Site Wide Search Requirements
by Khy Huang
I. Introduction
This document explains the requirements for the ACS Site Wide Search (SWS)
application. It describes both the general purpose for and the feature
level specifications of the SWS application. The SWS application provides
cross-application ACS searching functionality based upon a variety of user
inputs.
II. Vision Statement
Web sites that serve a lot of content must provide a searching tool for
their users to find pages with relevent content. Examples of this are e-commerce sites
which must help users find products of interest, news providers which must
help users find articles pertaining to their interests, and collaborative
community sites which must help users find other users's contributions.
It is unpleasant to go to a web site to purchase a specific item and end
up being forced to browse through product categories instead of simply
entering a key word to locate the desired product. These difficulties are
especially problematic when the product is categorized in a nonstandard
way.
The Site Wide Search (SWS) application provides different methods for
a user to locate site content. One such method is to simply enter a
key word and return all pages containing this term. A second method
allows users to specify the scope of the search. A third method gives
users the capability to search for theme related content based on the results
of an initial search.
System/Application Overview
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Intermedia - Intermedia.
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Application Interface - API for developers to add content from other applications
to the scope of the search.
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Subsite - Functionality to search for contents within a sub-site.
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Query parameters - An admin page to tweak search parameters.
IV. User-Cases
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Case 1 - User enters key words to search the web site to find related content.
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Case 2 - User is within a content area of the site. User has option to search the current content area or the whole site (sub-site).
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Case 3 - User searches a few areas of the site (i.e. bboard and wimpy point) by entering a keyword.
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Case 4 - User searches using exact phases
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Case 5 - User searches using boolean operations (and , or ) between entered key words
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Case 6 - User searches content with creation date of a particular time.
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Case 7 - User wants the search results to display # rows on each page. For example, users who have small screens usually want to display fewer results per page than those who have large screens.
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Case 8 - User selects the option to display results grouped into content areas
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Case 9 - User searches using the combination of methods provided by case 3 to 6 and display options of 7 or 8.
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Case 10 - Admin wants to specify the frequency of resyncing the index. An admin who runs a site with huge network traffic would not want to sync the indexes frequently
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Case 11 - Admin of medical web site wants to load a set of medical themes for the site to improve the search results.
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Case 12 - Admin wants to view statistical reports on searched terms
V. Related Links
Not available yet
VI.A Requirements: Data Model
Not available yet
VI.B Requirements: User-Level Requirements
30.10 User Search Pages
30.10.10 An embedded search widget which allows users to enter search terms and select site content area.
30.10.20 Advance search page
30.10.20.10 Text Box to enter key words
30.10.20.20 Keywords support the * as wild cards
30.10.20.30 An option to select which content areas to include in search
30.10.20.40 An option to select the type of search. The types are search exact or use boolean operators (and,or,not) between search terms.
30.10.20.50 An option to select date ranges for content
30.10.20.60 An option to select subsite
30.10.20.70 Select the number of rows to display per page
30.10.20.80 Group by context area option
30.10.30 Result Page
30.10.30.10 Display the search results
30.10.30.20 Option to show previous and next results
30.10.30.30 Option to select the number of items to display on each page
30.10.30.40 More like this (next to each result item). Other contents with similar themes.
VI.C Requirements: Admin-Level Requirements
40.10 Admin Pages
40.10.20 None
VI.D Requirements: Developer-Level Requirements
50.10 SWS Application Interface (facility for developers to include application data in the search repository)
50.10.10 Interface for setting up package as one of the content area to search
50.10.20 Interface to add or remove content
50.10.30 API for defining permissions required for viewing the content data
VII. Revision History
Document Revision # |
Action Taken, Notes |
When? |
By Whom? |
0.1 |
Created |
2000-11-08 |
Khy Huang |
0.2 |
First pass editing |
2000-11-08 |
Joshua Finkler |
0.2 |
Added more details |
2000-11-09 |
Khy Huang |
0.3 |
Minor editing |
11/10/2000 |
Joshua Finkler |
khy@arsdigita.com