[Rt-devel] Reworking SavedSearches

[Joby Walker]

Jesse Vincent wrote:
> So, this is very much something we looked at when doing the original 
> design for the RT 3.2  query builder and saved searches. The reason we 
> didn't split out Search Results and Display Format into their own
> separate subcomponents was out of a concern that it would take an 
> already complicated UI and make it even harder to use. 

Didn't know the history.  Good to know.

> Putting results format and search terms on separate pages seems pretty
> reasonable to me. Making it so that if you want to display a saved
> search, you need to load two or three different items to get the same 
> consistent behaviour.  What we've done for RT 3.6 is let users set up
> preferences for display defaults...It only goes part of the way there, 
> but it's our hope that it helps make it a bit better without making
> things hurt more.

After lots of feed back we were pressured to add the ability to define a
default format for a group and then a user could select one of their
groups to provide their default search format -- but the end result has
been that no one used the separate mechanism and just used saved
searches (we're using the Homepage Saved Searches).

> I'd encourage you to mock up a potential new UI before going all the way
> through with it, but if we (or you) can come up with something that's
> useful without making the toolset harder to use for a casual user,
> I'd be really psyched.

We'll look at the mockup.  One of the attractions for me is that our
casual users have a real hard time with the query creation part, but can
manage the formatting and ordering just fine.  If they could use some
already defined queries, they wouldn't have to deal with generating a query.

There is also no reason we couldn't create a new "Jumbo Saved Search"
page that allows you to edit all of the elements on one page...

One thing that we've done -- that is sort of related to this is that all
the Search/Results.* pages (and more) can be accessed with just a saved
search id# (https://path.to.rt/Search/Results.html?Id=55).  This is nice
because if you bookmark ...?Id=55 then even if the saved search changes,
you will get the new search -- not the old one.

So with the changes I've proposed, Search/Results.* could take:

If Saved Search 55 consisted of:
a) query 5
b) format 18
c) order 30

1) /Search/Results.html?Id=55

change the query to #6

2) /Search/Results.html?queryid=6&formatid=18&orderid=30

change the ordering (without saving)

3) /Search/Results.html?queryid=6&formatid=18&Order=Creator|Owner|

etc...

We'll work on a mockup soon, and post some images -- though we've change
the generic interface some so they'll be a bit off of standard.

Joby Walker
ITI SSG, C&C, University of Washington