Search improvements - additional sort and filter options

I’d like to add the ability to download search results as CSV.

I come from Khoros where this was available and very useful…   

Similar to others, our members have expressed interest in being able to sort Search results by date, so I am looking forward to seeing what the updated search looks like.  

Hello ​@CC Admin ,

Do you have an update on when search improvements will be deployed? Thanks a lot. 

Hello,

Our users are still requesting this filtering option. Could you please let us know if you have an estimated timeline for its implementation, as well as details about the filters that will be introduced?

This feature is highly anticipated.

Thank you very much.

We have several products and would really like the “product area” tag to be an option for help articles, events, etc. (not just Product Updates and Ideas), so we can make our search more tailored to each audience. This feels like I really important opportunity to ensure good experience for our users. Thanks!

Hi everyone, thanks for all the detail here, it genuinely helps to see the same needs coming up across so many of your communities! 

Let me try to address the various threads of this change in one reply.

The clearest signal is sorting by recency, and that's coming as part of the update we're working on now.

To give you a sense of the direction (nothing is locked yet, so this is exactly the point to push back or add to), here's what we're building towards and we hope to have some of these improvements out by the end of Summer:

New “Sort by” options:

• Newest First (Sorted by most recently posted topic)
• Recent Replies (Sorted by most recent reply activity)
• Most Discussed (Sorted by number of replies, most first)
• Most Viewed (Sorted by number of views, most first)
• Most Popular (Sorted by votes for Ideas, and likes for everything else)
• Title A–Z (Sorted by topic title, A to Z)
• Title Z–A (Sorted by topic title, Z to A)
• Author A–Z (Sorted by the author's username, A to Z)
• Author Z–A (Sorted by the author's username, Z to A)

New “Recency” filters:

• New & Recent Only (Hides topics older than 30 days, or with no replies in the last 30 days)

On the specific asks:

Filter by author, as you can see this is now included based on the feedback in this thread, I've seen how much your users lean on this.

​@Suvi Lehtovaara for older / closed topics ranking below fresher content, this one won't be fully solved by the current work. Improving the search algorithm itself and the quality of what gets returned is the next thing we'll turn to after the UI update, we have been working on foundational Search improvements across Community and Academy, we are now working on a Search UI improvements and then the focus will turn to the Search algorithm, this is the rough path we are following. I can't commit to dates yet, but the plan is still to get to it this year. However, we will add a new Recency filter (see above), which should help with this.

Product-area tag on more content types (help articles, events, etc.) as this sits with another team's product rather than mine, the best path is to raise it as its own idea. I'll also flag it to the relevant PM directly. But ​@AnnieWNovacek  if you could create a new product idea for this, that will be a good way to ensure others can vote which will add weight to this being considered by the product team.

​@olepord export results as CSV, this is not something we're looking at right now, but I've noted it.

Please keep the feedback coming on the sort/filter list above and if there's an option missing that would make a real difference for your members, this is the moment to say so.

Cheers,

Graeme

Hello

One of our community members recently pointed out that it's no longer easy to identify threads with zero replies. I also seem to remember there being a "Zero Replies" filter in the past. Is there a reason why this option is no longer available, or has it been replaced by a different approach?

Hi ​@Grzegorz Byrski,

With the new sorting options that we will be adding soon to Search (see my previous message), we could consider inverting to some of them to offer sorting options like this: Newest First / Oldest First or Most Discussed / Least Discussed, this would give you the “Zero Replies” option you are looking for.

Does this sound like the right solution ​@Grzegorz Byrski? Happy to discuss other options or additional sorting or filtering requirements.
 

Cheers,

Graeme

Hi ​@Graeme Rycyk 

Suggested sorting options sounds like a great solution. Thank you.