Visual Search is a graphical interface that allows patrons to narrow a search from a topic to sub-topics, ultimately reaching search results. You can also create components that directly launch a search query or open a Web page.

 

Visual Search comes with several levels of default search components. You can customize your Visual Search screen by modifying the default components or by creating new components. There is no limit to the number of components you can add to Visual Search.

 

To customize your Visual Search, log into your Oasis. On the Visual Search page you will see a link for Configure Visual Search.

 

Clicking on this link brings you to the login page for Setup. Once you have logged in, you are taken right to the Visual Search setup page. This page is also accessible from the main Setup page, after you have clicked on the edit button for the installation you want to configure. The Visual Search button is in this list of features to configure.

 

On the Visual Search Configuration page, the components are identified with labels in parentheses indicating whether each component is a topic, a query, or a link.

 

Components can be modified or deleted totally by choosing modify or delete in the drop down menu. The components can also be rearranged by using the move left and move right choices in the drop down menu.

 

To create new components, select the type of component you want to create at the bottom of the page.

 

Create a topic component if you want to launch sub-topics. Click on Create New Topic. For the new topic, click on the drop down menu and choose Modify.  You will see the Topic Component Configuration dialog box. To add a new image at this window, click Browse, navigate to where you have a saved image, click Open, and then click Upload. If the image you want is included with Oasis, click on Application and scroll down to see and choose from the included images, or click on Installation and see and choose from images already uploaded. In the Caption box, type the caption that will appear under the component. In the Description box, type the description that will appear when the cursor points to the component. Click Save.

 

You can choose a language for the caption and description of this component. You can create multiple captions and descriptions and images for each component, to go along with the languages of the rest of the interface. In other words, if you know you have patrons who want or need the interface in a certain language, such as Spanish, then have a Spanish caption and description for each Visual Search component as well as an English one.