Advanced Search (Solr)

Advanced Search (Solr) is a search platform that provides distributed search and indexing functionality. When enabled in Guidewire Cloud Platform, Solr extends the InsuranceSuite apps with free text search capabilities. With the free text search, you can search for policies, claims, and contacts using, for example, partial names or address data.

Advanced Search (Solr) Cloud

By default, Solr is configured to be a single instance. This means that a single pod on a single node is running the Solr software. For production planets, you can configure your Solr instance in SolrCloud mode. SolrCloud mode deploys a cluster of multiple Solr nodes. This provides distributed indexing and makes search highly available. In case some nodes go down, you can still use the search functionality on other nodes.

Enable Advanced Search (Solr)

To enable Advanced Search (Solr) on your planet, submit a case in the Guidewire Community.

Create Advanced Search (Solr) instance

Important:

To enable Advanced Search (Solr) for ClaimCenter and PolicyCenter, create Solr configuration before you deploy the InsuranceSuite apps.

To create Advanced Search (Solr) instance for one app:

1. In Guidewire Home, select a star system (physical star system).

2. From Apps , select Planets or select it from your pinned apps.

3. From Applications and add-ons, select Solr.

4. Select Create Solr configuration.

5. From Runtime Profile, select a profile: Small, Medium, Large, or Extra Large.

   Runtime profile defines the CPU and memory for the Solr pod. For development, select Small.

6. Enter Storage Size in GB.

7. (Optional) To enable SolrCloud for production planets, switch the toggle and enter the number of nodes.

8. Select Save.

You can update Solr configuration at any time by selecting Update Solr configuration.

Deploy Advanced Search (Solr) instance

To deploy an Advanced Serach (Solr) instance:

1. Create a Solr configuration.
2. Deploy Insurance Suite apps.

Note:

Advanced Search (Solr) instance for ClaimCenter is completely independent from Advanced Search (Solr) for PolicyCenter. You can create, deploy, and undeploy the two either at once or separately.

Prepare Docker image

To deploy Advance Search (Solr) instance, you need a Docker image that contains Solr configuration. To prepare the docker image for Solr:

1. In Guidewire Home, select a dev star system (physical star system).

2. From Apps , select Planets or select it from your pinned apps.

3. Select a dev planet and go to Build Management.

4. In TeamCity, go to your star system and select the app for which you want to deploy Solr.

   If you don't see any Solr builds, contact Guidewire.

5. Run the Build and Package Solr build.

   This action runs the gwb packageSolr tasks and produces a ZIP file containing Solr artifact.

6. Run the Dockerize Solr build.

   This step converts the build artifact to a runnable Solr image.

   Note:
   

   You can still introduce changes to files in config/solr directory after Solr is built and dockerized. For example, if you want to change anything in your free-text configuration, you need to build and dockerize Solr again. For more information on free-text search configuration, see Configuring free-text search chapter in Installation and Configuration guides for your InsuranceSuite app.

Deploy Solr Docker image

After TeamCity builds are done, go back to InsuranceSuite overview in Planets app to deploy Solr Docker image:

1. In Guidewire Home, select a star system (physical star system).

2. From Apps , select Planets or select it from your pinned apps.

3. Select a planet.

4. From Applications and add-ons, select InsuranceSuite.

5. Select Deploy selected.

6. Select the app which you want to deploy and provide the branch and the Build # / Dockerize # value of the Solr Docker image.

   You can find these numbers in TeamCity.

7. Select Deploy selected.

Advanced Search (Solr) deployment status

The table shows status depending on what is happening to Solr at a given moment.

Status	Description
Not configured	No Solr configuration added yet.
Not deployed	Solr configuration already exists and can be deployed.
Deploying	Solr deployment is in progress.
Deployed	Solr deployment is up and running.
Upgrading	Solr deployment upgrade is in progress.
Batch load	Solr batch loading is in progress.
Stopped	Solr deployment is stopped and can be undeployed.
Undeploying	Undeploying of Solr deployment is in progress.

Manage Advanced Search (Solr) instance

You can manage an already deployed Advanced Search (Solr) instance using the Actions drop-down list.

The Actions drop-down list options are as follows:

• Undeploy

  Undeploys the Solr deployment and deletes the persistent volume holding the index.

• Shut down

  Shuts down Solr but keeps the generated index. After the shutdown, Solr server doesn't run, but you can restart it quickly.

• Delete

  Deletes Solr configuration.
  To delete a Solr configuration, you must undeploy it first.

• Stop/Cancel

  Stops the ongoing deployment, upgrade, or batch load.

• Batch load

  When Solr is deployed and running, initially it doesn't build Solr index that enables searching the existing database records. The free-text batch load process loads Solr deployment with index documents. Currently, there are the following options:

  • claimcontact for ClaimCenter: this XML document includes all claim contacts in your ClaimCenter app database.
  • policy for PolicyCenter: this XML document includes all policies in your PolicyCenter app database.

Solr engine indexes the documents after it receives them from the free-text batch load command. After batch load process is finished, the Solr index is ready and the associated search functions in ClaimCenter and PolicyCenter work for data in these apps.