Crawling Solutions

What Crawling Does

When you crawl a solution, Cartographer queries the Dataverse metadata APIs to discover each component of a supported type that belongs to that solution. It reads the raw metadata for each component — table definitions, column schemas, form XML, view FetchXML, plugin step registrations, cloud flow definitions, and more — and stores a normalized record in the Component table. The names, metadata and documentation of your components never leave your environment. Cartographer does send VerseBlocks a usage report when a crawl runs. It includes counts and the display name of the solution crawled, but never component names or summaries. The privacy policy lists everything it sends.

Crawling is solution-scoped, meaning you choose exactly which solutions to crawl. This is not a full-environment blast — you control which solutions are documented and which are ignored. Cartographer is installed in one environment and documents the solutions you add there, one solution at a time. It does not inventory other environments or anything outside those solutions. To cover several environments, install it in each one. It is free, so there is no per-environment cost.

Incremental Crawling

After the first crawl, Crawl Now and scheduled crawls are incremental. Cartographer compares each component's current source against what it captured last time, and only reprocesses the ones that actually changed. A component whose source hasn't changed since the last crawl is skipped, not rewritten.

Adding a Solution to Crawl

1. 1

   Open Solution Manager

   In the Cartographer app, navigate to Solution Manager in the left sidebar.

2. 2

   Find the Add Solution row

   At the foot of the Configured Solutions section, the Add Solution row has a dropdown of the solutions in your environment, a Frequency dropdown and an Add Solution button.

3. 3

   Select a solution

   Choose the solution you want to crawl from the dropdown. It lists every visible solution in your environment, managed or unmanaged, and managed solutions from Microsoft can be crawled too. The Default solution, the Active solution and any solution you have already added are left out.

4. 4

   Configure crawl settings

   Optionally set how often it should re-crawl — manual only, hourly, every six hours, daily or weekly. Daily is the default. You set the frequency here, because Solution Manager cannot change it afterwards.

5. 5

   Add and Crawl

   Click Add Solution. Adding does not crawl, so click Crawl Now on the new row to start the first crawl. When it finishes, the button shows Indexing and a count while Cartographer makes the new components searchable. Keep the page open until that is done. A banner then reports how many components were created, updated, skipped and removed.

Component Types Discovered

Cartographer discovers components across your solution's data model, user interface, automation, web resources, and security configuration. Each type is processed differently to extract the most useful metadata. Summaries go into detail for types such as cloud flows, JavaScript, forms and plugin steps. Business rules, classic workflows, custom actions and business process flows are described only by their table, and charts, dashboards, desktop flows, canvas apps, custom pages and custom connectors get one line each.

Crawl Frequency

You choose how often Cartographer re-crawls a solution when you add it, to keep its documentation up to date. Solution Manager cannot change the frequency afterwards.

Re-crawling and Removing Solutions

Re-crawling

Click Crawl Now on any solution to trigger an immediate re-crawl. Incremental crawling means unchanged components are skipped. To re-read every component anyway, open the More actions menu, the three dots at the end of the solution's row, and choose Rebuild everything. It rewrites every component, even unchanged ones, regenerates every summary and re-indexes every component for search. Use it after upgrading Cartographer, because a normal crawl skips unchanged components and so leaves their earlier summary wording as it was. Rebuild everything does not regenerate user guides.

Removing a solution

To stop crawling a solution, open the More actions menu, the three dots at the end of its row in Solution Manager, and choose Remove solution. The confirmation dialog states how many component records will be deleted and requires typing DELETE to confirm. This removes the crawl configuration and all associated component records from the Cartographer database. It does not affect the actual solution in your environment.

Crawl Log

Every crawl operation is recorded in the Crawl Log. Solution Manager shows the latest one on each solution's row:

• The date and status of the last crawl
• Counts of components found, created, updated, skipped, and removed, shown as the last crawl breakdown