Adding custom contact facet to Sitecore Analytics index

Question

Sitecore 8.2 Update 4 with Lucene search on a local single instance Sitecore site: I have created a Custom Contact facet and I can see it is being saved to MongoDB.

I want to add it to the Analytics db so I can use it in the ListManager and so followed this document.

Using Luke to look at the index, I don't see the new fields and no errors in the log or Crawling log.

My config includes

<pipelines>
.....
<contactindexable.loadfields patch:source="Sitecore.ContentSearch.Analytics.config">
    <processor type="Sitecore.Foundation.Indexing.Pipelines.IndexCustomFacet, Sitecore.Foundation.Indexing"/>
</contactindexable.loadfields>

</pipelines>

When I put a breakpoint in IndexCustomFacet, it is never being hit! I can see all the expected config when I go to showconfig.aspx

<field type="System.String" fieldName="contact.Brand" storageType="YES" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider"/>

Answer 1

I added a custom field in this open source project I wrote. https://github.com/buildabonfire/Bonfire-Company-Personalization

Get the data

First you need a pipeline to pull the facet from the contact facet in xDB.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Bonfire.Feature.Kickfire.Analytics.Interfaces.Entries;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch;
using Sitecore.ContentSearch.Analytics.Pipelines.ContactIndexableLoadFields;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

namespace Bonfire.Feature.Kickfire.Analytics.Pipelines.CompanyIndexableLoadFields
{
    class LoadFields : ContactIndexableLoadFieldsProcessor
    {
        protected override IEnumerable<IIndexableDataField> GetFields(ContactIndexableLoadFieldsPipelineArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
            var contact = args.Contact;
            Assert.IsNotNull(contact, "contact");

            //Log.Info("Starting company field aggregator",this);
            var list = new List<IIndexableDataField>();

            var value = contact.Facets.FirstOrDefault(kvp => kvp.Value is ICustomerLookup).Value;

            if (value != null)
            {
                var companyInfo = (ICustomerLookup) value;

                list = new List<IIndexableDataField>
                {
                    new IndexableDataField<string>("contact.company", companyInfo.name)
                };
            }

            return list;
        }
    }
}

Pipeline

Then patch in this config to add the code above to the ontactindexable.loadfields pipeline and then the config to add the field. Be sure to notice that the field name contact.company is both in the pipeline and the config.

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <contactindexable.loadfields>
        <processor type="Bonfire.Feature.Kickfire.Analytics.Pipelines.CompanyIndexableLoadFields.LoadFields, Bonfire.Feature.Kickfire.Analytics" />
      </contactindexable.loadfields>
    </pipelines>
    <contentSearch>
      <configuration type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentSearchConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
        <indexes hint="list:AddIndex">
          <index id="sitecore_analytics_index" type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneIndex, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider">
            <configuration ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/defaultLuceneIndexConfiguration">
              <fieldMap ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/defaultLuceneIndexConfiguration/fieldMap">
                <fieldNames hint="raw:AddFieldByFieldName">
                  <field fieldName="contact.company" storageType="YES" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="WITH_POSITIONS_OFFSETS" boost="1f" emptyString="_EMPTY_" nullValue="_NULL_" type="System.String" settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider">
                    <Analyzer type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.Analyzers.LowerCaseKeywordAnalyzer, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider" />
                  </field>
                </fieldNames>
              </fieldMap>
            </configuration>
          </index>
        </indexes>
      </configuration>
    </contentSearch>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Answer 2

If you added new custom contact facet to Sitecore Analytics index you will see your field in index only for new contacts, which was created after added your facet.

If you want to update your existing contacts, you need to rebuild sitecore_analytics_index. How you can do it you can find there:

Rebuilding the Sitecore Analytics Index

How to rebuild the analytics index without rebuilding the entire reporting database?