Conversation on...Search?

[kenneth_rogers]

On day two of instcon‌ I stopped by the Community Booth and chatted with the one and only stefaniesanders‌. Yes, she had me create my own mock-up for a new Community home page (Community Home - Submit your own‌), but this lead to some more in depth conversations...about search.

Which Search?

Stefanie's first question to me was which search do I use? Due to  @tdelillo ‌ suggestion when I first started working for her, I only use the search in the top right hand corner (or as Stefanie called it, the Spotlight Search). But did you know that this search not only is on every page - but it is an ultra powerful searching weapon.

Why is it better?

Not only is it on every page, so you aren't constantly having to come back to the Community home page, it also allows you the ability to search specific content, people or places. But there are two other little caveats that are "special" about this search that are nice and I thought everyone should know about (one of which Stefanie taught me!):

1. You can limit you search to a specific group! (This is what Stefanie taught me!) When you are in your group, or a page in your group, start to search and then click to only show the results in that group!
   
2. Type your search item...then press "Enter". When you do this, you can drill down on your results even further. You can limit the content type (only search in blogs for example), or for a date range ("I know 'x' was created in the last week because it was related to the release notes - where is it!?!"), OR even display only content that has been marked as official.

I know this isn't ground breaking, rocket science, we re-did the equation for gravity in our conversation type work...but this is what can happen at InstructureCon. When you least expect it, you can learn something...and be inspired.

[Stef_retired]

 @kenneth_rogers ‌, thanks for creating this resource! I'm going to be linking to it like crazy, and I'm going to share it out to the Meta Community‌ which is where we talk about all-things-Community.

I had a moment of panic late last night wondering if I had used the correct term when I called the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner the "spotlight search." (Yes, I really am the kind of person who loses sleep over things like this.) It turns out that Spotlight Search is indeed Jive's official term for that thing--and when I was searching Jive resources to verify that, I discovered yet another new thing:

Tip: You can prevent your History and Bookmarks from being returned in search results. Just click the triangle next to your avatar and then Preferences. From there, select the Don't show history or bookmarks when searching box, then Save.

[laurakgibbs]

Thank you so much for writing this up,  @kenneth_rogers ‌! I use that Search ALL THE TIME since I am terrible at remembering to bookmark things here. I actually tweeted about the Community Search during #InstCon yesterday because I wanted to quickly find  @lindalee ‌'s comments about her use of Pages for student content creation and, presto, I was able to use Search to find it and link to it instantly 🙂

https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/890707578140884992

And FWIW I used Twitter Advanced Search to find that tweet 🙂

Twitter Advanced Search 

[awilliams]

I particularly like the "History" and "Bookmarks" section of the Spotlight search. History is great for getting back to that thing you know you were just looking at but can't recall where.

[awilliams]

PS. I'm pretty jealous you have your inbox indicator at 0. That is a thing I haven't seen in over a year...

[kenneth_rogers]

That's called being too involved in those notifications and making sure they're cleared out. I was on vacation once, and when I had the dreaded "50+" indicator I simply skimmed the inbox, read things that looked good, then marked all as read.

Gotta have a lean, mean, inbox machine.

[Stef_retired]

me every morning

me every time I walk away from the computer for, say, 30 minutes

[KristinL]

Spotlight Search is a great tool! I have used it exclusively for a while without really taking the time to appreciate the "oomph" behind it! Thanks for taking the time to highlight its potential for other Community Members. Like Adam, I use bookmarks and add custom tags and comments to make my search even easier when trying to find the super-valuable items that I find relevant to my teaching and technology integration roles.

PS. I too like the tidy inbox of 0. (Community, work email, personal email, linkedin, anything.)  Makes me feel caught up...too many notifications just stresses me out.