ThoughtSpot indexes column names and unique column values. The indexes are used to dynamically generate suggestions in the search bar when typing a search.

A column’s index influences the suggestions that appear for that column in search. You can modify a specific column’s INDEX TYPE in the DATA > Tables > Columns page or to set a system-wide Index value in the modeling file.

Default indexing

The default behavior of indexing is as follows:

  • All column names are indexed using their ColumnName value.
  • Values for columns with the column type of MEASURE are not indexed.
  • Values for columns with the data type of DATE are not indexed.
  • Columns that contain a large amount of free-form text (i.e. the number of characters in more than a few of the fields is more than 50) are indexed as PREFIX_ONLY by default.
  • Short strings (like a firstname column) are indexed using PREFIX_AND_SUBSTRING by default, which indexes both prefix and substrings.

You can override the default behavior by editing the modeling file to change the Index value for any columns that should be indexed differently. There are several different supported index types:

Index type Description
DEFAULT This is the default value. The default indexing behavior will apply to the column values, depending on their type. PREFIX_AND_SUBSTRING for short values and PREFIX_ONLY for long values and free-form text.
DONT_INDEX Prevents indexing on the column values.
PREFIX_AND_SUBSTRING Allows full indexing such that prefix and sub-string search both work for the column values.
PREFIX_ONLY Allows indexing such that only prefix search works for the column values.
PREFIX_AND_WORD_SUBSTRING Allows indexing such that only prefix search works for each word of a multi-word string, for the column values.

Make a change

  1. Find the column whose index type you want to modify

  2. Set its Index Type.

    If you are using the model file, double click in the Index cell, and type in the index type you want to use. Consider a column in which there are four values ‘ThoughtSpot’, ‘Thought’, ‘Spot’ and ‘Thought Spot’. If you search for ‘sp’, depending on the setting for indexing, the column value search result suggestions will vary:

    Index field value Search bar suggestions
    DEFAULT ‘ThoughtSpot’, ‘Spot’ and ‘Thought Spot’
    DONT_INDEX No suggestions.
    PREFIX_AND_SUBSTRING ‘ThoughtSpot’, ‘Spot’ and ‘Thought Spot’
    PREFIX_ONLY ‘Spot’
    PREFIX_AND_WORD_SUBSTRING ‘Spot’ and ‘Thought Spot’
  3. Save your changes.

Model the data for searching