Re: Implementing Saved Searches

[Scott Gray]

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, comments inline.

On 1/12/2009, at 7:30 PM, Bruno Busco wrote:

Hi Scott,
this is on my list also.

This is how I did imagine it:

**UI:
In the search options screenlet of the FindScreenDecorator:

This is interesting, how do you plan on presenting the drop-down to the user? I placed it in the form widget itself for a couple of reasons: * So that it can be positioned within the form according to the developers preference and styled on a per form basis * Because of the dual behavior I had envisaged for the form, i.e. it is a drop down initially but if a new search is performed then it switches to a text box to allow a name to be entered and saved. * The list of saved searches to populate the drop-down list is dependent on the form target * The new form element could also be used in the future to save a draft of a partially completed form

- a drop-down apperars if one or more saved search are available for
that search. If the user selects one of the options all the search
fields get populated automatically.

And the search results are presented at the same time right?

Not yet defined how to let the user delete a saved search.

Yeah I haven't done that either, I was thinking perhaps a delete link could be presented once the user performs the search to be deleted. So the user would select a search from the drop-down, the search is performed, a delete link is now present next to the drop down.

- "Save this search" button is shown to let the user save the actual
content of the search fileds.

Agreed

- A name field allows to set a name for the search the user is going
to save. This is what will be displayed on the drop-down to select the
search.

Agreed, the plan for me was to switch the drop-down out for a text box if a new search is performed.

- There should be the possibility to share saved search in same way
letting them being visible by all users.

I think this is nice to have but a little complicated because who are we sharing it with? I doubt we'd want to share them organization wide because the list would quickly become too long for a drop-down to be useful. Because of the complications I had planned on leaving this until someone actually needed the functionality or someone else felt like working on it.

- All this is only available if the user is logged in. No search save
is possible for not logger users.

Agreed

**Code:

Every search screen should have a unique key that will be used to
store a preference.

Adrian suggested to use userPreferences for this and I think it is a good idea.

I did read this suggestion but I didn't feel that a single key-value pair was a good fit for the amount of information that needs to be stored. What would the name and value consist of?

I am using the userPreferences to store the screenlet collapsed status
also, I did not commit yet but I will do soon. In this case the
screenlet-id is used as key.

This makes sense for a UserPreference record because it is naturally a unique key and a single value.

Additionally, I would like to use a saved search to automatically run
a report periodically. To do this I need to pass the saved search as a
parameter to a service.

+1 I see a few potential uses for persisted forms/requests, saving drafts, creating reports, possibly even the most recently viewed items feature that we've talked about before. I tried to create the data model with these things in mind.

Thank you very much for sharing all this!
-Bruno

2009/12/1 Scott Gray <scott.g...@hotwaxmedia.com>:

We've discussed in passing a couple of times now the possibility of allowing users to save their searches/finds in order to allow them to quickly perform the search again in the future. I'd like to get this implemented in the very near future and since there have been a few different ideas thrown around about how that might be achieved, I've gone ahead and put together

some implementation notes for feedback from the community.

No code has been written and opinions of any nature would be greatly

that).

Thanks
Scott

HotWax Media
http://www.hotwaxmedia.com

appreciated, since it's not a major feature I'd rather only wait a day or two before getting stuck in (unless of any conversations take longer than

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