In its previous iteration, the Sitecore Search integration was built using custom API wrappers, which retrieved search results directly from Sitecore Search API. The newly added Search JS SDK package contains components, functions, and query hooks that allowed to completely remove custom code and focus on visual representation of components.
The implementation is now aligned with reference architecture at https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/developers/search-js-sdk-for-react/introduction-to-sitecore-search-js-sdk-for-react.html. All of the widgets display the results from 2 indexed sources - PLAY! Summit (main conference website) and PLAY! Media (headless) website.
The Sitecore Search SDK is available here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@sitecore-search/react.
Here are the widgets that are integrated into the demo and how they are configured:
Preview Search widget displays search results as you type your query. It does not include facets or much details of the result, but displays helpful suggestions and allows you to quickly find the content by name.
It is personalized by Audience, just like all other widgets in our Sitecore Search instance.
Search Results is a widget for your main search page. It includes facets, content excerpts, highlights and more. The results are also personalized.
Personalized Picks widget does not look like its results come from Sitecore Search, but they do and they are personalized! It is a selection of content across the site that changes based on the pages you visit.
Sitecore Demo Sidebar got improved too! There is a 3rd tab now and it displays the affinity scores for Audience - this is what drives personalization in our implementation.
So go ahead and deploy the updated PLAY! Summit (XM Cloud) demo:
Using the Demo Portal - for a quick look at front-end - you don't need your Sitecore Search instance - we'll configure Search integration to use ours.
Deploy your own from the source code - and connect it your own Sitecore Search instance to customize, reindex and play with personalization rules.
