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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

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 you must register a custom implementation of IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields. We recommend overriding the existing UmbracoTreeSearcherFields.

Your custom implementation needs to be registered in the container, for example in the Program.cs file or in a composer, as an alternative.

builder.CreateUmbracoBuilder()
    .AddBackOffice()
    .AddWebsite()
    .AddDeliveryApi()
    .AddComposers()
    .Build();

builder.Services.AddUnique<IUmbracoTreeSearcherFields, CustomUmbracoTreeSearcherFields>();

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>();
    }
}

The below example is using ILocalizationService which is currently obsolete and will be removed in v15. Use ILanguageService instead.

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, for example parentID does not work.

More advanced extensions

For further extensibility of the Umbraco Backoffice search implementation, check ISearchableTree