Coursedog

Submit a Ticket My Tickets
Welcome
Login  Sign up

Global Search - All Catalogs

Table of Contents

Overview
Search Fields and Display Order 
Understanding Catalog Search Mechanisms  
Additional Notes
Related Articles

Overview

The “global search” available in both the Contemporary Catalog and Standard Catalog allows for search capabilities across all catalog entities (Courses, Programs, Departments and Catalog Pages/Resources), enabling users to more rapidly find information and go to the appropriate page.

 

 

Search Fields and Display Order 

  • Global search searches against the fields shown in the below table, if populated within the catalog application.

  • Results will always be presented in the following order: Catalog Pages, Programs, Departments, Courses. 

Entity

Search Fields

Catalog Pages (Custom)

Page Name

Sub-Page Name (if sub-pages exist) 

Content

Sub-Page Content (if sub-pages exist)

Programs

Code

Name

Long Name

Departments

Name

Display Name

Courses

Code

Name

Long Name

 

Understanding Catalog Search Mechanisms  

  • Within the search, four distinct operations occur (one for each of Catalog Pages, Programs, Departments, and Courses). 

  • Within each set (e.g., “Catalog Pages” are a set), search ranks the results based on match, using a regex search and then re-ranking responses to match based on “best-fit” within the match. 

  • Once rank is determined, search sorts results by rank match within each set. For example, a user who searches for “HISTORY” and views only results in the “Courses” set will find the HISTORY courses first.

  • These search operations enable the most meaningful and relevant results to be surfaced first.

  • For standard catalog users, search results render as links, creating a browsing experience that's more in line with contemporary catalog.

 

Additional Notes

Open-Ended Results 

Use of regex accommodates cases where users may enter incomplete or partially matching text. For example, a user may search for “BIO” and search thus returns cases where “Biology” exists. However, the regex approach also introduces some limiting factors, such as results which bear little resemblance to the original query. For example, results which match the “IO” of “BIO” may include “Mission,” “Accreditation” and “Educational Resources”.

 

Results Max

Individual search categories (e.g., searching “courses” only) return a maximum of 50 results. However, courses and programs each have a pre-limit of 500, meaning the first 500 results are loaded from the database, before a fuzzy search is run to yield the 50 matching items at the end. 

Related Articles

Did you find it helpful? Yes No

Send feedback
Sorry we couldn't be helpful. Help us improve this article with your feedback.