Unable to Search for Knowledge Base Articles - Searching Does not Return Any or Some KB Articles

Products

• Workflow Solution
• ServiceDesk

Issue/Introduction

 When searching for knowledge-base articles, some or all KB articles that should return are not being found. This happens on both the Knowledge Base and Home tabs of the Process Manager portal.

This knowledge-base article will show you how to recreate the Lucene indexes that are used when searching the KB in your ServiceDesk system.

Cause

• If something interrupts the index merge, a write.lock file is created in the %\Symantec\Workflow\ProcessManager\LuceneFullTextsearch\Index directory. This write.lock will prevent any further indexes from being written, and because the existing indexes are being merged, they are unusable. This prevents any KB articles to be found.
• In a load balanced environment, indexes are only written on articles that were created on an individual node. For example, if you have 2 front-end servers, each server will contain approximately 1/2 of the KB indexes, and the other will contain the other 1/2. Depending which node you are accessing when searching, you will only find KB articles that have indexes on that node. This will cause mixed or unreliable search results.

Resolution

1.  On your ServiceDesk Server, navigate to the %\Symantec\Workflow\ProcessManager\LuceneFullTextsearch\Index directory. Delete all contents in this directory.
   Note: In some circumstances, the Symantec Workflow Server Service will need to be stopped in order to delete these files.
2. Open a browser and navigate to the following URL: http://<ServiceDeskServerName>/ProcessManager/LuceneFullTextSearch/LuceneFullTextSearchService.asmx
3. Run the LoginUser method and login with an administrator in your ProcessManager portal. Copy the GUID that is returned (this will be used in step 5).
   Note: While typing the password, it will appear as plain text.
4. In your browser, navigate back to http://<ServiceDeskServerName>/ProcessManager/LuceneFullTextSearch/LuceneFullTextSearchService.asmx
5. Run the CreateIndex method. Paste the GUID you copied from step 3 into the sessionID textbox and click Invoke.
6. (Optional if running in a load balanced environment) - Repeat steps 1-5 on all front-end nodes in your load balanced environment.

This will take a considerable amount of time to run if you have a high volume of KB articles. It is recommended to do this after business hours. Once the CreateIndex operation is completed, you will be able to search your Knowledgebase.

Applies To

This will always happen in a load balanced environment, but other circumstances can cause problems on environments running on a single server.