Posted 07/25/2014 by Akshay Sura
The new Coveo JS Framework for Sitecore 7.x has a lot of features out of the box that are especially great for the end user (the Content Admin). After the initial growing pains of adopting the bleeding edge of the new framework, the product is maturing and stabilizing.
We have been using this product for the past 9 months on two huge Sitecore implementations and have learned a lot. Coveo integrates into the Sitecore CMS well and most of the work can be performed using configuration and Sitecore admin.
The setup starts with an installer, provider Sitecore package and an Interface Sitecore package. If you leave the default options, there are no configuration changes needed. If you happen to change the install directory, you would have to update the config file with the modified path. By default it install it to c:CES7.
Like all systems, customization is key. Most of the customization for the Coveo JS framework is markup and js. Coveo has some documentation on developer.coveo.com and they have also added answers.coveo.com, these can guide you in the right direction. I often found myself wanting more information and so had to reach out to support. The team at Coveo is very helpful at resolving issues.
The following are a few of the customizations you might run into:
- Top Suggestions in the search box (results coming in from a static list or based on multiple templates and fields)
- Custom Facets
- Multi-Lingual Facets
- Customize search result items (since all data come from the REST webservice the index needs to have all the values you need for the js framework)
- Customize REST Pipeline (to pass in additional data to the front end without having to index everything, item look up etc.)
- Foreign Keys
Needless to say that we have lived and breathed Coveo along with Sitecore in the last 9 months and feel like we have seen it grow. Matt Schultz’s idea of extending the REST pipeline to add in additional information to the response is sure to be picked up and included into the future builds of Coveo.
If you have any questions or need more information, be sure to reach out. We will be publishing a few more blog posts on Coveo in the coming days.