Timing for free-text search upgrade
Guidewire recommends that customers plan ahead for additional fields to the Solr Extension index. Add fields to the index before or during a PolicyCenter upgrade. Do not wait until after an upgrade to do this.
The reason for such advance planning is that the addition of fields to the Solr Extension index requires executing the Solr batch load process. The time and resource cost for running batch load is substantial when a PolicyCenter instance has many policies. Add a field to the Solr Extension index as soon as you determine that the field would be useful and feasible for free-text search.
- With a long-term perspective, discern which entity fields would be useful and feasible as search fields for the basic search page. Apply this step with respect to any entity fields other than the default free-text search fields.
- In the new target system, configure free-text search for these additional entity fields. Team members do not need to configure the basic search page for these fields at this moment. They can configure the basic search page after the upgrade.
- Perform the upgrade from the current PolicyCenter system to the new system.
- Run the free-text batch load command.
Configuring free-text search fields before upgrading avoids executing the free-text batch load process a second time after the new target database is full of policies. The preceding guidance applies without regard to whether the old source system uses free-text search.