Ability to filter and sort long list of search results

Related products: Navigation and Search

Hi Team Guru! I brought this up within our slack channel and was routed here by one of my colleagues.

Problem

We have so much information on Guru that for certain groups (international teams) it is hard to find the information they are looking for without long scrolling or opting in/out of search within only one collection or all collections to find which information applies to them specifically.

Possible solution

I, therefore, wondered if it was possible to assign “primary” groups to people with access to multiple collections? This would ensure that the smaller but primary collection would populate results first and then from the main and bigger collection next (as secondary collection) when using the search bar. This way employees see immediately if there is localized/unique knowledge for them within their collection, and if nothing populates they can be sure the information from the secondary/larger collection applies to them.

Hi Jessica,


PM for Search and Discovery here! I’m not sure if someone else has suggestions but rather than you having to configure something for this (no configuration for search exists today) I wonder if something we’ve done some early investigation into would be helpful:

We’re looking into how to add facets to the search results page so that users who tend not to go to the trouble of filtering in the search box (or who wouldn’t know what to filter by) have options for targeting the information they need when a lot of content comes back in a search. The idea would be a lot like what you see on shopping website - you’d use drop downs and checkboxes to select characteristics that help you get closer to the content you need: specific collections, tags, verifiers, if it’s verified etc. As you make selections the results list would update to reflect that slice of results. 

 

If you are really interested in being able to set up a relationship between users and collections as an influence to search, I’d love to see this in the product feedback section of Community so we can see who else is interested! There’s a current limitation with the platform we’re using so I can’t convert this into feedback. Additionally, if you’re really interested in filters/facets on search results, you could make that a post too, that way I can better track who else is interested and set a status to let you know how that project progresses once we start.

Thanks!


I like that idea. The more familiar with the platform is to other websites definitely makes the usability easier. Excited to see what you and your team will continue to build and improve. Thanks a lot!


Hi @Jessica Velez

We now have the ability to move questions to the feedback area so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to pull this post over and adjust the title, perhaps to “No way to filter long search results list” so it’s easy for other customers to see if they face the same issue?

My reasoning is that we’re starting to test ideas for faceted filters, sorts, and pagination on the search results page and the situation you describe is a perfect example of the challenge with the results as they are today. I’d love to use this post as a way to gather thoughts from other customers and share updates as we make progress on this work. 

My hope is that after we provide these foundational improvements we can get to more interesting options like saved searches, suggested filters (perhaps based on past Guru usage), default filters and more :)


Updated idea statusOpenAccepted

Good news!! I’ve marked this as “Accepted” because we’re actively exploring the ideas I mentioned a few months ago. :tada: The options we’re considering include Collection, Board, and Tag filters (these would be based on the Cards returned for a particular search and the searcher’s content permissions), sorts like last updated and created date, and simple filters like verified cards and previously viewed cards. We’ll also allow you to access more search results with this work (currently you can’t see more than 50 results). 

In addition to allowing searchers to target what they’re looking for, this should also help them gain a better understanding of the information available and how it’s organized. In the long run this context should help them search more effectively.

 

Request: If you have suggestions for filters would be helpful beyond those I’ve mentioned, I’d love to hear those. We won’t get to all possible options to start (nor will these ever cover as much as Card Manager) but I’d like to make sure we aren’t missing something that is top of mind for everyone. 

Thanks!


Updated idea statusAcceptedScheduled

Since we’re actively working on this I’ve moved it to “Scheduled” - no timelines to share yet but keep an eye out here for updates!


Hi Team Guru! I brought this up within our slack channel and was routed here by one of my colleagues.

Problem

We have so much information on Guru that for certain groups (international teams) it is hard to find the information they are looking for without long scrolling or opting in/out of search within only one collection or all collections to find which information applies to them specifically.

Possible solution

I, therefore, wondered if it was possible to assign “primary” groups to people with access to multiple collections? This would ensure that the smaller but primary collection would populate results first and then from the main and bigger collection next (as secondary collection) when using the search bar. This way employees see immediately if there is localized/unique knowledge for them within their collection, and if nothing populates they can be sure the information from the secondary/larger collection applies to them.

Hellow, i also need some filters to help my team find cards as they want, not using words, but boards, date etc.

 

Can we create filters inthis section by collection +/or, board +/or, date. My team doesn’t hace the section Card Manager, they only have reading status.

I think it would be in New cards, but if it posible to filter at any time. 

 

Tks


Hi @Monica Alves, thanks for those questions!

