Enable Enterprise Search

The Enterprise Search Integration can be activated from within the App Integrations panel of the VIP Dashboard. Once activated, the Elasticsearch (ES) index for a site’s content is created using VIP-CLI commands.

1. Navigate to the VIP Dashboard for an application.
2. Select “Integrations” from the sidebar navigation at the left of the screen.
   • Integration activation is environment-specific. If needed, select a different environment (e.g., staging, develop) from the dropdown located at the upper left of the VIP Dashboard application view.
3. Locate Enterprise Search in the list of Integrations in the App Integrations panel.
4. On the right-hand side of the Enterprise Search row, select the linked text with the value “Configure” to access the Configure Integration panel.
5. In the section labeled “Activate Integration“ on the Configure Integration panel, activate New Relic for the environment by toggling the switch to “Active” (green background with a white check mark).
   • For WordPress multisite environments, an additional toggle option is provided to allow the Enterprise Search Integration to be activated network-wide or per network site.
6. After activating the Enterprise Search Integration, a series of VIP-CLI commands are generated to create an ES index and test its health. Step 1 in the series of commands creates the new index. Step 2 and Step 3 verify that the Enterprise Search Integration is working as intended for a site before fully enabling it for all search queries. Sites that are already launched and serving traffic can avoid search downtime by completing one or both of these basic tests before fully enabling Enterprise Search.
   • On WordPress multisite environments, the commands must be run per network site.
7. When the ES index creation and health check is complete, begin sending search queries to Enterprise Search by toggling the switch labeled “Offload Search Queries” to “Active” (green background with a white check mark).

PHP warnings, issued notices, or other signs of conflicts can be monitored with debugging tools such as Query Monitor and Runtime Logs.

Test offloading of search queries

In addition to the command provided in Step 3 in the Configure Integration panel, the offloading of search queries to the Enterprise Search index can be tested with other methods before toggling the switch labeled “Offload Search Queries” to “Active”

URL parameter string

The parameter string vip-search-enabled=1 can be appended to a site’s URL to test the offloading of search queries to Enterprise Search.

To test offloading, search for a term on a site with Enterprise Search enabled. Append the parameter to the URL in the browser’s address bar and reload the browser. For example:

http://example.com/?s=<search-term>&vip-search-enabled=1

For the search term tomato, the URL would be structured similar to this example:

http://example.com/?s=tomato&vip-search-enabled=1

Refer to results in the Enterprise Dev Tools panel to verify that search is successfully being offloaded to Enterprise Search.

HTTP response header

Search requests that are successfully offloaded to Enterprise Search will return a X-ElasticPress-Query: true response header.

This is also true for requests made to a WP REST API search endpoint that are successfully offloaded to Enterprise Search. For example: https://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/search?search=<search-term>.