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How can I change the search parameters in the system?

Archived Lee R. 9 years ago

Hello. How can I change the search parameters of our system to include the KB article description, FAQ description, and even post descriptions...even better, maybe just the best answered posts?


Thanks

Replies (4)

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Hello Lee,

All posts description is included in search but with lower priority. If you want to add more keywords for the search, it would be best to use tags.

Please clarify in more details if you experience any problems with search results.

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Stas,


I am not seeing the system return KB articles, FAQ, or posts with keywords that I have put into the description areas. I think the search needs to be tweaked. For example, I have a change log (like your release notes) with a list of product fixes, see below for an example of just one. In our change log we might have 100 items that have been fixed or added and we need to be able to search by the # or keyword.


Right now if I search for the number, or the keywords, nothing is returned. I am looking for a way to make sure that our FAQ and KB articles return valid content to the user when a search is performed. It seems that only the tags and title are being search. I would like to make sure that the search brings back more content as the descriptions tend to have way more detail that can lead to a positive outcome for our internal and external clients. Thx


[160862] Created the save dialog when closing a draft report.

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Lee,


Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The wight of description in pretty low, because it can contain many words not related to the article. The nature of self-hosted packages is that we are limited with full-text search of the system.

To make results more precise, we count more on title and tags + description distributes the order of results. So if you won't have keyword in tag or title, but will have it in description, it won't give you any results.

In your case, you would get many trashed results that would be worse than you would get results from description.

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I get that if you narrow the search parameters you are likely to return a high level of quality but you cannot put enough content in the title to cover most keyword needs.


My question, is it possible to change the search to include the descriptions for KB article? If we are adding the articles then the content has been scrubbed to be keyword and solution specific/friendly. This would help users with improved search returns for our teams and users.


Also, it would be great if the search return could include 'Best Answer' descriptions as these typically solve the problem that has been posted, and they are reviewed by our team to ensure they cover the right answer. I agree that including all posts will bring back a lot of content but the goal for the search is to present the user with the best answers...


So, can we tweak the search to:

  • Include KB and FAQ descriptions
  • Best Answers

If so where and how?


Thanks Stas!

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Hello Lee,

You can modify title, content and tags multipliers here:

application/3.2.x/modules/system/services/FullTextSearch.php:223

But you changes will be overrided after first system update.


For example you can set multiplier 1.5 to content

  1. $select->order('(title_rel*1.5)+(tags_rel*1.5)+(content_rel*1.5)+relevance DESC');

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Alex thanks for the update. When you mean multipliers do you refer to the search weighting?


We can set a reminder to update after each upgrade...


Thanks guys

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Lee,


Alex meant exactly the search weighting of description in a formula of calculating global results order.

You are welcome

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Once the php file is changed is there a procedure to have the file picked up in its new form. i.e. do I need to restart the community instance to get the new search weighting to be applied.

If so how do I get it to pick up the change.

I made the change and now we are seeing a 500 error when performing a search

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Matt,


Sorry, but custom development is not something we provide support on. We can do custom development on paid basis only for Self-Hosted packages.

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Stas,


Do you plan to make adjustments or offer the ability to adjust the search functionality in the future? Would be a great help if the search engine would search the key data areas in the system.


Next question is how much do you charge for custom work?

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Hello Lee,


Sorry, we don't have plans for the next minor releases.

We charge $30/h for custom work.

All requests on custom development could be sent to support@useresponse.com

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That is perfect. We will most likely need some help with a few things.

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