Index management

Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source reindex automatically whenever one or more items change. Actions that trigger reindexing include price changes, creating catalog or shopping cart price rules, adding new categories, and so on. To optimize performance, Commerce accumulates data into special tables using indexers. As the data changes, the indexed tables must be updated—or reindexed. Commerce reindexes as a background process, and your store remains accessible during the processes.

Reindexing data speeds up processing, and reduces the time the customer has to wait. For example, if you change the price of an item from $4.99 to $3.99, Commerce reindexes the data to show the price change in the store. Without indexing, Commerce would have to calculate the price of every product on the fly; handling shopping cart price rules, bundle pricing, discounts, tier pricing, and so on. Loading the price for a product might take longer than the customer is willing to wait.

The indexers can be set to either update on save or on schedule. All indexes can use either option, except Customer Grid which only supports on save. When indexing on save, Commerce starts a reindex on save actions. The Index Management page completes the update and flushes the cache, with the reindex message appearing within a minute or two. When reindexing on a schedule, a reindex runs according to a schedule as a cron job. A system message appears if a cron job is not available to update any indexers that become invalid. Your store remains accessible during reindex processes.

NOTE
Adobe Commerce merchants using Live Search, Catalog Service, or Product Recommendations have the option to use a SaaS-based price indexer.

When a reindex is needed, a notification appears at the top of the page. The index and message clears based on the reindex mode and potential actions that you take. For more detailed information about indexing , see the How the application implements indexing in the PHP Developer Guide.

Index management - actions

  • Index Management has a slightly different presentation for flat product catalogs.
  • To avoid problems when multiple Admin users update objects that trigger automatic reindexing, it is recommended that you set all indexers to run on schedule as cron jobs. Otherwise, every time an object is saved, any objects with interdependencies might cause a deadlock. Symptoms of a deadlock include high CPU usage and MySQL errors. As a best practice, it is recommended that you use scheduled indexing.
  • Adobe Commerce (Adobe Commerce only) By default, admin actions, such as reindexing, are logged by the system and can be viewed in the Action Logs Report. Action logging can be configured in the Admin Actions Logging in your store’s advanced admin settings.

Best practices for reindexing

Reindexing and caching have different purposes in Commerce. Indexes track database information for increased search performance, faster data retrieval for storefronts, and more. Caches save loaded data, images, formats, and the like for increased performance loading and accessing the storefront.

  • Typically, you want to reindex when updating data in Commerce.
  • If you have a large store or multiple stores, you may want to set indexers like category and products to scheduled cron jobs due to the possibility of reindex looping. You may want to set the reindex on a schedule during non-peak hours.
  • When reindexing, you do not need to also perform a flush cache.
  • For fresh Commerce installations, you must flush the cache and reindex.
  • Flushing caches and reindexing does not flush your computer’s web browser cache. Clear the browser cache after completing updates to your storefront.

Change the index mode

IMPORTANT
For stores that use Adobe Commerce B2B and have set Elasticsearch as the fulltext (catalogsearch_fulltext) indexer: The fulltext index must be rerun after any bulk permissions change or when the ‘permissions’ indexer is in ‘Scheduled’ mode.
  1. On the Admin sidebar, go to System > Tools > Index Management.

  2. Select the checkbox for each indexer that you want to change.

  3. Set Actions to one of the following:

    • Update on Save
    • Update by Schedule
    • Invalidate index
    note important
    IMPORTANT
    Customer Grid can only be reindexed using Update on Save. This index does not support Update by Schedule.
  4. Click Submit to apply the change to each selected indexer.

    Index Management columns

    table 0-row-2 1-row-2 2-row-2 3-row-2 4-row-2 5-row-2 6-row-2 layout-auto
    Column Description
    Indexer The name of the indexer.
    Description A description of the indexer.
    Mode Indicates the current update mode for each indexer. Options:
    Update on Save - The index is set to update whenever an entity change is saved. These entities include products, categories, and customers. When the save action completes, a series of steps begins catching the changes and updating the index. The Index Management page updates and flushes the reindex message within a minute or two.
    Update on Schedule - The index is set to update on schedule according to a cron job. The cron job includes the schedule interval for reindexing, writing updates to the index when run.
    Schedule Status Displays the schedule status updates.
    Status Displays one of the following:
    Ready — The index is up to date.
    Suspended - Reindexing is paused.
    Processing - Reindexing is currently running.
    Reindex Required - A change has been made that requires reindexing, but the indexers cannot be updated automatically. Check to see if cron is available and configured correctly.
    Updated Indicates the date and time that an index was last updated.

Reindex using the command line

Commerce provides additional reindex options using the command line. For complete details and command options, see Reindex in the Configuration Guide.

Index trigger events

Reindexing triggers

Index type
Reindexing event
Product Prices
Add customer group
Change configuration settings
Flat catalog product data
Add store
Add store group
Add, edit, or delete attribute (for searching and filtering)
Flat catalog category data
Add store
Add store group
Add, edit, or delete attribute (for searching and filtering)
Catalog category/product index
Add, edit, or delete products (single, mass, and import)
Change product-to-category relations
Add, edit, or delete categories
Add or delete stores
Delete store groups
Delete websites
Catalog search index
Add, edit, or delete products (single, mass, and import)
Add or delete stores
Delete store groups
Delete websites
Stock status index
Change inventory configuration settings.
Category permissions index
Add store
Add store group
Add, delete, or update attribute (for searching and filtering)
IMPORTANT
Use of a flat catalog is no longer recommended as a best practice. Continued use of this feature is known to cause performance degradation and other indexing issues. See Use Flat Catalog Product for more information.

Index actions and controls

Action
Result
Controls
Creating a store, new customer group, or any action listed in Actions that Cause a Full Reindex
Full reindex
Full reindexing is performed on the schedule determined by your Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source cron job.
Bulk loading of items (Commerce import/export, Direct SQL query, and any other method that directly adds, changes, or deletes data)
Partial reindex (only changed items are reindexed)
At the frequency determined by your Commerce cron job.
Changing scope (for example, from global to website)
Partial reindex (only changed items are reindexed)
At the frequency determined by your Commerce cron job.

Events that trigger full reindexing

Indexer
Event
Catalog Category Flat Indexer
Create a web store
Create a web store view
Create, or delete an attribute that is any of the following:
- Searchable or visible in advanced search
- Filterable
- Filterable in search
- Used for sorting
Change an existing attribute to be any of the preceding.
Enable flat category storefront options
Catalog Product Flat Indexer
Create a web store
Create a web store view
Create, or delete an attribute that is any of the following:
- Searchable or visible in advanced search
- Filterable
- Filterable in search
- Used for sorting
Change an existing attribute to be any of the preceding.
Enable flat category storefront options
Stock status indexer
When the following Catalog Inventory options change in the system configuration:
Stock Options - Display Out of Stock Products
Product Stock Options - Manage Stock
Price Indexer
Adding a customer group.
When any of the following Catalog Inventory options change in the system configuration:
Stock Options - Display Out of Stock Products
Product Stock Options - Manage Stock
Price - Catalog Price Scope
Category or Product Indexer
Create or delete a store view
Delete a store
Delete a website
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