SOLsearcher Cloud (SSC) Features and Architecture Overview Series

SOLsearcher Cloud (SSC) is built to make cloud-based electronic document delivery and archive accessible, manageable, and fast to deploy. The product overview session covers what SSC does and why it matters. This architecture session goes deeper—walking through how SSC is configured, how files move through the system, how indexing works, and how the platform integrates with your existing web infrastructure.

Watch the full architecture walkthrough above, and read on for a detailed look at the components, configuration workflow, and design decisions that make SSC a practical, production-ready platform.

Four Areas, One Streamlined Deployment

SSC’s deployment is organized into four functional areas, each designed to minimize complexity while giving your team full control over the environment. The Deployment Wizard automatically builds all Azure cloud resources, eliminating the manual backend configuration that typically comes with cloud-based software implementations. The SSC Website Administrator provides a browser-based management interface for configuring what’s displayed to end users and how archives are organized. Indexing templates are defined through a graphical interface to control which fields are captured, searchable, and presented. And SOLfusion automates the file submission process, with command-line submission also available for scripted workflows.

The result is a platform that your IT staff can configure and support with minimal training—no long-term custom development, no open-ended services engagements, and no ongoing dependency on outside resources.

The Deployment Wizard: From Configuration to Cloud in Minutes

Configuring cloud-based solutions often involves complex backend setup tasks. SSC’s Deployment Wizard changes that equation entirely. The wizard walks you through each configuration step and then handles all backend Azure setup automatically—creating resource groups, provisioning servers, configuring networking, and deploying the containerized application.

For many organizations, the default settings are all that’s needed. A typical initial configuration involves entering a deployment prefix, providing an administrator email, selecting a geographic region, and reviewing the setup. The wizard takes care of the rest. Initial deployment completes in about an hour, and subsequent redeployments with updates take just a few minutes since the server infrastructure is already in place.

The wizard’s configuration tabs give you precise control when you need it. The Basic tab establishes your organization’s identity in Azure and sets the deployment region—typically the location closest to your largest customer base for optimal performance. The Network tab configures Azure Virtual Networks and Subnets, either creating new ones or connecting to your existing Azure network infrastructure. The Performance tab lets you fine-tune the balance between cost and performance for storage, API servers, indexing servers, and the API gateway independently. And the Authentication tab configures OpenID Connect integration, with Microsoft Entra ID available as a built-in default or the option to connect to Google, Facebook, or any other OAuth provider.

Multi-Tenant Isolation Through Virtual Networks and Deployments

For service providers and organizations that host documents for multiple customers or departments, SSC’s architecture provides true isolation within a single implementation. Each client can have a separate deployment with its own Virtual Network, database storage, and server resources—without requiring a separate system purchase for each one.

Deployments are version-specific, which means you can run different software versions for different clients or document types. When one application needs a software update, you can upgrade that deployment independently without affecting any others. If a deployment needs to be removed entirely, deleting the associated Azure resource group provides a clean, complete removal of all resources SSC created within that context.

Elastic Scaling: Performance That Matches Your Workload

SSC supports both scaling up (adding resources to existing servers) and scaling out (adding additional virtual machines), with independent controls for each component. This separation is deliberate and practical—your indexing workload and your end-user traffic often peak at different times, and SSC lets you allocate resources accordingly.

The API servers handle search requests and document retrieval, scaling based on HTTP request volume. The indexing servers process incoming PDF files, scaling based on the number of files in the queue. Each indexing instance launches two threads per virtual CPU, so an eight-vCPU configuration provides 16 parallel indexing threads. At maximum scale, SSC supports up to 30 instances with eight vCPUs each—indexing up to 256 files in parallel for heavy batch processing. The API gateway routes all requests to backend services and can be scaled independently as traffic demands.

Storage performance is also configurable across three tiers. In practice, the standard cool tier has proven fast enough for most environments, but higher tiers are available when access speed is a priority. Servers scale up automatically to handle peak demand and scale back when resources are no longer needed—so you’re never paying for capacity you’re not using.

File Submission and Workflow Automation

File submission to SSC is handled by SOLfusion, which runs in your local environment and watches designated network folders for incoming files. When a qualified file arrives, SOLfusion automatically initiates the indexing, splitting, and storage process. File name filtering lets you route submitted files to the appropriate process within SSC, and you can configure as many watch folders as your applications require.

