8

better logic in search

Mindy Scroggins

December 09, 2015 00:19

Answered

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When I search for a student I would like the currently enrolled student to be at the top of the list. Right now it isn't even alphabetical. When I start typing in a student's first name which is very unique starting with the letters Dai the first name that pops up is a name starting with Han and a last name starting Dew. The name I am looking for is the 13th in the list!  Why is it that it doesn't even come up with a name starting with D or even a last name starting Dai?

Just looking for a smarter search feature, please.

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3 comments

• 0
  
  Kathryn Wood December 09, 2015 15:28

  Yes, I agree!  The search engine is not efficient as it stands now.  Please look into this!

• 0
  
  Kathy Lupton December 09, 2015 18:39

  We have the exact issue here - it's very time consuming to have to search a long list for the name (especially when it's not in alpha order).  Help please!

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  Adam Sentz December 09, 2015 19:52

  Thanks for the feedback everybody. Search is one of the more difficult programming challenges and there's always room for improvement. 

  Populi's search feature doesn't just search for exact matches on names, but a number of other things as well like addresses. Populi also tries to return matches even if you spell a difficult name incorrectly. This means that entering a very small number of characters is likely to return a larger number of lower quality matches. I tested out "Dai" in Mindy's instance of Populi and found that typing just one more letter resulted in the person I believe she was looking for being the top match. It's likely that this is an adjustment from other systems you've used in the past, but I think you'll find that if you just type a few more characters your matches will dramatically improve.

  In addition, the order of search results are ranked on relevancy with greater weight being given to things like names and less to something like someone's license plate. So it wouldn't really work to display results in alphabetical order.

  We have some ideas for how to improve some of the frustrating cases that people run into with Search and we will continue to evaluate those.

  This request is pretty similar to one that we already have so I'm going to direct future votes and comments that way. https://support.populiweb.com/entries/94863668-Improve-the-search-option