Backoffice Search

A guide to customization of Backoffice Search

The search facility of the Umbraco Backoffice allows the searching 'across sections' of different types of Umbraco entities, for example Content, Media, Members. However 'by default' only a small subset of standard fields are searched:

Node Type	Propagated Fields
All Nodes	Id, NodeId and Key
Media Nodes	UmbracoFileFieldName
Member Nodes	email, loginName

An Umbraco implementation might have additional custom properties that it would be useful to include in a Backoffice Search. For example: an 'Organisation Name' property on a Member Type, or a 'Product Code' field for a 'Product' content item.

Adding custom properties to backoffice search

To add custom properties, it is required to register a custom implementation of IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields. We recommend to override the existing UmbracoTreeSearcherFields.

Your custom implementation needs to be registered in the container. For example in the Startup.ConfigureServices method or in a composer, as an alternative.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddUmbraco(_env, _config)
    ...

    services.AddUnique<IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields, CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields>();
}

or

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Composing;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.DependencyInjection;
using Umbraco.Cms.Infrastructure.Examine;
using Umbraco.Extensions;

namespace Umbraco.Docs.Samples.Web.BackofficeSearch
{
    public class BackofficeSearchComposer : IComposer
    {
        public void Compose(IUmbracoBuilder builder)
        {
            builder.Services.AddUnique<IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields, CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields>();
        }
    }
}

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services;
using Umbraco.Cms.Infrastructure.Examine;
using Umbraco.Cms.Infrastructure.Search;

namespace Umbraco.Docs.Samples.Web.BackofficeSearch
{
    public class CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields : UmbracoTreeSearcherFields, IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields
    {
        public CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields(ILocalizationService localizationService) : base(localizationService)
        {
        }

        //Adding custom field to search in all nodes
        public new IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeFields()
        {
            return new List<string>(base.GetBackOfficeFields()) { "nodeType" };
        }

        //Adding custom field to search in document types
        public new IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeDocumentFields()
        {
            return new List<string>(base.GetBackOfficeDocumentFields()) { "nodeType" };
        }

        //Adding custom field to search in media
        public new IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeMediaFields()
        {
            return new List<string>(base.GetBackOfficeMediaFields()) { "nodeType" };
        }

        //Adding custom field to search in members
        public new IEnumerable<string> GetBackOfficeMembersFields()
        {
            return new List<string>(base.GetBackOfficeMembersFields()) { "nodeType" };
        }
    }
}

You cannot use this to search on integer types in the index, as an example parentID does not work.

More advanced extensions

For further extensibility of the Umbraco Backoffice search implementation check ISearchableTree