The Visforms search index plugin
Note: These features are part of the Visforms Subscription and are not included in the free Visforms version.
Functionality
This search index plugin allows to search the transmitted data using the Joomla search function. For this more effective and therefore faster Joomla search function, the plugin indexes the form data. The options set in Visforms for the visibility of the data in the frontend are taken into account. The Joomla search functionality includes the search index module and the search index component.
Visforms gives you a lot of control over which form data is visible in the frontend and which is not.
Therefore, the plugin indexes the form data according to the following rules and displays search results where
- the form is published.
- the form option “Allow data view in frontend” is activated.
- the user who wants to browse the data belongs to an appropriate user group.
A suitable user group has sufficient access rights for the data view access rights defined in the form. - the field is published.
- the data set with the transmitted data is published.
- the user who wants to browse the data belongs to an appropriate user group.
A suitable user group has sufficiently high access rights for the data view access rights defined in the field. - the field option “Frontend Data View” is set to “List and Details” or to “Only Details”.
Display of search results
This last criterion is important. Because the search results then link directly to the detailed view of the data record in whose data the search term was found. We simply make the following assumption here. The user who is searching in the data also wants to look at this record.
Basically, the search results link to a detail view that is created with a menu item of the “Visforms form data” type. Therefore, by default, a search is only made in forms whose data has actually been published using a menu item of the “Visforms form data” type.
usage
Note: Please make sure you have installed your Visforms Subscription.
You must then activate the plugin in the plugin manager before you can use it.
To do this, go to the “System” menu item in the administration of your Joomla installation and then to the “Plugins” entry on the “Manage” tile. Locate the plugin’s entry named “Searchindex - Visforms”. To do this, use the search filter above the plugin list.
The plugin is activated when you see a green tick in the status column. It’s disabled when there’s a gray circle with a white X in its place. In this case, click once on the gray circle to activate the plugin.
Integration into the Joomla search index
After the plugin is activated, the search index will be created automatically. Whenever relevant changes are made to a form, a form field, or saved form data, the search index is automatically updated.