Configuring Federated Searches

Owned by Cooper Labenske
Apr 14, 2022
2 min read

Federated searches allow you to link to multiple Voyager indexes and view them within a single Voyager application.  A central, federated index draws information from indexes of satellite Voyager instances. The following diagram illustrates data flow in a Federated Search configuration.  

 

Voyager uses a security token to allow secure federated searches with remote catalogs. 

To configure Federated Search, go to Manage > Index > Federated Catalog Search. 

Steps to Configure Federation

To make sure that the security for federation is correctly configured, follow these steps (not required for federation without security):

  1. Generate an Authentication Token (Secret Key) on the parent Voyager instance

  2. Copy the Secret Key to all of the remote Voyager instances

  3. Add the remote catalogs on the parent Voyager server

  4. Save the search so that you can access these settings later

Configuring Authentication

Voyager uses a security token to allow secure federated searches with remote catalogs.  To configure Authentication Tokens, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Manage Voyager > Security > Authentication

  2. In the Authentication Tokens section, click Generate to create a new Secret Key

  3. Click Save

  4. Copy the Secret Key 

  5. Paste the Secret Key in the Authentication page for all remote Voyager servers

 

Adding Remote Catalogs

After configuring the Secret Key, you can add the remote catalogs on the parent Voyager instance

To add a remote catalog:

  1. Go to Manage Voyager > Index > Configure Federated Catalog Search

  2. Enter the URL to the remote Voyager instance in the Add Catalog box and click Add

  3. To edit or remove existing catalogs, use the Edit and Remove options.

NOTE: The sequence of steps is very important. If you add the remote catalogs to the parent Voyager server before you configure the Secret Key on the remote instances, the remote catalogs will appear with a warning message on the parent.  To remove these messages, you need to remove and re-add the remote catalogs.

 

 

To capture these settings and make them available later, save the search. 

Important Note

In order for a Federated Search Server to retrieve catalogs from remote Voyager Clients, you must change the remote URLs from the default of localhost:8888 to either the machine's hostname:port or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN:port). (The latter is only required for those organizations using DNS, or with servers facing the Public Internet.)