Coveo .NET Front-End Search Interface

Front-End and Back-End Separate Releases

The Coveo Platform Front-End and Back-End components are now distinct products that are released, installed, and versioned independently (see About Back-End and Front-End Component Versions). This scheme will allow Coveo to publish feature-rich Front-End components more frequently.

Interface Setting Deployment

In Coveo Platform versions prior to 7, the skin files were stored on the Master server (under [CES_Path]\Web\Coveo\Skins) and the interface settings were saved in the web.config file of the Web server. Several interfaces could share one skin. This centralized management allowed to make changes in one location and automatically update all dependent .NET search interfaces on all Front-End servers of a Coveo instance. With this scheme, it was not possible to set up a Front-End staging process within a Coveo instance.

In the Coveo Platform 7, the interface and skin concepts are merged. Each .NET search interface on each Front-End server has a copy of the interface and skin files (under [.Net_Front-End_Path]\Web\Coveo\Skins\[Interface_Name]). You can therefore customize and test .NET search interfaces on a given server without affecting other Front-End servers (see Planning Your Front-End Staging Process). A Deployment tab was added to the Interface Editor to easily push the .NET search interfaces from the staging Front-End server to one or more target Front-End servers (see Deploying Search Interface Settings).

Full Control on .NET search interface CSS

With previous Coveo Platform versions, you could edit the style of the various elements of a .NET search interface but the changes could only be made using the Interface Editor, and only changes relative to hard-coded default styles were saved. With Coveo Platform 7.0, you can fully edit the content of the CSS file associated to a skin, either using the Interface Editor or directly editing the CSS file (see Modifying .NET Search Interface CSS Styles).

URL Shortener Database

The new optional URL shortener database feature converts potentially very long search URL parameters to a short 24-character reference string. With feature-rich .NET search interfaces such as Case Consoles, the URL shortener is a must to eliminate errors occurring when a URL reaches the Internet Explorer URL length limit (see About the .NET Search Interface URL Shortener).

DIP Supports Microsoft Office 64-bits

The Desktop Integration Package is now compatible with the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office 2010.

SharePoint Search Box Installation and Activation

The installer now allows you to separately install and activate the Coveo Search Box in SharePoint. You can therefore install the search box integration web part without activating it, allowing you to activate it or not independently for each of your SharePoint sites from the SharePoint configuration manager. During maintenance, you can also use the installer to activate or deactivate the search box.

Dropping support for Internet Explorer 6

The Web applications of the Coveo Platform 7 no longer support the legacy browser Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6). The Coveo .NET Front-End search interface displays a warning message when the connection is established using Internet Explorer 6. The Coveo Platform supports recent versions of all major standard and mobile browsers (see Supported Browsers - Coveo .NET Front-End and CES).

Administration Tool

New URL

In the process of separating the release or Front-End and Back-End components (see Front-End and Back-End Separate Releases), the default port and URL of the Administration Tool changed. The Administration Tool that used to be accessed on the same default port as the .NET search interface now has a direct access dedicated default port (8081).

Example: With the Coveo Platform 7, the Administration Tool base URL is:

http://CoveoMasterServer.MyOrganization.com:8081

In previous Coveo Platform versions, the Administration Tool base URL was:

http://CoveoMasterServer.MyOrganization.com:8080/Admin

New Look and Improved Pages

The Coveo Administration Tool look was redesigned to improve its usability and its appearance.

A number of pages were added or improved:

• Addition of the Administration Role management (see About Administration Roles).

• New search-based Index Browser page (see New Index Browser).

• A new security browser (see Using the Security Browser).

• Pre-loading menu renamed from Search Pages (see Administration Tool - Pre-loading Menu).

• Add Source pages parameters now only show parameters applicable to each connector.

New Index Browser

The Administration Tool in the Coveo Platform 7.0 offers a new search-based Index Browser that provides improved features to help you more easily manage the content of your unified index (see Administration Tool - Index Browser Menu).

The Index Browser features are:

• Search-driven content with easy filtering using facets

• Tree view of folders

• Properties, Permissions, Fields, and Summary inline document details as well as printable and clickable URIs

• Easy Top Result creation from the index browser

• Content sortable by relevance, indexed date, or modified date

Support for .NET Conversion Scripts

CES 7.0 includes an out-of-the-box support for .NET conversion script on top of the existing support for JScript and VBScript. You can load compiled .NET assemblies (.DLL or .EXE), and also compile C# files on the fly in a temporary assembly (see About .NET Conversion Scripts).

Multi-Schedule on Sources

With Coveo Platform 7, you can now assign more than one schedule to refresh or rebuild a source. This provides greater flexibility as when and how often your sources are refreshed and rebuilt (see Scheduling Source Refresh Actions).

User Identity Import/Export

From the Administration Tool, you can now export user identities to an XML file that you can easily import in another Coveo Platform instance, thus simplifying the migration between environments, for example when deploying from quality assurance to production (see Exporting/Importing User Identities).

File Picker in Path Fields

All parameters in which you specify a path or a file now feature a button allowing you to open a dialog box where you can easily browse and select the path or file.

Internal Date Format

With previous Coveo Platform versions, date values were stored in the index with a 4-byte number. This limited the range of possible date values from January 1, 1970 to year 2031.

In the Coveo Platform 7.0, an 8-byte number is used to store the date values in the index. This extends the range of possible date values from January 1,1400 until December 31, 9999.