SSC accepts any file type, though PDFs offer the most flexible indexing capabilities, as SSC can extract content directly from pages and associated metadata. For non-PDF formats—PostScript, AFP, PCL, LCDS, or Metacode—Solimar’s Print Director Enterprise or SPDE solutions can convert them to PDF prior to submission. Non-PDF and scanned image files are indexed based on file name information or an associated JSON file containing the indexing data.

For environments that prefer scripted automation over SOLfusion’s folder-watching approach, file submission can also be executed via command line as part of batch files or existing process scripts.

Graphical Indexing Design with SDX Designer

Defining what content gets indexed—and what end users can search on—is done through the SDX Designer, a graphical plugin for Adobe Acrobat. The interface lets users draw selection boxes directly on a sample document to identify the fields to capture. Indexing rules support single fields, paragraphs, floating data, tables, and various forms of PDF metadata, including comments, white text, annotations, and page piece dictionary information.

The resulting index templates associate captured data with familiar keywords—such as account number, client name, and invoice date—making the search experience intuitive for end users. For non-PDF file types, the SDX Designer XT tool defines index fields using JSON files that accompany the source documents.

Indexing occurs at ingestion time. SSC splits each PDF into individual record files and stores the index data in Azure Cosmos DB as JSON. Because the parsing is done up front, documents don’t need to be reprocessed at retrieval time—which saves on hosting costs and ensures fast, responsive search results. The SSC Website Administrator provides real-time visibility into indexing activity, showing what’s processing, queued, or in an error state, with options to resubmit or remove files as needed.

Archive Management and Document Organization

Once SSC is deployed, the browser-based Website Administrator handles all archive configuration—document organization, presentment rules, security, and user permissions. The administrator interface is role-based: users with full tenant management authorization see all configuration tabs, while standard users see only the search interface relevant to their permissions.

Archives group related files that share common indexing templates and retention rules. Within each archive, administrators control which search fields appear on the user-facing search page and which fields display in the results—these don’t need to match, giving you flexibility in how information is exposed. File lifecycle management lets you define when documents should be moved to lower-cost storage and when they should be automatically purged, reducing long-term storage costs while maintaining compliance with retention requirements.

The Tenant model provides a clean organizational layer for environments hosting multiple companies or departments. Each Tenant can use different indexing templates while sharing the same database infrastructure, and user permissions are managed at the Tenant level. The system handles Tenant housekeeping automatically—when the last archive in a Tenant is removed, the Tenant itself is cleaned up.

Search, Retrieval, and Web Integration

End users interact with SSC through a web-based search interface that can be deployed as-is or integrated into your existing corporate portals. Users select a document type, enter search criteria based on the indexed fields, and receive results quickly—paging through large result sets is responsive with no perceptible lag. Viewing individual PDFs is fast because each record is already parsed into a separate file during ingestion.

The primary integration point for custom web presentment is SSC’s RESTful API—an open, well-documented interface that lets you connect SSC’s search and retrieval capabilities to your internal and customer-facing websites using any web services language. Documents can be presented in their native format or as PDF, and since SSC uses industry-standard REST architecture, your existing web servers can host the integration. The built-in template website is also available as a starting point, ready to be branded with your organization’s logo, colors, and layout preferences.

Authentication That Works with What You Already Have

SSC uses OpenID Connect for authentication, which intentionally separates identity management from the archive platform. This design means your users don’t need to be managed in two places—SSC integrates with the authentication system you already have. Microsoft Entra ID is the built-in default and requires no additional configuration. For organizations using other providers, the Deployment Wizard simplifies setup: select OpenID Connect, provide the configuration document URL, and SSC automatically pulls the endpoint settings.

Authorization within SSC is rule-based, using the JSON Web Token (JWT) key-value pairs returned by your authentication provider. SSC’s own authentication service sits behind the API gateway and handles the token validation and claims processing that would otherwise require custom programming—keeping the integration clean and the development effort minimal.

The Big Picture: Enterprise-Grade, Simple to Manage

Stepping back to look at the full platform, SSC leverages industry-standard technologies across every layer—Azure cloud infrastructure, Cosmos DB, Blob storage, OpenID Connect, REST APIs, and containerized deployment. The architecture is scalable, fault-tolerant, and designed for horizontal expansion, integrating with existing CRM and web presentment systems without requiring a rethinking of your infrastructure.

What makes SSC different is the balance between capability and manageability. This is a platform your team can deploy, configure, and support without turning into a long-term custom development project. The modular, enterprise-scalable design delivers the performance and security organizations need, with the simplicity and cost-efficiency that keep projects on track and stakeholders satisfied.