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Hi Community,

 

We are planning to rework our Acumatica Global Search (or Universal search) and now we are collecting requirements for this feature. The most popular ideas like categories and including attributes have been already included, but still, we would like to ask for your opinion about any ideas and problems related to global search, feel free to write it here.

Hello, an easy Search configuration would be nice:

  • Select which entities should be searched for and what can be excluded
  • Maybe also to include customized fields in the search
  • Also where to search first: Menu Items, Transactions, Files or Help

Using wildcard characters like:

Use

To find

? (question mark)

Any single character
For example, sm?th finds "smith" and "smyth"

 

Example from Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/using-wildcard-characters-in-searches-ef94362e-9999-4350-ad74-4d2371110adb

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/examples-of-wildcard-characters-939e153f-bd30-47e4-a763-61897c87b3f4

 

 

 


This might be not 100% related. But what about adding “Tags” in the Notes. And then search for those tags?


Maybe searching for orders/invoices using the inventory items included in the orders.

Also - is there a comprehensive guide on global search, advising what it can and cannot search or any limitations?

We have reviewed the following one but looks like it is not updated.
ScreenId=ShowWiki&pageid=6a7886a5-ed3f-4e5b-8b5f-5d8b517bc755


What about searching multiple tenants at the same time?  We have a customer with three tenants.  When a CSR answers an incoming call, they don’t know which tenant to search to find the contact.


Ability to easily configure any field in the system (including UDF and attributes) to either be included in search or not. Just like quick filters allow to define that in GIs.

 

This will improve performance, by excluding unnecessary fields, and improve convenience for searching customer fields.


Universal Search currently shows Menu items tab with no results, if we can provide a preferences so users can set to show Transactions and Profiles as first tab and then show Menu. Files and Wiki that would help a lot for end-users, currently users are searching for customer or order number and the Menu items shows 0 results and customers are puzzled. So a feature to sequence the tabs would be quite helpful for all users. 


@afomichev Maybe you can provide some more details on the scope of the project? There are obviously lots of places where search comes into play in Acumatica, so it would be helpful to know if you are simply trying to improve the site-wide global search, or whether this rework will be baked into other areas of the product (i.e. product search in Sales Orders, Customer search in Sales Orders, etc).

I think synonyms might be a good feature to think about. I will give you an example. If you want to “Upgrade” the Acumatica site, you might type in the word “Upgrade” to global search, and you will get zero results. You might also type “new version”. Or “install”. Or “2022 r2”. None of those things will get you to the correct tab, which is named “Apply Updates”. You have to know those magic words if you want Global Search to find what you want.

If you want a lot of good ideas around search, check out this product: Search REST API Reference | Algolia. It has a lot of concepts, such as synonyms and hierarchical search concepts that might be useful to adopt into Acumatica. You might even consider an integration option where you leverage some of their stuff (but they do cost money….so it should probably be optional).


My problem is the sort order of results. I enter a supplier partial name, and select the transactions and profiles tab and the transaction results are all over the place date wise. Results should be sorted most recent first.


the search results should be divided by category's, see below search from another system

 


When searching to catalog by category instead of the tabs across the top, also drop down when you’re on the menu option instead the link how it looks below so that way it is less items to see on this page. Example search vendor category would be Menu items > drop down to all you see in the screenshot below. 

 


To speed up using the universal search system when you time out of a session and then have to repeat your search.

While timed out, you can still access the global search text box, and display results.

It is not till you click on a result - Say a menu item.

That the Time out log out occurrs.

You then log back in. But you are back on the same page you started with before performing the search.

Suggested improvement: If timed out, the global search when clicking will log you out.

Or

If you search, then when it logs you out, if you can log back to the searched item, so you do not have to repeat your search.


Be able to use the global search to search the cross reference alternative ID on Stock Items. 

 


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