Add or edit entities

This is part one of the get started walkthrough series. You can optionally skip this part before moving on to indexing your content.

An entity describes an item that is searchable. This can be a product, a content item, or a category, or it can be a custom item. Each entity has its own set of attributes, representing the corresponding item or items.

Entities affect what is displayed in experiences and how data is indexed in your implementation. Sitecore Search is preconfigured with four distinct entities: Content, Product, Category, and Store. Each has attributes typical to items of its type.

The entities need to have attributes to hold all the metadata you want to display and use with Search algorithms. This might require adding attributes to existing entities or creating custom entities. For example, a search result for an article might include name, author, publication, and publication date, whereas those for a shoe might include name, description, brand, SKU, and price.

The Content entity is preconfigured with attributes typical for various types of content, like reports, magazines, videos, and demos. Similarly, the Product entity is preconfigured with commerce-related attributes.

You can extend the Product entity with attributes similar to those in the Content entity, so visitors can see products and content items in the same result set. You can see all the preconfigured entities by clicking Administration > Domain settings and then clicking the Attributes tab. In the entity drop-down menu, to filter listing, select an entity.

Before you can complete this part, make sure you have a list of attributes you want in your entities.

To add attributes to existing entities:

To create a custom entity:

Now you can go on to index your items.