Filters are controls visitors use to narrow search results.

Examples include:

• Format
• Delivery
• Subject area
• Date
• Location

Filters depend on indexed Search Fields. Before a field can be used as a filter, it must exist in the search index and be enabled as a search filter.

Open Search Configuration > Fields to configure Search Fields. For a typical filter, enable Show this field as a search filter, then use Search Configuration > Filters to review and tune filter-specific settings.

Some advanced filter options may initially be visible only to Airgentic support or superusers.

Filter Style vs Selection Mode

Filters have two separate settings:

• Filter style controls how the filter looks.
• Selection mode controls whether visitors can choose one value or more than one value.

For example, a Button list can be either:

• Single value at a time: selecting News narrows the Type filter to News only.
• Multiple values: selecting News and Events can show results from either type.

The field editor shows an example beside the selected Filter style so you can see the kind of control visitors will get.

Filter Styles

Not every service needs every filter style.

Most website filters use Button list or Checkbox list.

Field Value Ordering

The Sort by dropdown in Advanced settings controls the order of values inside a filter.

Common choices:

• Most common first, then A-Z: shows the values with the most matching results first. This is the usual default.
• Alphabetical A-Z: useful for stable lists where visitors know the value name.
• Alphabetical Z-A: the reverse alphabetical order.
• Least common first, then A-Z: useful mostly for diagnostics or specialist cases.

Selection Mode

Use Selection mode to decide whether the filter behaves like a drill-down or a multi-select filter.

Use Single value at a time when the values are mutually exclusive or when the filter should feel like navigation. A common example is Type: a result normally belongs to one type, such as News, Events, Policies, or Courses.

Use Multiple values when visitors reasonably expect to combine values. For example, a visitor might want results that are Online or On campus, or documents that are PDF or Word document.

The Single-select menu style is single-select by default. A Button list or Checkbox list can also be configured as single-select when that visual style is preferred.

Multiple-Value Matching

For filters with Selection mode: Multiple values, choose how multiple selected values are matched.

Most multi-select filters should use Match any selected value. If a visitor selects Online and Evening, results can match either value.

Use Must match all selected values only for multi-valued fields where the same page can contain several values and the visitor expects every selected value to be present. For example, a course tagged with both Online and Evening would match when both are selected.

This matching setting does not usually matter for single-select filters because visitors can only choose one value at a time.

Recommended Setups

Multi-Value and Hierarchy Filters

Enable Multi-valued when a single page or document can have more than one value for the field. If the website stores those values in one metadata string, set Split multi-value field on to the separator used by the website, such as a comma.

Use Hierarchy / drill-down path as the field type when the value has levels. The hierarchy delimiter and maximum depth are shown in Advanced settings only for hierarchy fields.

Examples:

Filters by Scope

Different search scopes may show different filters.

For example:

• Programs might show Format, Delivery, and Credential.
• Courses might show Subject, Term, and Delivery.
• News might show Date and Topic.

This helps keep the search interface relevant for each type of result.

For example, the Programs scope can show Delivery, Sector, and Credential, while the News scope can show different filters.

Configure scope-specific filter visibility on Search Configuration > Scopes. Category mappings are managed separately on the Categories tab.

See Configuring Search Scopes.

Value Normalisation

Filter values should be clean and consistent.

For example, these should usually become one value:

• online
• Online
• Online Learning
• web-based

Airgentic can normalise values using canonical labels, synonyms, casing rules, and allowed-value lists.

When Filters Need Reprocessing

Changing how a filter is displayed may not require reprocessing. Changing the field used by a filter usually does.

Typical examples:

When you save field changes on Search Configuration > Fields, the admin console explains whether HTML Processing, an index update, or no processing is needed.

Some advanced filter options, such as value normalisation and scope-specific visibility, may initially be managed by Airgentic support or superusers.