Hi everyone,
I’d love to start a discussion (not a feature request) around a UX/design challenge that I see often in tools like Gainsight.
The theme
“How can we design a user experience that feels like rich text content is searchable/filterable, even though rich text fields themselves can’t be filtered or queried in a practical way?”
The problem I’m trying to solve
In many real-world implementations, we store important information in rich text areas (e.g., human-readable notes, status context, playbook details, customer narratives). However, when end users ask for things like:
- “Can I filter customers where the notes mention X?”
- “Can I search within that narrative and narrow results?”
- “Can I do an intermediate search without exporting data?”
…the honest answer is often: not directly, because rich text isn’t designed to be reliably filterable/searchable like structured fields.
Common workaround (and why it’s not great)
A typical approach is to create a parallel plain text field (or a set of structured fields), copy the content (manually or via automation), and then filter on that. This can work administratively, but from a user experience standpoint:
- It’s not intuitive for general users (it’s hard to explain where to search and why).
- It creates duplication and governance overhead for admins.
- Users still feel like “the system should be able to search that text.”
What I’d like to discuss with the community
I’m looking for practical patterns that maximize user experience while staying realistic about platform limitations. For example:
How do you approach the design when you need “discoverability” from rich text content?
Do you rely on metadata/tagging, structured summaries, keyword fields, controlled vocabularies, UI cues, or other methods?
I’d love to learn:
- What design patterns have worked best in your Gainsight/Salesforce implementations?
- How do you communicate these limitations without frustrating users?
- If you’ve built a “search-like” experience around rich text, what did you do (and what would you avoid next time)?
- Any governance tips to keep it maintainable over time?
Thanks in advance—really interested in hearing how others solve this in practice.