Content Management System (CMS) | Open Source Content Management Software | Application Framework

Search Result sorting (#521)

Issue

I could have sworn this was an RFE already, but that must be in some parallel universe somewhere.

It would be great if search results could be sorted by any/all of the fields returned in the results. (If I had to choose only one, it would be Date)

Susan B

Comments

JT 10/23/2007 10:23 am	RFE's must be specific about what piece of functionality they are to affect. So I need to know what search results listing you want to be able to sort. For example, is it the CS search? If there is more than one then I need separate RFE's for
susanb 10/23/2007 11:00 am	CS searches are the ones I had in mind. --Susan
fdillon 10/21/2008 10:31 am	After further review, adding this feature will slow down searching everywhere on the site. As a compromise we would be willing to limit the results returned to 100 and return them as a data table (similar to the asset manager and the help desk) allowing the results to be sorted on the client. This will, however, bump the difficulty. Please let us know if this is acceptable and we will adjust accordingly.
susanb 10/21/2008 11:09 am	If the order is limit the data set first and then sort those results, that will not solve the problem. How is it being done in the new request tracker? Seems like this problem has already been solved there. All I'm really looking for is the ability to click a header on a CS search result screen and get the same results with an ORDER BY clause added to the original query. I'm willing to wait some amount of time for the new query on a large data set. What am I missing?
JT 10/21/2008 11:29 am	The Help Desk asset has it's own completely home grown search engine. The CS uses the WebGUI search engine. The WebGUI search engine returns results by relevance and that will be true even when it's rewritten in WebGUI 8. So in order to do what you want, we'd have to write a custom search engine just for the CS. I can approve Franks solution to this, but writing a custom search engine for the CS is not something I'd approve. In addition, I don't think anybody but you is likely to use this feature. Feel free to convince me.
kristi 10/21/2008 11:41 am	I think many people would use this. Currently, search results are very difficult to use. If a user is searching a forum to try to answer a question for him/her self, years worth of posts get returned. Personally, posts from back in 2005 aren't relevant to me at the moment. WebGUI has changed too much since then. For example, a search in the Et Cetera forum for "commerce" returns three pages of items from as far back as 2005. I think it would extremely useful to be able to just click on "Date Submitted", or something similar, to reorder the results to more easily access those from 2008 that apply to the new commerce system.
pvanthony 10/21/2008 12:04 pm	I too would like this feature. Especially when it comes to sorting by date for the results.
knowmad 10/21/2008 2:49 pm	I agree that this would be a useful feature of the search asset. The ability to sort results would be extremely beneficial as relevance in a CS often has as much to do with the date of the post as it does with the keywords that have matched.
JT 10/21/2008 3:36 pm	So it appears I was wrong about who would use this feature. However, I do have to question whether or not you really want sorting or if it's just that relevancy doesn't work right for your needs in WebGUI. I'll be the first to admit that relevancy ranking in WebGUI right now is nearly non-existent. So my question is, if we had good relevancy ranking where how new something is gives it higher relevancy, would that close this ticket? I absolutely don't want to allow sorting of search results by arbitrary fields. Doing so will cause the search system to become bloated and slow as WebGUI grows.
susanb 10/21/2008 3:50 pm	It's possible better relevancy would help. But the example Kristi posted is the example that frustrated me enough to put in this RFE. Newest may not always be what someone is looking for. I know on the old support board, I often wound up adding a year as one of my search terms to try to find that thing that I was pretty sure was there but could not remember well enough to actually find, with limited success. If arbitrary field based sorting would bloat the system, what about only adding sorting for a subset of fields like Date, Title and Submitter.
JT 11/3/2008 11:56 am	Ok, I'll then just have to say that this has to be put on hold until I know for sure what search mechanism WebGUI 8 will have. Not saying it has to wait until WebGUI 8, just that I need to know that WebGUI 8's search mechanism will be able to cover this feature. And this RFE may make me choose one option over another just so I can accommodate.

Details

Ticket Status	Acknowledged
Rating
Submitted By	sbaur
Date Submitted	2007-10-18
Assigned To	fdillon
Date Assigned	2008-10-21
Assigned By	fdillon
What to improve?
URL	rfe/request-for-enhancement/search-result-sorting

Karma

Difficulty	10
Karma So Far	4620
Karma Rank	462.00

Keywords

Ticket History

11/3/2008 11:56 AM	Acknowledged	JT
10/21/2008 3:36 PM	Difficulty changed to 10	JT
10/21/2008 11:41 AM	Pending	kristi
10/21/2008 11:29 AM	Feedback Requested	JT
10/21/2008 11:09 AM	Pending	sbaur
10/21/2008 10:31 AM	Feedback Requested	fdillon
10/21/2008 9:28 AM	Assigned to fdillon	fdillon
10/21/2008 9:10 AM	2000 karma transfered	kristi
10/21/2008 9:03 AM	Assigned to unassigned	kristi
10/21/2008 9:02 AM	Assigned to kristi	kristi