Configurable Course and Program Search

Tiffany Winters

Modified on: Fri, May 2, 2025 at 2:22 PM

Table of Contents

Overview
Configuring Search Templates
Supported Search Fields/Options
Public Facing Catalog Considerations and Best Practices
Related Articles

Overview

PATH: Catalog > Settings > Sidebar Search Filter

Institutions with both Contemporary Catalog and Curriculum Management can use configurable search to create custom search filters for program and course pages within their catalogs.
The templates within your Curriculum module inform the filter options.

Configuring Search Templates

Caveat | How to Do It | Previewing Your Template | Assigning Search Templates to Catalog

Caveat

Curriculum program and course templates should be configured before creating configurable search templates. Not doing so will result in dysfunction of the search. If you update your Curriculum program and course page templates with new fields you would like to include in configurable search, a new configurable template must be created in Catalog.

How to Do It

Step 1: Click “New Filter Template”.

Step 2: Input a name.

Step 3: Select a “type” (Course or Program) from the dropdown.

Step 4: Click “Create”.

Step 5: Drag and drop “available data sources” (filters) from the left onto the Sidebar Facets List on the right.

Step 6: Click into the field to access its “Question Settings”.

Step 7:

Select your preferred Interface Element Type.
Several Interface Element Types are available, but specific options vary depending on the question type.
For example, the following Interface Element Types – “radiobutton list” and “dropdown” – are supported by the “Select” question type.

Step 8:

Select the “Data Sets” toggle.
You can dynamically filter options via these “data sets”.
If no filtration is applied to the data set, the facet will default to all available options when in use on the public catalog.

Step 9:

Determine whether or not you wish to “Preserve Options Order”.
When checked, the order that the user defines in the template for the dataset will persist to the public website.
When not checked, the public catalog data set will be sorted by the back-end label for the data.

Step 10: Confirm field visibility.

Step 11:

Confirm whether or not you would like for the field to include an informative tooltip on the public-facing catalog.
If enabled, fill out the tooltip text box with a brief description of the information provided by the chosen filter. This will appear on the public facing catalog.

Edit Mode

Public-Facing Catalog

Previewing Your Template

You can preview the appearance of filters within the configuration by selecting the “preview” button.

Assigning Search Templates to Catalog

Once your search template(s) have been configured, you will want to assign them to a catalog by following the below steps:

Navigate to Catalog > Settings > Catalogs.
Select the Catalog you wish to add the search templates to. This will open the “Edit Catalog” modal.
Select your template(s) from the “Catalog Courses Page Search Configuration” and/or “Catalog Program Page Search Configuration”.
Click “Save”.

Supported Search Fields/Options

Overview

Within configurable search, the following fields from Curriculum Management templates are supported. We expect these fields to cover most use cases.
You might see additional fields appear as available data sources, but only the ones listed below are fully supported.

Prebuilt Fields

Courses	Programs
Attribute Select	Attribute Select (SIS-Dependent; needs to be specially integrated)
Campus	Campus
Campuses	Campuses
Can Schedule	Career
Career	College/School
College/School	Degree Designation(s)
Course Aliases	Department(s)
Course Number	Field of Study
Department(s)	Program Academic Focus
Grade Mode	Program Attributes
Graded Component	Program Career Categories
Instruction Modes	Program Interests
Primary Component	Program Level
Start Term/End Term	Status
Subject Code Select	Subject

Custom Fields

Courses	Programs
Course Select	Course Aliases
Date	Course Number
Department Select	Course Select
Number	Date
Program Select	Department Select
Date	Number
Term Select	Program Select
	Subject Code Select
	Term Select
	Course Aliases

Public Facing Catalog Considerations and Best Practices

Dropdowns | Checklists | Radio Buttons | Additional Note

Dropdowns

For most data sources, dropdowns give users the ability to select one option from an extended list.
For Departments, the dropdown will be multi-select as shown in the below screenshot.
- However, if you need to change this to be single-select, reach out to your Customer Success representative or open a support ticket – your Data Engineer (DE) can help adjust this.

The configuration logic for dropdowns is “is”. In other words, the search must be an exact match.
You can request a change to the CONTAINS operator by submitting a support ticket.
- When using the CONTAINS operator with a single value, that means the result needs to merely contain the criteria but doesn’t need to be an exact match.
- When using the CONTAINS operator with multiple criteria, such as "CONTAINS X AND Y", it means that only courses or programs with all specified criteria will be displayed.
  - For example, if you set Degree Designation to "CONTAINS X AND Y AND Z", only programs that include all three degree designations will be shown.