See conference video - http://www.lucidimagination.com/devzone/events/conferences/revolution/2011 The organization needed to enable a very customizable form of Global Navigation for the various types of users (based on their profile and other factors). This would normally have involved complex logic to figure out the appropriate set of links to show for a customer, and would have been a maintenance nightmare. Instead we approached the problem as a search problem. Coupled with a novel encoding scheme we were able to solution the problem simply by searching on the customers profile groups and return a coherent global navigation using Solr to index the data. This has resulted in a very simple to understand and maintain solution that will stand in good stead in the future. The presentation is meant to be a description of using Solr to implement a real-world application.

1. Customized Navigation Using SOLR Shantanu Deo, Technical Director, AT&T

2. We Have A Simple Business Need Great! What is it? We want a Global Navigation with Multiple levels. Sure no problem. It should be different for different people! Hmm.. Ok. BTW we have @ 60+ ways to group users and a user can belong to many groups at once What does that mean ? Also we want to be able to make frequent changes to who sees what and when. Ok that might be tough to do given our release turnaround times for code related changes Page 2

3. Simple Needs = Complex Requirements Page 3 No. of user types = about 60 No. of Navigation levels = 3 No. of unique URL’s = 700+ Hierarchical dependence across levels. Complex edge cases: If user belongs to Category A/B/C but Not D then show URL Combinatorial explosion (60! In theory)

5. The tertiary level is further broken up in categories by columns

6. Each Column has a heading which may/may not be a link

7. The rightmost column should be highlighted differently.

12. Its positional encoding

13. Its list of user groups for which it can appear in that position

14. Its list of user groups for which it is hidden

15. Other attributes that address the other small requirements associated with the tertiary level (eg. Column heading etc) The same URL may appear multiple times, but its set of User Groups is unique.

17. Robust and Scalable

18. Proven stability in our own Production environment for over a year as our primary search for phones.

19. So already in our production environment (no internal hoops to jump through)

22. Avoid the need to make code changes everytime there is a change in the groups or new URL’s are introduced – Simply re-index new data and begin rendering

23. Deploy quickly in existing SOLR infrastructure

25. Shantanu Deo

26. VinayMarda

27. Jay Chan

28. Rama Atmakur

29. Greg Taff

30. RupeshJha