topic Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH in SAS Programming

Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

ChrisHemedinger — Thu, 07 May 2015 14:54:23 GMT

Many of you use the Search feature on www.sas.com and support.sas.com to find the information that you need to do your jobs. SAS is seeking information about how you use Search on SAS.com sites, how effective it is for you, and feedback about your overall experience with it.

If you want to participate, please complete this short survey. Your responses will help SAS to build a better search experience to meet your needs.

The survey will be available through May 15, 2015.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

ballardw — Thu, 07 May 2015 15:37:17 GMT

I took the survey yesterday.

I did find that the responses to the "how often did you find what you were looking for" type questions were too limited.

The choices for "found' were exactly the same as the frequency of search. I really wanted to express something like 'I find what I am looking for about 70% of the searches'.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

ChrisHemedinger — Thu, 07 May 2015 15:43:15 GMT

Thanks for taking the survey and for the additional feedback! I'll make sure that the team sees this.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

LinusH — Mon, 11 May 2015 12:45:11 GMT

Perhaps it's me - there is a question about using product/version filter. But I just can't see these options, there's just the Advanced Search...

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

ChrisHemedinger — Mon, 11 May 2015 12:53:23 GMT

The survey is trying to learn what you might like to see around these features -- it doesn't necessarily reflect the features that you see today...

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

RW9 — Mon, 11 May 2015 13:48:23 GMT

Hi,

Have completed the Questionnaire, and agree with ballardw that the options are a bit misleading.

There are a couple of things I would like to see added (mentioned in the questionnaire):

Tagging - adding tags to posts can make searching easier. Stackoverflow.com is a good example of this.

Stickies - having sticky posts. For example something around importing from Excel - dates/guessing etc. As there are several posts which come in of a very similar nature.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

ChrisHemedinger — Mon, 11 May 2015 14:01:34 GMT

Great feedback, thanks! I'll point out that this survey about search applies to all of SAS.com (www.sas.com, support.sas.com) and not just communities -- which I think is really relevant to your suggestions around posts.

We have a separate project to improve the overall experience for communities.sas.com, and that's happening very soon. Stay Tuned!

Chris

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

reneeharper — Tue, 12 May 2015 13:13:59 GMT

Product and version filters are only available in a couple of places today. You can filter the documentation by product and release from the main documentation page. Also, Samples & SAS Notes can be sorted and filtered by release and product, among other things. The following is an image of the Results Filter tab from the Problem Note listing. (Note that these examples are only representations of two ways that filters can work. Implementation can take many forms.)

Here's the image from the Problem Notes Results Filter tab.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

reneeharper — Tue, 12 May 2015 13:27:05 GMT

Hi RW9.

I know that this isn't the same as an easy sticky in your search results, but have you tried using the My SAS bookmark feature? You can learn more from this blog post about My SAS.

If you investigate bookmarks, I'd love to hear what you think.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

RW9 — Tue, 12 May 2015 14:26:23 GMT

Hi,

Yes, the stickies weren't actually for my benefit. Its more to have topics which come up regularly e.g. -

"How to xyz interact with Excel"

Perhaps even be able to pin other discussions to the stickied one.

The reason behind is to reduce the repeat questions, most of which come up because its tricky, if you don't know the right terminology, to find information. Tags help, e.g. tag of Excel pulls all Excel related stuff up in a search. But there could be a stickied "Excel Ins/Out" with the various topics.

A bit like the "How to ask a question" section. Its something I see a lot is games forums, for example: http://www.gog.com/forum/general#1431440435

The key posts on an overall topic are stickied at the top, all other posts drift through and out off into oblivion. Its one feature that is missing from there though is the ability to attach another post to a sticky.

Hope that clarifies what I mean and as Chris rightly mentioned, I was primarily thinking of the communities section.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

jakarman — Thu, 14 May 2015 18:11:00 GMT

I took he survey, just some additional comment.
Mostly I know the topic / area and than go searching with words and rethink of those not the real topic but having the biggest chance of a good hit.

I would like more categorized pages like the programmers-bookshelf (admin stat etc) having all things ordered. I know it is thinking in a old age approach but that one has also advantages.
A note to make: The programmers bookshelf is having trouble with mixed content (http https) generating pop-ups (14 may)

Another often frustrating one is finding the documentation entry and see that it has got locked.
Any reason for that explanation or some other underpinning is not there. Why? ( why not open up or why has the reason it got blocked not been mentioned).

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

CathyWarner — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:14:16 GMT

Hi Jaap,

Thanks for this additional feedback. The documentation for certain solutions is locked down so that only those customers with licenses can access it. If you have a license for that software product, you can obtain the credentials from Technical Support.

Can you provide an example of the problem with programmers bookshelf? What pages are you viewing that have the problem?

--Cathy

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

jakarman — Fri, 15 May 2015 14:17:43 GMT

Cathy

1/ Programmers bookshelf. This is what happens mixed protocols https/http
The is coming a popup to allow that in the middle of building the web-page.

Yes I know I can set default to ignore that. But I normally want to be warned. Being mixed can be meaning troubles.

2/ I know that easy answer for certain solutions. My remarks is that it is not mentioned on the website. ( I know several of them and will not propogate those as your decision is having it locked)
At least the system requirements doesn't open much sensible secrets but could be helpful in an early decision to promote it or not. Yes I know it is sales, but outside SAS there can be people promoting SAS.

In the situation now you are forced to contact SAS. That alone can be a too big hurdle to take.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

CathyWarner — Fri, 15 May 2015 16:26:59 GMT

Thank you for the clarification. I'll add this information to the search survey feedback.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

Doc_Duke — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:06:49 GMT

Chris,

I have to wonder where this was posted that I never saw it...

I use the SAS.com's search mostly for the documentation. I would find those results more useful if they were grouped by version number, when appropriate.

When I have a less defined question, I will often use the Google search with the site limited to sas.com, e.g.

excel import site:sas.com

Doc Muhlbaier

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

Rick_SAS — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:12:00 GMT

To follow up on Doc's comment, when I search for SAS syntax, Google often points me to SAS 9.2 documentation, or even the V8 doc! Any way for SAS to tell search engines to deemphasize the 9.2 doc and to point to 9.3 or 9.4 instead?

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

Doc_Duke — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:15:54 GMT

I just add the version number to the search for it,

excel import 9.4 site:sas.com

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

Rick_SAS — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:46:59 GMT

I have tried that, too, but it is not always successful.

Re: Seeking your feedback on SAS.com SEARCH

SteveDenham — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:50:13 GMT

To get away from the Google algorithm, which is based on total hits, set up a bot that accesses the 9.4 documentation through Google. Once you get a GIG of hits, the algorithm should recognize the 9.4 documentation as the "popular" version.

I am sure Google will love you for doing this, though...

Steve Denham