All of the improvements discussed in this post are for the search results page in the web app so that all Guru users can take advantage of them when looking for knowledge - no Card Manager access required. Here’s a mockup of what we’re thinking for the more complex filters (imagine this on the right side of the search results list that exists today):

Mockup of filters

 

There will also be a few additional “simple” filters similar to the favorites filter that exists. We’ll make sure these work alongside the filters you can already set when you submit a search. The sorts we’re planning on are relevance (default), date created, and last update date. On the topic of Boards, we’re looking at surfacing Boards as a new type of result, along side Cards. You can check out this post to learn more about that work. 

 

In case anyone is curious how this work is going, the project is a bit behind due to other work taking priority but it’s still progressing!


Hi everyone, 

It’s been a while since my last update so I wanted to confirm that we are actively working on this and making good progress! The first piece of this that you’ll see is the sorting functionality: 

Sorting mockup

Relevance will be the default and you won’t be able to add Ascending or Descending to that (it already has an order 😀). We’re aiming to have this on for our own team to test with soon and very quickly after that we’ll enable it for everyone. 

Following sorting, we’ll head into the additional filters that I showed above (collections and tags), plus a filter for author, and additional “simple” filters (like favorites) for verified cards and cards you’ve viewed before.

Thanks for your patience and please let me know if you have questions!


Great news @Jessica Velez, @Amelia Altstadt, @Siobhan Hyser, @Gabriel Ginorio, @Monica Alves, @tomerhs, @Manuel Shipwood, @Snigdha Nigam, and @Lynn Miller - 

Earlier today we released the sorting functionality to all customers 🎉. If you refresh any open Guru tabs you have you’ll see the new dropdown above the search results list in the web app on the right. Once you sort the list by “Last Updated” or “Date Created,” a new option to choose “Newest first” or “Oldest first”  will appear in the dropdown menu. You can learn more about this update by checking out the “How search results are displayed in Guru” article in Help Center.

Thank you and please let me know if you have questions or have feedback!


Thanks for the update Laura! Wohoo, really excited to see this implemented and I know a lot of our users will be too.

Additional feedback: It’d be amazing to see additional filtering options in the future (e.g. set timeframes around creation or modification, if there images, PDFs, videos, etc.), author, and collection, board group, and board level filters)


Hi @Amelia Altstadt

It’s so great to hear this, thanks for letting me know how this update has been received by your team! I can see from internal tracking that it’s getting use!

Regarding your other questions:

  • Collections, Tags, and Author filters are in progress and part of the work scoped to address this feedback post (see screenshots in earlier comments for an idea about how those will look). I’ll be back with an update on release plans for those soon.
  • Filtering by boards proved to be tricky from a UX perspective and could be impacted by some other work we’re doing to improve our hierarchy structure so we’ve decided to wait before committing to that but I do understand the value. There’s an active post for that improvement here
  • We don’t have plans to add timeframes for the sorts at this time, I think their usefulness as designed will increase once the additional filters mentioned above are released as you’ll be able to sort against a narrower set of results. That said, I’m curious to know more about how this would help your team. Would a person use those timeframes when searching for information to answer a question or learn something, or is it more related to someone looking for content to update or archive? 
  • We also don’t have plans to add additional filters related to types of card content or attachments at this time - I’d love to see a new feedback post about that so we can gauge interest and understand the need!

Thank you for continuing to share what you need to be successful with Guru - it’s a big part of how we prioritize our work!


@Laura Desmond-Black  Thank you for the response, Laura! 

 

  • Soooo thrilled to hear collections, tags, and authors filters are coming. Hadn’t seen the earlier comments so thanks for pointing me up there - the mock up is very exciting to see!
  • I understand regarding the complexity for boards - I hope the hierarchy structure work can provide the right set up for this eventually! 🤞
  • The intention around timeframe would be to help a read only user find information more quickly. E.g. I know a feature was released between this timeframe, so it becomes easier to narrow down results of cards relating to that content.


 


Thanks for the detail @Amelia Altstadt!

  • Awesome, glad they will be helpful. 
  • I hope so too, I know they would be valuable, some teams have boards with quite a few cards.
  • Ah, that makes sense, I’ll keep an eye out for more feedback about this as usage of sorts grows.  

Hello!

Terrific news: as you may have noticed, we released the update we planned for this need earlier today! Now, any time someone runs a search in the web app they’ll be able to easily filter their results by Collection, Tag, Author, Cards I’ve favorited, and Verified Cards. We hope these new options are useful to you and we’d love to hear how they work for your team!

We’ll also look for your feedback (through new feedback posts) about other filters you’d like to see in this area (one already exists for Boards for example 🙌🏻). 

Thank you for your feedback on this topic and helping us make Guru better!


ScheduledComplete

Hi, 

I wanted to let everyone know about another small item related to this work that was released earlier today: filters that are applied to the search results are now captured in the URL. This makes them bookmark-able in your browser and shareable. You can learn more in my comment on this post.

Please let us know if you have questions over there!