Upcoming change to quick search function in Shotgun

Hi everyone,
We’re looking at making some changes to the “quicksearch” function:
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  1. Allowing for any combination of fields to be selected for search through the dropdown (e.g. on a Shots page, search Shot Name and Description only, or just Shot Name, or Description and Status, etc…)
  2. Selecting all fields visible on pages by default (so by default, the search would search everything in the table, but it would be possible to uncheck individual fields to limit to just specific fields as required). Fields not visible on the page can be searched by choosing them individually.
  3. Removing the “keywords” option

What we’re trying to accomplish here is a rework of this functionality to make it more intuitive. When users type into the quick search on a table, they instinctively expect to be able to zero in on something visible in the view, whether that’s a shot name, specific tag, etc. Instead what actually happens is that they end up searching a limited subset of all the information (the “keywords”), which are actually a hardcoded set of fields– our sort of best guess as to what people might want to search in each case. For the most part this was fine, but it caused confusion for users expecting to find information in other columns (and who might not think to look in the dropdown menu). Additionally, people who wanted to specify exactly which fields could be searched were left disappointed– they had to either go with the keywords or a single field. We think these changes should align closer to users’ expectations when using it for the first time, as well as provide more flexibility for more sophisticated users.

In terms of actually removing the keywords option, I’d like to share our thinking for removing it. It was originally implemented as a concession to searching a table of data without a detriment to performance. As I mentioned, we chose a set of specific values that worked for the majority of situations, but ultimately provided a more complicated experience overall. New users couldn’t understand why certain things wouldn’t show up when they searched for them, and seasoned users requested for the configuration to be customised (or changed). Our hope is that with the other two changes to this function in place, the keywords option becomes moot and only serves to create clutter.

Let us know what you think!

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I think the biggest that hurdle my users encounter is that this field does not default to link fields (ie a tasks or versions page does not default to the “Link” field. I’ve heard this is for performance but since so many things are tracked/searched based on shot/asset name it’s been a hurdle

It sounds like this change WOULD cover that. So I’m certainly a fan.

As far as needing to deselect options I feel like it would be great to have a similar “ctrl+click” like the filter menu has so you don’t have to keep opening the menu if you need to quickly deselect a large number of fields. Or is there a proposed “deselect all” for those situations where you DO want to search only a single field?

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In addition to this, would you be able to upgrade it to be diacritic agnostic? For example at the moment, searching “über” will not return matches named “uber” (and vice versa). This has been a bit of an issue for us, and means we generally have to name our entities with both versions (such as “übercool (ubercool)” )

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Bumping this up as this improvement was released yesterday, and it’s awesome. Thank you @jack and the folks behind this!

Hi, since the latest update to the quick search function my team is experiencing issues when trying to search in the Detail View of the Shots page (supervisors like to use this during dailies sessions).

Previously, we could search tags, shot codes (episode_sequence_shot) or partial shot codes (sequence_shot) or even just shot numbers and get the results we’re after. This is not working for us now.

Is this possibly related to the Detail View not considering there to be any ‘visible’ fields? When I perform the same search in the ‘List View’ of the shots page with the correct fields visible I get the results I would expect (because ‘visible’ fields like Tags and Shot Code are exposed and considered as part of the search?).

Is there a way to have the Detail View default to the same ‘visible’ fields as the ‘List View’? Is it possible to save these settings for all users globally?

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I second @Jordan on this.
Our team relies heavily on Detail View (for Assets page), and the search box is crucial.
Now, typing in the name of the asset, partial name, case insensitive, etc. no longer work as expected like before.

Anyway around this other than using list/thumbnail view?

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I’ve found this change to be a net performance LOSS on all pages as the default behaviour is to search across ALL visible fields rather than the few that it previously targeted by default.

While the feature is welcomed I really would prefer to have control over the default fields per entity and the perhaps store these per user or page settings?

I just think overall we are going to see way more unhappy people and 503s due to the additional load on the server across all our already badly managed pages. Production seems to really like seeing 20+ fields for reporting purposes, but then as soon as someone comes along and types something, boom, several seconds of waiting and that compute is now at a cost of our total server query time.

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The other issue I have with this is if the default is ALL visible and you want to select a Name/Code field specifically, selecting that field in the menu DESELECTS it. Then you are instead forced to untick ALL visible and then check your specific field. With both clicks incurring a refresh to present the changes. CTRL modifier also has no affect like it would normally in the filter panel.

I want this to work, but it’s a change in default behaviour and it just feels like it’s something that should have been optional for existing sites.

While I’m here, UI design is great, but the highlight of the carat rounding is a little off comparred to the search box behind it.

image

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@Halil I agree that it would be best if the default search fields could be managed on a page, entity, or project level for all users.

In an effort to be constructive with my feedback, the flaw with this change is very much apparent on List views with several Linked entity fields. As soon as you add fields from linked entities that’s where it’s a big jump in performance.

Perhaps deselect linked fields by default, and change “All Visible” to “All {Entity Type} Fields” if adding more granular or admin control will be an issue to implement?

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Me again … :slight_smile:

The names of the fields in the search menu don’t seem to be aware of any renaming that may have been performed for fields in the List View on the current page.

eg.

Hi @jack, just checking if there are any planned updates in the near future to this function.

I second @Jordan and @nmintrasak - where I could previously search asset name in detail view I now have to click the search options > asset fields > asset name. Is there a way to have this permanently selected on these pages? Without it selected it does not filter any results at all.

This is quite frustrating for members of my team, and having to remember to do that to search for a particular asset is going to cause a bit of friction

This also appears to have introduced a bug when using the quick search in the Media App. Even though the default “All Visible” is set, it’s clearly not searching on the Version Name field (which is the only one visible by default). We’ve been training users to go and manually select the “Version Name” from the dropdown, but that’s less than ideal.

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Hey SG, this has been broken for 2 weeks. Why hasn’t it been reverted?

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Just chiming in here to mention that our users are also running into issues with this. By default in the Media page’s Thumbnail View there are no Fields Visible In View for the Search to check against, so by default in Thumbnail View the Search doesn’t do anything.

_thumbnail_view_search

Switching to List View, Fields show up in the Fields Visible In View section, so by default the List View Search does something.

_list_view_search

Unless you customize the Thumbnail View to use Fields Not Visible In View > Other Fields, it’s pretty much useless, and even so those settings don’t persist, so you’re forcing users to use Filters, which isn’t great.

My 2 cents.

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Hey Autodesk - any chance we could get confirmation you’ve seen this?

@jack @patrick-hubert-adsk

@Jordan

The fix for Thumbnail/Detail views will be released end of this week. The fix will, by default preselect a group of fields to search-in if there are no visible columns in the view.

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Hi Alexander,

Great news! Thank you so much for confirming.

Hello,

I’d like to re-open this discussion here, because it seems that a recent update terminated this great change of the behavior of the quick search function.

Per default, the quick search (e.g. on a task page) inlcudes all visible fields, but excludes all entity and multi-entity fields. Now that is something what we are using most when searching on task pages.
On a task page including all shot tasks of our project for example we want to search for shot tasks of a specific sequence using the quick search. What worked perfectly for a couple of weeks is gone again now, as the field “Link” is a entity/multi-entity field and again is excluded per default from the quick search.

Is there any chance to roll this back?

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