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Feedback Requested: When you use the search box - how do you expect it to behave?

cstanton

Hello everyone!

On the element14 Community, we have a search bar at the top of every page. This is standard Verint Community behaviour. 

There are only a few aspects of how this behaves that we can control, and the subject of this discussion is:

Do you expect to be able to search the entire Community when you type into the search bar? Or do you expect only to search within where you have navigated to?

Let me explain.

When you're on the homepage, element14 Community and you type into the search bar, you will search across the Community site and you will see a filter list:

image

This has the default of searching 'all' and you can filter it by what the search considers the 'top' groups applications, in this case, we're searching for "Raspberry Pi".

Unfortunately, this can be limiting because if the group or application in the group you want to filter by doesn't appear, then you can't really select it and you're forced to go to an advanced search (by hitting enter).

If we instead browse to  RoadTests & Reviews and type in "Raspberry Pi" the search will default to only within RoadTests & Reviews:

image

If you then want it to search 'anywhere' you have to click the filter 'anywhere'

image

Searching in this manner makes it easier to search within a specified group. As we have seen if we're on the homepage, it is harder to search within a specified group if the filter for that group does not appear in the drop-down search box.

The question to put to you is:

  • I vote for "I do not worry. According to Murphy's law, when I want to search once per year, indexes are not pre-calculated correctly and search do not work"

  • in reply to misaz

    Valid feedback, if disheartening.

  • in reply to cstanton

    It actually happended, but I sometime use it and it works most of the time. I meant this comment mostly as irony Slight smile

  • The search system is really "special", it took me quite a while to get used to it to be able to obtain useful results. Now I feel comfortable with it and I wouldn't change it but it's hard to understand for newcomers.

  • I voted for 'Yes, I expect to search across the Community by default'.

    I don't use the search very much. Recently I tried to find some of my own content that way (experimenting with measuring total gate charge of a MOSFET), but it only threw up a few results, none of them mine. After fiddling around trying better search terms, I suddenly remembered that your search depends on where you do it from. A quick switch to the home page and I was there (top result, too, though I did know the right search terms to use).

    The reason I didn't initially just navigate straight to the content was because it was in your 'landfill site' where you tipped all the old personal blogs.

    It is a shame that someone searching within the site on that topic might not find it unless they knew it existed and knew to search in a particular way for it. Against that, of course, is that people would find it from outside using the regular search engines.

  • For newcomers, then it probably makes sense to default to a community-wide search, as they probably don't have a clue what the structure of the site is and where to find things. When they are overloaded with results, then their reaction will probably be 'how do I filter this'. Otherwise, if they are in the wrong group, they may not get many results, think that is all on offer and at that point decide to leave the site.

    For returning members, then I think it probably should be a user profile setting so as they can choose their preference as part of fine tuning their user experience to suit their individual needs.

    I've been using the site for a little while now, so less newcomer and more returning member and when initiating a search from within a group, it still catches me out. Perhaps because it appears the same as the search box on the home page e.g. at the top of the page and visually at that point there is nothing to indicate that it is about to default to a group search. Brain mistakenly assumes that you are doing a community-wide search and you overlook the search scope settings and wonder why you aren't getting the results you expected. However when it returns the results, it does give you the option of expanding the scope of the search to 'Anywhere' for a community-wide search. Just got to wait for brain to stop overlooking it.

    One thing that I've noticed however is that the link to the 'Advanced search' at the bottom of the search results can often end up hidden from view. This is often due to ending up with nested vertical scroll bars. But it can also happen when the system is running slowly and the search is taking a while to return and display the results. A newcomer may not realise this and not see the link to the Advanced search, and once again decide to give up and leave the site.

    I tend to use the Advanced search to navigate the site by default though. I have a number of bookmarked links set up with different commonly used search options, so am probably one of those weirdo users that doesn't use the site as the designers intended. Slight smile

  • in reply to beacon_dave
    beacon_dave said:
    One thing that I've noticed however is that the link to the 'Advanced search' at the bottom of the search results can often end up hidden from view.

    Thanks for also noticing, I can confirm that this is worse on a mobile device, I raised this with Verint and they're going to put a fix in for it at some point in a future release.

  • I hope it to search everywhere since I might not know the appropriate category, or there maybe multiple categories. If I'm searching, its because I'm already lost.

  • I too feel the same as some others. I rarely use it, and when I do, I often can't find what I need. I think it should search the entire site, not just a single group.

  • in reply to jc2048

    FWIW, It just occurred to me that "site:community.element14.com" would work on Google as well as it does for other sites. My first result is your post:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acommunity.element14.com+measure+total+gate+charge+of+mosfet