Configuration Labels | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• What a version label is
• Staging vs. Production labels and best practices

Version Overview

A configuration version is a unique instance of a saved configuration. Whenever you make a successful edit and save to your config (whether through the UI or JSON), it will create a new version. You will see your various configuration versions in the “Configuration Versions” of your selected experience:

If you ever want to reference an old version of your config, you are able to download configuration versions directly from the “Configuration Versions” screen above.

Staging vs. Production Labels

When you go to build the frontend of Search (which you’ll learn about in a later module), you will have a Staging instance and a Production instance of your Pages site. Version Labels allow you to pin a specific configuration version for use in Staging or Production. The Staging instance of the site is where you will want to see your changes and understand how your config edits impact the search results. It is a safe, “sandbox” environment for QA and approve of changes before they go live to Production.

It is a best practice to pin the Staging instance of your Search experience to the “LATEST” config tag, like below:

This will allow you to always see the latest version of the configuration in the search results on your staging site, allowing you to easily test any of the changes you made before you set your Production label to that same version.

You will never want to set your Production label to “LATEST”, because config changes should always be tested in Staging first. It is safe to switch your Production label up to a new version once it’s been fully tested. In the example above, we can switch the Production label to “6” after Staging testing is complete. Again, always make sure your Production label is set to an explicit version label number and never the “LATEST” tag.

Testing Versions in Test Search

Test Search allows you to run and compare queries by version (either a specific version number, Staging, or Production). Simply use the drop down within Test Search to select a Search Configuration version and then run your search.