indexation.
However, if you only want to filter them out from the result list when the user has entered a query, then I recommend using a pipeline condition as shown in the second screenshot.

Does that answer your question?

Useful links:

• Manage Filter Rules
• Manage Query Parameter Rules

[akaustav]

Thanks, @y-lakhdar. We'll try moving the filtering logic to our pipeline.

[akaustav]

@y-lakhdar - When do these filter and query parameter rules take effect? Do they take effect immediately or maybe after the next scheduled crawl?

[y-lakhdar]

They will take effect immediately.

[akaustav]

Thanks, @y-lakhdar. I was actually modifying the settings in a different organization and not seeing any differences in results. Hence, my earlier question. The pipeline filters worked perfectly for us - once I put those into the correct Coveo organization.