Funnelback 15.20 training

These Funnelback training courses and VMs are provided as-is to enable Funnelback users to undertake self-directed training.

They are provided without any warranty and require moderate technical skills to set up and use. If any support is required for the use of this training material this can be arranged by contacting your account manager or sales representative.

Obtaining a training licence

Funnelback training VMs require a training licence.

• If you are a Funnelback partner you can generate training licences for yourself or your customers on the Funnelback partner portal.
• If you are a Funnelback customer you can request a training licence by contacting your account manager or sales representative.

The training licence permits the licenced user to use the training VM for the purpose of training only for the duration of the licence period.

Virtual machine

• Vagrant box (VM v1.3)
  5.3 GB, MD5: 2ee5519e19072b4085f1e193579f3091
• Funnelback 15.20 VM setup instructions

Course outlines - marketing and communications stream

FUNL101 - Funnelback for marketing and communications professionals

Prerequisites

Students should have basic computer skills but a technical background or prior experience with search engines is NOT assumed. This makes the course an ideal introduction for anyone wanting to get started with Funnelback. Past experience in managing or updating components of a website would be useful though not required

Course outline

• Introduction to search - overview of search as a concept and Funnelback.
• The search results page - examination of the more common functionality that is used in the search results page to maximise the search user experience.
• The Funnelback marketing dashboard - overview of the Funnelback's web management and reporting interface
• Understand your search
• Search analytics reports
• Content auditor reports
• Accessibility auditor reports
• Optimise your search
• Using search analytics to improve your search
• Controlling what gets indexes
• Using the SEO auditor
• Tuning your search results

Course outlines - implementation stream

FUNL201 - Funnelback for implementers

Synopsis

This course provides students with the core skills required to extend, manage and maintain an existing Funnelback search.

Audience

This course is suitable for front end developers who wish to maintain a Funnelback search. The course focuses on the implementation, maintainance and extension of an existing search collection and covers topics such as search result templates and basic feature configuration.

Prerequisites

Students should have experience with reading and editing HTML, Javascript and CSS.

Course outline

• Introduction to collections, profiles and front end services
• The Funnelback administration interface and marketing dashboard
• Search templating
• Front end services creation and management
• Best bets, synonyms and curator rules
• Configuration of common features:
  • auto-completion
  • related searches (contextual navigation)
  • metadata
  • display options
  • faceted navigation
  • remote includes

FUNL202 - Funnelback for advanced implementers

Synopsis

This course provides students with the core skills required to set up, customise and develop advanced functionality for Funnelback searches.

Audience

This course is suitable for search developers. The course focuses on the setup and creation of new Funnelback search services and also covers advanced configuration and customisation.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 201 - Funnelback for implementers, and also have coding skills. Familiarity with the Java or Groovy languages is desirable.

Course outline

• Search collections
  • Creating a collection
• Search update cycle
• Updating a search index
  • Checking an update
  • Debugging failed updates
• Meta collections
• Working with XML
  • Relationship with metadata
• URL sets (gscopes)
• Advanced metadata
• Geospatial and numeric metadata
• Social media collection
• Push collections
• Manipulating search result content
• The query processing pipeline
• UI hook scripts
• Accessibility auditor configuration
• Index manipulation
  • Removing items from the index
• Alternate output formats
  • Output search results as CSV
• Extra searches
• Content auditor configuration
• Accessibility auditor configuration

FUNL203 - Funnelback for backend implementers

Synopsis

This course provides students with the advanced skills for implementing Funnelback.

Audience

This course is suitable for advanced search developers. The course focuses on advanced techniques and tasks requiring backend knowledge and access.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 202 - Funnelback for advanced implementers, and also have familiarity with the Linux command line. Familiarity with the Java or Groovy languages and shell scripting is desirable.

Course outline

• Accessing Funnelback by SSH
• Funnelback directory structure
• Workflow
• Administration users
• Creating additional profiles and services
• Funnelback padre binaries
• Document filtering
• Funnelback APIs
  • Administration API
  • Search results API
  • Recommender
• Configuring ranking
  • Automated tuning
• Custom collections
• Template localisation

FUNL204 - Funnelback for enterprise search implementers (draft)

Synopsis

This course provides students with skills required to implement an enterprise search.

Audience

This course is suitable for advanced search developers. The course focuses on advanced techniques and tasks requiring backend knowledge and access.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 203 - Funnelback for backend implementers, and also have familiarity with the Linux command line. Familiarity with the Java or Groovy languages and shell scripting is desirable.Course outline

• Overview of enterprise search
• Securing your search
• Indexing other file formats
• Indexing other data source types
• Implementing custom DLS
• Troubleshooting enterprise search

Course outline - solution design stream

FUNL301 - Designing website search (draft)

Synopsis

This course is for solution architects and frontend developers and provides an introduction to designing and implementing a website search using Funnelback.

Audience

This course is suitable for solution architects and frontend developers.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 201, 202 and 203 and have a good familiarity with Funnelback's features.

Course outline

• Requirements gathering
• Solution design

FUNL302 - Enterprise search design (draft)

Synopsis

This course is for solution architects and frontend developers and provides an introduction to designing and implementing an enterprise search using Funnelback.

Audience

This course is suitable for solution architects and frontend developers.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 201-204 and 301 and have a extensive implementation experience.

Course outline

• Overview of enterprise search
• Designing an enterprise search
• Collection security
• Enterprise repositories

Course outline - administrator stream

FUNL401 - Funnelback for search administrators (draft)

Synopsis

This course is for search administrators and covers the skills required to maintain and troubleshoot existing Funnelback searches.

Audience

This course is suitable for search and system administrators and support staff.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 101, 201-203, have extensive implementation experience and basic system administration experience.

Course outline

• Collections, profiles and frontend services
• Troubleshooting issues with collections
• Troubleshooting techniques
• Troubleshooting specific issues
• Collection updates
• Debugging filtering
• Troubleshooting analytics
• Managing system services
• Managing users
• Maintenance tasks

FUNL402 - Funnelback for system administrators (draft)

Synopsis

This course is aimed at system administrators responsible for setup and maintenance of a Funnelback instance.

Audience

This course is suitable for system administrators.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 101, 201-203, have extensive implementation experience and basic system administration experience.

Course outline

• Installing and patching
• Application configuration
• Funnelback services
• Web administration
• Backend administration
• Funnelback filesystem
• Application level logging
• Creating a multi-server deployment
• Configuring multiple servers
• Licence management
• Managing users
• Scheduling updates
• Backing up Funnelback
• Monitoring Funnelback
• Securing Funnelback
• Firewalling
• Upgrading Funnelback
• Performance tuning
• Installing database drivers
• Maintenance tasks
• Capacity planning

Platform/application specific training

FUNL501 - Using Funnelback with Squiz Matrix (draft)

Synopsis

This course is for implementers and solution designers and covers Funnelback implementation and design when integrating with Squiz Matrix.

Audience

This course is suitable for solution designers and implementers.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 201-203 and have Funnelback implementation experience.

Course outline

• Designing Squiz Matrix for Funnelback
• Crawling Squiz Matrix
• Using Squiz Matrix with push collections
• Auto-completion integration
• Recommendations
• Debugging the user interface
• Funnelback as a data source

Training workshops

TW01 - Knowledge graph

Synopsis

This workshop takes an experienced Funnelback implementer through the steps involved in building a knowledge graph.

Audience

This course is suitable for advanced implementers.

Prerequisites

Students should have completed FUNL 201-203 and have extensive Funnelback implementation experience.