Hi Luke

The configuration of Examine indexes in Umbraco 9 / Examine 2 works different and is done with .NET’s Options pattern

The documentation on Our https://our.umbraco.com/documentation/reference/searching/examine/indexing/ hasn't been updated for V9 yet, but Shannon has added some docs about it here: https://shazwazza.github.io/Examine/configuration (V1/V2)

I also had a look in Umbraco core and found ConfigureIndexOptions https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/search?q=ConfigureIndexOptions

I just tried this in a project to make nodeName field sortable, so I can sort employees alphabetically.

/// <summary>
/// Configures the index options to construct the Examine indexes
/// </summary>
public sealed class ConfigureIndexOptions : IConfigureNamedOptions<LuceneDirectoryIndexOptions>
{
    private readonly IUmbracoIndexConfig _umbracoIndexConfig;
    private readonly IOptions<IndexCreatorSettings> _settings;

    public ConfigureIndexOptions(
        IUmbracoIndexConfig umbracoIndexConfig,
        IOptions<IndexCreatorSettings> settings)
    {
        _umbracoIndexConfig = umbracoIndexConfig;
        _settings = settings;
    }

    public void Configure(string name, LuceneDirectoryIndexOptions options)
    {
        switch (name)
        {
            case Constants.UmbracoIndexes.ExternalIndexName:
                options.FieldDefinitions.TryAdd(new FieldDefinition("nodeName", FieldDefinitionTypes.FullTextSortable));
                break;
        }
    }

    public void Configure(LuceneDirectoryIndexOptions options)
        => Configure(string.Empty, options);
}

and then register the configuration in a composer:

public class SearchComposer : IComposer
{
    public void Compose(IUmbracoBuilder builder)
    {
        // Custom Examine configuration
        builder.Services.ConfigureOptions<ConfigureIndexOptions>();

        // Register services, etc.
    }
}