The purpose of the post is to gather information regarding the use of Advanced Search. We're early in the process and want to better understand goals/challenges.
Search is one of the most critical features in RSA Archer today as users need to be able to locate things quickly and easily.
Today, there are 2 places to run a search in RSA Archer: 1) Global Search (located in the top-right area of the Global Header) and 2) Advanced Search. The Global Search searches all of RSA Archer using a keyword or phrase like Google. Advanced Search, which also has keyword search, has more bells and levers to pull to in order to construct a more thorough search.
To get to the Advanced Search screen, the user must first go to the Main Navigation menu, select a Workspace -> Solution -> Application. Then they select the magnifying glass.
Advanced Search allows a user to construct a search by building relationships between different applications and then tailoring the results to meet the business goals. It allows the user to customize what fields appear in a report and filter/sort/group the results. For example, I may want to find all the risks labeled “Critical” and “High” across these 8 applications and thru 5 different search paths. Due to the complexity of Advanced Search, Power Users/Sys Administrators often created canned reports to aid business users to find data.
To coin a popular Marvel comics phrase: "With great power comes great responsibility”. To effectively harness the power of Advanced Search, the user experience must be simple to understand for all users. Our customers have repeatedly told us that this screen can be overwhelmingly complex and frustrating. Most business users relate to the simplicity of a Google Search rather than RSA Archer’s complex search screen. See graphic below.
For us to design a better solution for this Search experience, we’d like to learn more about the context around how it’s being used today (Business users).
- What are the main challenges with the Adv Search screen today?
- Which search feature (Global or Advanced) do your users use most frequently?
- How often are your users going to the Adv Search screen?
- How many relationships (applications) do you typically use when building a search?
Please share your feedback through this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QFGWMSB
By gathering your feedback, we hope to design the right solution to fit your needs.
Originally posted on January 30, 2020 in the Archer Community.
Comments
9 comments
I don't know if the survey will address this, but the most recurring complaint we get is that when using the Global Search, you can't find the keyword in the record, so the users don't know why some records got hits. Yet the search engine clearly knew there was a hit. This is particularly true when hits occur inside off-layout fields, cross-reference, and attachment fields. but the search engine clearly knows there was a hit. But it does not return the field name in which it found the hit.
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
Thanks for reaching out and looking for feedback! I filled out the survey, but forgot to mention a couple of things.
1. Reporting on self-referencing apps. It's not really possible today, so seeing parent-child type relationships or related records that live in the same app is difficult.
2. If we had the ability to align the user field to our org's HR rollup. Many users want insight into "John Doe's" records and, at least with our instances, this isn't easily possible. Not sure if there's something within Advanced Search that could somehow enable that option almost like it does a hierarchical values list to "contains inclusive" a level/person in the org.
3. The ability to create calculated and comparison fields in a search. Show me the difference between these dates on the fly, the average difference between two items, show me the count of certain items on the fly - without having to create a field in the app to then pull into search results. Also if we could search based on field comparison's it would be very helpful, e.g. show me all issues where the creator of the record is also a reviewer or show me records where Person 1 in App A is the same person listed in a field over in App B or show me where the count of this field exceeds the count of another field, things like that.
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
I'm not on 6.7 yet, but are you counting Advanced Search the same as modifying the default navigation search results?
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
Lauren,
Thank you for your question. The Adv Search blog and survey is for anyone that uses Adv Search in any version of 6. And yes, it is for modifying the search results or an existing report. Or to build a search from scratch. Think of it this way - anytime the user interacts with the Adv Search screen. Does this answer your question?
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
I was hoping that was the answer. Here is an idea I posted a few weeks ago to help better streamline it though. I'll complete the survey too, I just wasn't sure if you were looking specifically for feedback on when the users use the magnifying glass (almost never here) versus clicking modify (all the time). Streamline search and eliminate "Search Default Field" option
Edit: My original question on it too, though I don't think it adds any value. Currently "default search" and "advanced search" are treated different in some ways, which is why I posed that question. Personally I don't think this is something that should have to wait for votes to fix, and I think your answer actually goes to prove that point. We need to make sure we're all speaking the same language, and you're referring to both being the same, but from a technical standpoint, they're not always the same. https://community.rsa.com/thread/204151
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
Jason Ross,
Thanks for your feedback! Reporting on self-referencing applications has been addressed in the forthcoming April 2020 release of the platform!
The other item we will be sure to take into account with our planning. Please ensure this feedback has been captured through the survey link above. It's a short survey, and will provide tremendous input to us.
Originally posted on January 30, 2020.
Liam Doyle,
Thank you for the feedback. Please ensure it has been captured through the survey link above. It's a short survey, and will provide tremendous input to us.
Originally posted on January 31, 2020.
As Admins / Power users of Archer, we can answer from our perspective, of what we see & hear from the business users. I think it would be useful, if you were to have this blog & subsequent survey targeting the business users directly, so that we could all forward to them to gain their opinion and let them document "It's just not intuitive"!
Originally posted on February 5, 2020.
Shaun,
Thank you for the feedback. One of the issues we have is how to target business users directly. First, they would need access to RSA Link which most of them likely don't have. Second, we don't have access to the business users (email addresses, etc...) so we have to go through the Admins and hope that they are providing an accurate view of the business user's frustrations with Adv Search.
However, the survey monkey link doesn't require an RSA Link account so I think you could forward it to your business users: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QFGWMSB
We would be most appreciative if we could get more business users answering the survey questions.
Thanks.
-Benjamin Blinn
Originally posted on February 5, 2020.
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