Media manager item is distributed but not used for tridion website, still it will be searched in aws cloud search?

Question

I am new to aws cloud search.

for one of our client we are using tridion 8.5+media manager and aws cloud search for website search. implementation has been done using dxa 1.5

requirement is ecl items need to be indexed in aws cloud search whichever is used in respective websites. that means japan ecl item should be indexed for japan site and only japan site search result will bring that result not other locals.

My question is as follows:

1. if any media manager item has been distributed but not used in website [ that means: ecl item is not attached in component and not published from tridion]. will it still be indexed in cloud search?

2. if any ecl item is attached in component and published for japan site will there be possibility to get it indexed for other locals?

Answer 1

It depends on how you are creating the indexes using AWS CloudSearch!

Typically, you can create an index from sample files or predefined configuration (if we know the indexes already) or will have to manually define them (always found that manual is easier). Once the indexes are created, we will have to populate the indexes using an SDL framework like SI4T. It also depends on how you have configured your indexes for separate languages.

If the content is distributed, you should have a mechanism to populate the search index upon publishing the media item to the respective languages / locales. If there are URL patterns are predefined, you can extend the SI4T CM framework to insert /language/locale/ specific references in your CM side and your deployer extension will pick it up to populate the data to the search index. The other way is to populate the search index upon publishing the media items to the respective languages and locales. In some cases, you will have to write site-crawlers to crawl the external DAM delivery and populate the indexes (incase APIs are not availabl).

In either case, you will have to write something custom populate the indexes correctly. Hope it helps!