You can make some external search engines available to people using Jive.
If a search engine
supports OpenSearch, you can add support for it so that the search engine will be used
(in addition to the internal search engine) when people search for content in Jive. Examples of
OpenSearch engines include Technorati and Wikipedia, plus Jive communities.
Engines that support OpenSearch provide a descriptor XML file and usually publish the
file at a public URL. The descriptor tells OpenSearch clients what they need to know to
query the search engine.
Fastpath: Admin Console: System > Settings >
OpenSearch Engines
There are two ways you can add OpenSearch engines in the Admin Console:
- Enter a descriptor URL, then click Add Engine from Descriptor URL. The
application will visit the URL to retrieve the descriptor XML file, then
retrieve the needed information from the file.
If the application gets the
information it needs, you're finished. However, you might get prompted for
more information, such as login credentials if the engine is secure. Note
that you can edit engine properties later.
- Click Add Engine from Form, then fill out the form to include the
required information. The information asked for here is what would be included
in the descriptor XML file. This is the same information you can edit for an
engine, as described below.

As you edit the engine's properties, keep in mind that:
- The icon URL is a URL to an icon representing the search engine. Jive will
display this in its UI.
- The application uses the search URL to send the user's query.
- The search result content type is the content type, such as application/rss+xml
or text/html, that the search engine's results will be returned in. If this is a
type that the application can parse, such as application/rss+xml, the results
will be displayed directly; if not, the application will display a link through
which the user can separately search the engine's site itself.
If you specify
HTML as the content type, a sidebar will display a link that people can use to search for their phrase at the OpenSearch location.
If they search, their results are displayed in a new window.
If you specify
RSS or Atom as the content type, the application will display a new tab with
the Name value. The application will parse returned results into a format
that displays on the search results page, under the new tab.
- The query test term can be anything you like to test queries.
- You might need to enter a user name and password if the search engine requires
login credentials.
- The Enabled check box is selected by default, meaning that user searches will
query the engine. Uncheck the box to make the search engine unavailable to
users.
Note: The Jive application
is also an OpenSearch provider (although OpenSearch isn't a good replacement for
searching content it contains). You just have to point your OpenSearch reader to Jive's OpenSearch XML
descriptor. For OpenSearch readers that aren't able to autodetect the descriptor, you'll
have to add it manually. The OpenSearch descriptor for your community is located at
http://<jiveURL>/opensearch.xml. For example, for the Jivespace
descriptor, go to http://jivesoftware.com/community/opensearch.xml. Provide this file as
the descriptor for your OpenSearch reader.