Step 1. Launch Aspire and open the Content Source Management Page

Launch Aspire (if it's not already running). See:

• Launch Control

• Browse to: http://localhost:50505. For details on using the Aspire Content Source Management page, please refer to Admin UI

Step 3. Add a new Microsoft Search publisher to the Workflow

To add a Publish to Microsoft Search drag a Microsoft Search publisher rule from the Workflow Library and drop to the Workflow Tree where you want to add it. This will automatically open the Microsoft Search publisher window for the configuration of the publisher.

Step 3a. Specify Publisher Information

 In the publisher window, specify the connection information to publish to the Microsoft Search.

• Name: Unique name for the publisher
• Tenant Id:  The tenant Id provided by Microsoft
• Client Id:  The client Id generated when the Application was registered in Prerequisites
• Client Secret:  The client secret that was generated in Prerequisites
• Index Name:  The name of the connection/index that will be created in MS Search
• Groovy Transform:  The path to a Groovy transformation file that will process the document to make it match the expected structure from either the fixed ExternalFile or the custom ExternalItem data types in MS Search connection schemas
• Use custom schema:  Enables the usage of the limited custom schema in MS Search.  If disabled it will assume ExternalFile schema, otherwise it will be ExternalItem and will require the path to a JSON schema file
• Start/end actions Clear:  In order to create the connection automatically on full crawls this must be enabled, otherwise it will be assumed the connection exists

ExternalFile vs ExternalItem

Microsoft Search allows the usage of one of two schemas:  fixed ExternalFile or custom ExternalItem.  ExternalItem allows limited freedom to define properties to be expected from crawled items.  Needless to say, the Groovy transformation file must yield an output that matches the expected schema.

ExternalFile schema

The fixed external file schema expects the following information:

• acl:  The list of ACLs for the document
• createdDateTime:  A standard UTC string that represents the creation date and time
• modifiedDateTime:  A standard UTC string that represents the last modification date and time
• createdBy:  The author's name
• lastModifiedBy:  The name of the last person that modified the document
• title:  The document's title
• url:  The document's url
• name:  The document's name
• extension:  The document's file name extension
• size:  The document size
• content:  The document's content

This is a sample document in JSON format as expected by the REST API:

{
	"@odata.type": "microsoft.graph.externalFile",
	"acl": [
		{
			"type": "user",
			"value": "d411eb08-42e2-4316-aab5-2df8e9d9c21b",
			"accessType": "grant",
			"identitySource": "Azure Active Directory"
		}
	],
	"createdDateTime": "2017-11-08T19:06:17Z",
	"modifiedDateTime": "2017-11-08T19:06:17Z",
	"createdBy": "empty",
	"lastModifiedBy": "empty",
	"title": "sample document",
	"url": "http://the.url.com",
	"name": "name.txt",
	"extension": "txt",
	"size": 10,
	"content": "the content/n"
}

ExternalItem schema

As mentioned before, the ExternalItem schema has limited customization capabilities.  It expects the following information:

• acl:  The list of ACLs for the document
• properties:  A name/value list of custom properties of predefined types
• content:  The document's content

When configured to use custom schema, the publisher component expects a txt file with the following structure:

{
	"properties": [
		{
			"name": "propertyName",
			"type": "String",
			"isSearchable": "true",
			"isRetrievable": "true",
			"isQueryable": "true"
		}
	]
}

Where:

• name:  The property name in JSON friendly characters
• type:  The data type of the property. Can be one of the following:
  • String
  • Int64
  • Double
  • DateTime (as UTC offset: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.nnZ)
  • Boolean
  • Collection(String)
  • Collection(Int64)
  • Collection(Double)
  • Collection(DateTime)
• isSearchable:  (optional) If true, the property will be indexed as containing searchable content
• isRetrievable:  (optional) If true, the property can be retrieved as part of search results
• isQueryable:  (optional) If true, the property can be queried for specific values