Searching for content - mission impossible

[VeselinaPeykova]

I really hate to repeat myself how important for SCN is to have a proper site search functionality, but we are running out of time.

I tried to paste the title of a question, which I saw on the answers page in the different search options: from Q&A, topic pages, from search by tag page, from https://onedx.find.sap.com/ and none of them was able to display the result.

This is the question, which I used to test:

1. The closest was the Q&A search, which showed the helpful 1 result found, but not the actual result.

2.All content for the topic page (http://go.sap.com/community/topic/materials-management/all-content.html😞

3. Search by tag (http://go.sap.com/community/tag.html?id=477297786799213261950044802925335😞

4. SAP Search (https://onedx.find.sap.com/😞

5. I tried also searching for how long would it take four men to build a wall? site:answers.sap.com in two popular search engines - DuckDuckGo and Startpage (it takes results from Google) - no results. It is probably just robots.txt - I hope.

The site search options work if you remove the question mark, which was not immediately obvious - at least not to me:

Please, don't include search limitations in a blog series - new members won't read them.

I would also like to point out again, that today many new forum members find the search concept hard to grasp, but at least we could point them in the right direction by constantly educating them. 

Unfortunately, search got trickier in the new site - the same magnifying glass button at the top right of the page points to different search options - depending on where you start from:

1. It can be: http://go.sap.com/community/topic/materials-management/all-content.html?SearchTerm=how%20long%20woul...

If you start from All content from Browse Community for the topic, or with a different search string for the same site - from content Tag: MM (Materials Management) .

2. It can point to https://onedx.find.sap.com/landing, if you use it from https://answers.sap.com/

Do SAP UX experts sincerely believe that this is intuitive, or easier to use, or logical?

Will it be possible to allow at least the site content to be indexed by Google at launch, so that we can try to make another custom search engine?

[former_member181891]

Hi Veselina,

In addition to Jason's comments re: search functionality, from a UX perspective, the different search experiences across the applications is on our radar.  We will keep the community posted as we explore the options here further.

Best,

Jamie

[agentry_src]

Hi Jamie,

What does "on our radar" mean?   Also curious as to what options there are for the search capabilities that are absolutely required for SCN.

Moderators are required to reject content which was posted by people who failed to search first.  But if they search and can't find because of a flawed search tool, on what basis do Moderators decide to remove repeat questions?  

Regards, Mike (Moderator)

SAP Technology RIG

[JasonLax]

There's a bug here: searching for "how long would it take four men to build a wal?" (remove "l" from "wall") works so the question mark is acting like a wildcard...except for question marks.  The team is looking into this.

Since the other embedded searches depend on the same search engine, the behavior and results will be the same on all of them.

You should have a look at my latest status update.

[VeselinaPeykova]

Yes, this is what I assumed about the question mark - glad to know that it is being looked into.

I saw your status update a few days ago, unfortunately I am not able to test the custom google search engine with the new site - probably because google bots cannot crawl it yet.

[SimoneMilesi]

So we should rely on external search tool to get a more accurate result? (not misunderstand me: i'm the first who hates to reinvent the wheel but... )

And which is the logic behind the "promoted results"? How a content is set to "valuable"? The number of likes? This could be a tricky: i can give you plently of examples where a content was full of likes and 5 stars but, digging a bit, you see they were against any logic/guidelines.

Just to understand a bit

[JasonLax]

That's correct: the beta content has been hidden from external search crawlers. But it's setup for the new content when it goes live.

[JasonLax]

The vast majority of users and visitors use external search today. I hope we can improve the site search so that it is equal or better. However, both will always exist and be available.

Promoted results are those that are manually programmed from suggestions and by stakeholders.  Fro example, there are promoted search results today for most community spaces.

[SimoneMilesi]

Promoted results are those that are manually programmed from suggestions and by stakeholders.  

This part scares me a bit, but i'll wait to see it in action

[JasonLax]

They've been in use for years: Have a look on http://find.sap.com

[JimSpath]

I tried 2 searches today, adding "filters".  The reported number of hits do not add up (at least from my view).

(1)

The title shows 12 results above, but the filter count thinks it is 15.

(2)

This shows 1 result in the "Solution" type filter, except 2 result sections are displayed.  It appears the first box is an advert, hint, or other promo.  That should be labelled [See Also] or something if it is not a true search result.

[JasonLax]

The first result is a "promoted search result" but these aren't paid for: They used to ensure valuable content appears at the top of search results, like we've done for most community spaces in the past.

[VeselinaPeykova]

If this icon:

means a promoted result and this is on top of the actual results (my understanding from the explanation for the second screenshot), shouldn't the total count for the first screenshot be at least 27? The result shows 12 promoted entries, no regular ones and there is no next or display more button in IE11, Firefox ESR 45.4.0 and Google Chrome 44.0.2403.155 m after you apply the filter.

I understand that this is not a BETA issue, but since this is the official SAP search for the whole site, maybe it will be good if somebody looks into that.

[SimoneMilesi]

Fun thing: if you follow the OpenSap courses about Fiori UX guidelines, you can see the new SCN is not following them if not in minimal part.