Apply additional filtering to "Content Search" web parts

Please note that this configuration refers to Content Search web parts only available in Classic pages (Atlas 1.X).

When configuring web parts such as Quick Links or FAQs on a page you may want to apply additional filters to determine which items are shown. This is considered advanced configuration and should not be applied unless you are confident in updating Atlas pages.

The most common example of this is a Department Centre with multiple Landing pages for the Department and sub-Departments. The default behaviour is that all the Quick Links or FAQs for that Department Centre will be shown when the relevant web part is used.

Please note that it is recommended to create the filterable items in advance to allow the Search system to crawl the values.

The steps below will allow you to apply additional filters to any Content Search Web Part. In terms of Atlas web parts this includes Carousels (main and content), some Listing web parts such as Latest Documents, Quick Links and others. If you are unsure please contact your CSM for advice.

Apply filtering to a web part on a page

1. Put the page into Edit mode
2. Find the web part you want to filter and click on the small arrow in the top right to reveal the menu, then click Edit Web Part:
                          
3. The page will reload in order to open the web part configuration panel, and you will need to scroll back to the top of the page to see it. After scrolling up you will see this panel on the right:
   
4. Click Change Query and wait for the screen to load.
   You will be presented with the Build Your Query screen.
5. Most of the configuration is already set and should not be changed as this will cause the web part to return unexpected data, so please do not change anything in the BASICS Instead click REFINERS at the top of the panel:
   
6. On the REFINERS tab you can add filters to the existing query to reduce the results based on their metadata tags. You will need to be aware that SharePoint Search gives names to these filters that we cannot change, so a reference is provided on this page: Atlas Managed Properties for Search
7. So to add a Department filter to the web part, scroll down the list of refiners in the page linked above and find the Managed Property for Department. We can see that this is “RefinableString06”. 
8. Select the specific value to filter to under the RefinableString06 heading, and click ADD to add it:
   

Please note – if you do not see the value you need here it is because the query is not returning any items which have that value, so filtering by it will return no results. This is either because you didn’t create the items yet, they are set to be hidden, or Search has not crawled them yet.

8. You will see the changes in the preview panel on the right - we now only have the item which has the Construction department tagged:

Before:     After:  

9. You can add multiple filters if necessary or remove filters by selecting them on the right and clicking REMOVE.
10. Once you are happy with the results returned, click OK at the bottom right of the panel. If you click cancel all your configuration will be discarded:
    
11. This will close the query configuration panel. Make sure you click OK again at the bottom of the web part configuration panel to complete the process:
    
12. Check in or Publish the page to see that your filter has been applied to the results.