How to link Sitecore Content Editor to a custom Solr search index configured for a certain Data Template? - optimization

Question

I have created a custom Solr search index for a specific Data Template as I expect to maintain tons of items created based on that template. As you would guess I organised my items into Sitecore Item Buckets for better performance and also I could configure my Sitecore front-end to utilise that custom Solr search index. Now I would like to optimise the search across my Item Buckets in Content Editor, but it seems that Sitecore takes the master index over any custom indexes. How can I configure Sitecore to use my custom index?

Answer 1

Once you have created your custom Solr index you should also have created a corresponding config file as per one of the example files provided by Sitecore. For instance, for Master DB you can use Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.Index.Master.config.example as a config template and simply add a patch:before="*[1]" attribute to your custom index definition as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
<sitecore>
<contentSearch>
<configuration type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentSearchConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
<indexes hint="list:AddIndex">
<index patch:before="*[1]" id="my_sitecore_custom_master_index" type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrSearchIndex, Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider">
<param desc="name">$(id)</param>
<param desc="core">$(id)</param>
<param desc="propertyStore" ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/databasePropertyStore" param1="$(id)" />
<configuration ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/defaultSolrIndexConfiguration" />
<strategies hint="list:AddStrategy">
<strategy ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/indexUpdateStrategies/syncMaster" />
</strategies>
<locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
<crawler type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SitecoreItemCrawler, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
<Database>master</Database>
<Root>/sitecore</Root>
</crawler>
</locations>
<enableItemLanguageFallback>false</enableItemLanguageFallback>
<enableFieldLanguageFallback>false</enableFieldLanguageFallback>
</index>
</indexes>
</configuration>
</contentSearch>
</sitecore>
</configuration>
Now Sitecore will load my_sitecore_custom_master_index index configuration as first priority and utilise it while processing any search queries for your custom items instead of the default Sitecore one.