Q. How can we allow our shoppers to select more than one facet?

A. In order to support selection of more than one values in facets the following changes should be made :

Filter parameter changes : The filter parameter in the search API supports more than one value separated by an OR operator. If the shopper selects more than one value in a facet then the payload for the filter parameter should be specified in the following manner : filter=:”” OR :”:”.
Add Facet.multiselect parameter : Set facet.multiselect=true in the search request to ensure that the remaining values in the facet are retained along with the product count associated with them. By default, facet.multiselect is false, which leads to removal of remaining values from the facet once one value is selected.

The option to select multiple values in a facet is available only for ‘Range’ and ‘Text’ facets. Multi-level facets do not support selection of more than one value.

Q. I created facets for my site but still can’t see any response value in the API call. Why?

A. The facets creation is a two step process.

First step is adding facet to the global facet pool – It can be done in the console by browsing to Manage > Configure site > Configure Facet
Second step is enabling the facets from site-rule – This can be done in the console by going to **Merchandising **> **Commerce search **> Site Rule. In site rule, click on View Site Rule, then click Next to reach the facets screen. Enable the facet that you want to display on the site and click on Save. Publish the site rule to store the changes.

Once the site-rule is published it starts reflecting immediately. However, it may take 10-15 mins to reflect the changes in site-rule due to caching.

📘
Note
Facets enabled in site-rule are returned for all request. You can also enable facets based on criteria using field-rules.

Q. How to display a higher number of facets without hurting request latency ?

A. Returning a higher number of facets hurts performance of your search and adds a few extra milliseconds to your response time. In general, it is recommended to show 10-15 most relevant facets on a search results page (SRP) to help shoppers discover and use filters effectively without too much cognitive load on the shoppers. However, if your business demands showing a higher number of facets on the SRP and you don’t want to sacrifice on the performance then we have a solution for you.

**Solution 1: Using Multi-valued field **

Step 1: Combine individual facet fields into a single multi-valued fields. Let us assume that you want to create facets on the following fields :

Availability which has value “Yes” & “No”
Gender which has value “Male” & “Female”
Size which has the unique values “S” , “M” , “L” , “XL”
Add a new multi-valued field in the catalog called Facet_group_1 where the key & value pair of the fields are stored.

Sample feed before transformation :

\{  
  "add": [
  \{
  "Availability": "Yes",
  "Gender": "Male",
  "Size": "L",
  "UniqueId" : "1"
    },
  \{
  "Availability": "No",
  "Gender": "Female",
  "Size": "S",
  "UniqueId" : "2"
  }
  ]
}

Sample feed after transformation:

\{  
  "add": [
  \{
  "Availability": "Yes",
  "Gender": "Male",
  "Size": "L",
  "UniqueId" : "1",
  "Facet_group_1" : ["Availability|Yes","Gender|Male", "Size|L"]
    },
  \{
  "Availability": "No",
  "Gender": "Female",
  "Size": "S",
  "UniqueId" : "2",
  "Facet_group_1" : ["Availability|No","Gender|Female", "Size|S"]
  }
  ]
}

Step 2: Create a facet on the field Facet_group_1 instead of creating a facet on individual attributes Availability, Gender, and Size. The facet response for Facet_group_1 is going to have the following format :

\{  
"facetName": "Facet_group_1",
"filterField": "Facet_group_1",
"values": [
"Availability|Yes", 50,
"Availability|No", 50,
"Gender|Male", 40,
"Gender|Female", 60,
"Size|L", 20,
"Size|S", 30,
"Size|XL", 40,
"Size|M", 10,
],
"displayName": "Facet Group 1",
"position": 1
}

Step 3: Parse the facet response to get back values for the individual facet on the front end.
Iterate through the values returned for Facet_group_1 to separate the key-value pairs and group the pairs having the same name to generate facets for the original attributes

Availability

Yes – 50
No – 50

Gender

Female – 60
Male – 40

Size

XL – 40
S – 30
M – 10
L – 20

📘
Note

The display name for facets has to be decided at the time of the feed change step (i.e. step 1).

The position, display name, and sorting of facet values cannot be configured from the console.
This approach is not recommended for Range facets (e.g. facets created on price).

Solution 2: Using Multi-level facets for grouping facets

There are occasions where you may have different ways of classifying a product based on the same property.

For example, the Size of a fashion product can be defined in the following ways :

Size_1: “Regular” or “Petite” or “Plus”
Size_2: “S” or “M” or “L”

In these situations, you can use multilevel facets to help shoppers narrow down to the right product quickly without introducing a lot of facets. You can achieve this by following the following steps.

Step 1: Combine the individual facet fields into a single path type field called Size_group

Feed before transformation

\{  
  "add": [
  \{
  "Size_1": "Regular",
  "Size_2": "L",
  "UniqueId" : "1"
    },
  \{
  "Size_1": "Petite",
  "Size_2": "S",
  "UniqueId" : "2"
  }
  ]
}

Feed after transformation

\{  
  "add": [
  \{
  "Size_1": "Regular",
  "Size_2": "L",
  "UniqueId" : "1",
  "Size_group" : "Regular > L"
    },
  \{
  "Size_1": "Petite",
  "Size_2": "S",
  "UniqueId" : "2",
  "Size_group" : "Petite > S"
  }
  ]
}

Step 2: Create a facet on the field Size_group instead of creating a facet on individual attributes Size_1 and Size_2. Handle the response of the Size_group multilevel facet to display the facet. The facet response will look like:

"facets": {  
"multilevel": {
"bucket": [
          \{
          "values": [
          "Regular",
          30,
          "Petite",
          50,
          "Plus",
          20
          ],
          "position": 0,
          "filterParam": "Size_group1_fq",
          "level": 1,
          "multiLevelField": "Size_group"
          }
          ],
"breadcrumb": {}
}
}

Once the shopper selects the “Regular” option, then they will get an option to select amongst the options in Size_2.

facets": {  
"multilevel": {
"bucket": [
        \{
        "values": ["S",10,"M",10 ,"L",5,"XL",5],
        "position": 0,
        "displayName": "Size_group",
        "filterParam": "Size_group2_fq",
        "level": 2,
        "multiLevelField": "Size_group"
        }
        ],
"breadcrumb": {
"filterField": "Size_group",
"values": [
          \{
          "value": "Regular"
          }
          ],
"level": 1
}

📘
Note
The shopper will get an option to select only 1 value at each level.

Q. Do we support multiple hierarchical facets on a single Search Results Page?

A. You can build a hierarchy in your facet values to enable multi-level navigation and filtering. This pattern is great for very long lists of values and to improve discoverability: your users will be able to browse up and down in the levels to refine their searches. Using multilevel faceting, we can view number of products present in each category and apply these filters directly to narrow down our search.

To enable, the dataType of these fields should be set as “path”. Hierarchical facets can be configured only on “path” fields.

A sample request to check: [https://search.unbxd.io/API](https://search.unbxd.io/API) Key/Site Key/search?&q=*&rows=40&start=0&version=V2&format=json&variants=true&filter=category_path:%22Apparel%22&filter=color:%22Black%22&facet.multiselect=tru