In this tutorial, you will learn about all the steps required to upgrade Sitecore Search from v7.2 to v.75. Upgrading Sitecore can be a painful experience. This is why documenting my attempts and the issues I encountered while upgrading search will help you out a lot. There are several essential search-related configuration tweaks that you need to implement before your search will work. You will learn all about these tweaks and all the pitfalls, if this sounds of interest to you, read on 🔥🔥🔥
After Upgrading To 7.5 My Site Doesn't Load
After running my initial upgrade to 7.5, when I tried to access the Sitecore backend, I encountered an exception. Assuming you have not customised your Sitecore search, take a copy of Sitecore.ContentSearch.config from a clean Sitecore v7.5 install. Copy it into your webroot here:
App_Config ➡ Include
Re-run your Sitecore instance and the content editor should hopefully load 🤞
The next step is to re-index the search indexes . Go to your Sitecore Desktop and to open the ndexing Manager:
Start ➡ Control Panel ➡ Index ➡ Indexing Manager
It is possible the Indexing Manager fails to load and instead throw an exception:
Could not find the computed index field type: Sitecore.ContentSearch.ComputedFields.Culture,Sitecore.ContentSearch
This is annoying 😞
This issue is likely caused by obsolete config files within your Include folder. If you have not done any custom modifications to the index files, I recommend that you override them with copies from a fresh 7.5 install. For reference, you need to copy these files:
Sitecore.ContentSearch.Analytics.configSitecore.ContentSearch.configSitecore.ContentSearch.DefaultConfigurations.configSitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.DefaultIndexConfiguration.configSitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Analytics.configSitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Core.configSitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Master.configSitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Web.config
This fixed my first issue, but when I tried to open the Indexing Manager again. I encountered this issue:
If you encounter the same Sitecore error, it's basically complaining because it can't find a config value. The databasePropertyStore key refers to a node that should exist in one of the search configs. If you look at Sitecore upgrade configuration notes and search for databasePropertyStore you can see this key has been moved from to this location:
App_Config ➡ Include ➡ Sitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.DefaultIndexConfiguration.config
The installation notes state that for each index definition config file, we need to do a find and replace on the ref attribute of the node. you need to change contentSearch/databasePropertyStore to contentSearch/indexConfigurations/databasePropertyStore.
As I'd used clean config versions for Sitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Core.config, Sitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Master.config and Sitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.Index.Web.config, I knew these files should be correct.
After a lot of searching, I managed to find three custom Lucene indexes that had been created for the site that had been built and I was unaware of. These config scamps were tucked away in an obscure folder within the Include folder. When I changed the databasePropertyStore reference to:
contentSearch ➡ indexConfigurations ➡ databasePropertyStore
The indexing manager now threw this error:
Could not find configuration node: contentSearch/indexUpdateStrategies/intervalAsyncCore
Reading the Sitecore upgrade notes again
For each index definition, update the ref attribute value of the node in the element in the following way: paths like this “contentSearch/XXX” need to be updated to the paths like this “content search/indexConfigurations/XXX”'
I went back into my custom index config files and updated all the reference in strategies section, from :
To this:
After this change, jackpot my indexing manager worked and I was able to re-index my site 💥
You should now have a working and upgraded Sitecore search 🔥🔥🔥
If you are trying to upgrade Sitecore search and you encounter issues, this is common. If you're reading this and you are stuck, my first advice would be to always read the Sitecore upgrade instruction fully. Whenever I've done Sitecore upgrades, I always find using a file and folder comparison tool like Beyond Compare a lifesaver.
Happy Coding 🤘
