ELASTICSEARCH INTEGRATION AT EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS
The digitization of the European Union and its institutions is a top priority. Given the vast amounts of content created and accessed daily, this digitization must make significant strides in efficiency and provide transparency to the citizens of the European Union.
In this context, a European institution sought to standardize their search experience with proven, high-performance, reliable, and scalable search technology to deliver relevant information to users of their website and portal. As a proven 'enterprise search' expert, this institution chose to engage Elk Factory as their technology partner to provide a solution based on Elasticsearch.
WEB SEARCH FOR THE PUBLIC REGISTER AND PRESS RELEASES
As a European institution, transparency and accessibility are key ingredients to gain and maintain the trust of citizens. Therefore, the website provides citizens and internal staff access to an extensive network of various information sources.
Our responsibility was to create a search solution to make the public register and press releases searchable. The public register contains all official documents, from legislation, treaties, and publications to meeting agendas. In the press release section, visitors can find all official communications from the European institution. The archive not only consists of written content but also includes videos, photos, and infographics.
We built a solution based on Elasticsearch, consisting of an index API integrated via a connector with their content management system Umbraco. Additionally, we added a search API to execute user queries. This powerful search function is equipped with features such as auto-complete, spell correction, and faceted search based on filters.
ADVANCED SEARCH FEATURES IN THE BUSINESS PORTAL
To support internal staff and improve decision-making, the European institution requested the search solution to be extended to their internal business platform. Besides a fast and effective search experience, it was also crucial that all activities took place in a secure environment. Therefore, we set up a dedicated Elasticsearch cluster based on the existing website architecture.
For the business platform, additional search capabilities were added to enhance the user experience:
- Faceted search: To increase relevance, users can easily filter and sort their search results by selecting different filter criteria.
- Elasticsearch searches not only the content but also the metadata.
- Each search result includes a text snippet where the search term is visually highlighted, allowing users to quickly assess the relevance.
- Similar documents with the same identification are merged into one search result, such as a document in multiple languages.
- The list of search results includes only documents according to the assigned access rights to ensure an effective search without compromising security.
The choice for Elastic was based on its high degree of scalability, reliability, and security. The solution we implemented is future-proof and can easily be extended to multiple applications.
ELK FACTORY – ELASTIC ELITE PARTNER
Elk Factory is the Elastic partner for implementing the Elasticsearch platform. We always aim for a win-win situation! Together, we look at how this platform can make your business more efficient, so you benefit, and we gain a satisfied customer!
Contact us for more information.