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xiaoyu-shen
xiaoyu-shen
Helper ⭐️⭐️
March 27, 2019

Inside Design: Advanced Search

  • March 27, 2019
  • 19 replies
  • 974 views
InSided aims to help your customers find their answer easily. We are currently investigating an improved search experience with possibilities to filter results based on categories, topic types, post time and tags. We’d like to share some early concepts about the search page and hear your feedback.

🎯 Goal


Help users to find answers easily with search filters.
  • Provide powerful filters to scope down search results
  • Make search a delightful experience on all devices

💡 Concepts




🤔Questions

  1. What is your biggest pain with searching currently?
  2. Which mobile version would you prefer, and why?
  3. Which filter do you find most important, and why?
We’d love to hear your feedback.😊

    19 replies

    Show previous replies
    Claire
    Claire
    Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    April 2, 2019
    +1 on everything that's already been said.

    I think there are 3 reasons why people search within our community:
    1. To find the answer to a question or some specific information
    2. To see what's out there that they might be interested in
    3. To find a thread they know exists because they want to add something to it, send the link to someone, or just refresh their memory
    #1 and #2 are more for new members and lurkers and #3 is more for superusers and is particularly difficult at the moment.

    I like all the filters you've got in the screenshots.
    I think filtering by category is helpful for all 3 use cases.
    Being able to search by user I think is key for #3 since you often remember who posted it more than the other details.
      Arthur2
      Arthur2
      Contributor ⭐️
      April 9, 2019
      We are super happy that you look into this! And reactions are also very insightful.

      1 - What is your biggest pain with searching currently?

      Even if we agree with everything mentioned above, our biggest pain is to show search results that are outside of our community. We are a software company, and we would also like to connect our documentation to this, and other relevant resources.

      2 - same as @LPortalupi

      3 - Which filter do you find most important, and why?

      Filters on Category (which area of the site) and tags seem the most important to us. It would greatly improve overall accuracy. Something similar to the Gitlab search for example 🙂
        LPortalupi
        LPortalupi
        Helper ⭐️
        April 15, 2019
        Another pain point for me as a community manager and for our community members is not being able do a string search to find the most relevant post quickly (this is somewhat related to @Arakou's Manage Search Rules post).
        lionel s
        lionel s
        Contributor ⭐️⭐️
        May 3, 2019
        Hello,

        This is going to be great, I look forward to test it. :)

        1. No clear chronological results. Some recent topics are mixed up with old ones without apparent logic.
        2. V2 seems easier to use.
        3. Filter answered/unanswered questions. Be able to filter by date (1 week, 1 month, ...). Select a category.
        Thanks !
          Esther Groth
          Esther Groth
          Contributor ⭐️⭐️
          May 21, 2019
          Hi,

          is there any news on the current state of the advanced search? Is it already in planning and will it be developed this year?

          Kind regards,

          Esther
          Yoeri
          Yoeri
          Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
          June 21, 2019
          We are currently investigating some advanced search functionality. As mentioned in our latest roadmap update we want to re-enable search in categories again. Xiaoyu shared some insights in the topic "Inside Design: Search in Category" check it out and let us know what you think 🙂
          Group Product Manager, Customer Communities
            ZapierSteph
            ZapierSteph
            Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
            May 13, 2020

            I upvoted a few other posts on this topic regarding user search field being included in Advance Search, but I also wanted to leave a note from my team about specifically what we would look for:

            It would be helpful to be able to search for the details of a post (eg post author, category, originally published, etc) using the URL of ID of the post.
             

            Thanks for this!

              Yoeri
              Yoeri
              Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
              May 14, 2020

              “using the URL of ID of the post.”

              I’m not really sure what you mean with this Steph. Also, these type of search queries sound more like advanced searches that your team would want to do in the Control environment, and not something that should be available n the community for all users to do (I don’t think the majority of users would use this, but I may be wrong)

              Group Product Manager, Customer Communities
              anirbandutta
              anirbandutta
              Expert ⭐️
              March 3, 2022

              Hello,



              This is going to be great, I look forward to test it. :)


               


              2. No clear chronological results. Some recent topics are mixed up with old ones without apparent logic.
              3. V2 seems easier to use.
              4. Filter answered/unanswered questions. Be able to filter by date (1 week, 1 month, ...). Select a category.


              Thanks !

              Exactly, I was expecting the most recent results first and chronologically served results but not currently the case. How far are we with Search improvements project @xiaoyu-shen ?

              It's an opportunity for engagement
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