Key Happenings at support.sas.com - Sharing Updates and advances in SAS Online Support

Tuesday, October 27. 2009

Advances in Searching

UPDATE:
The advanced search functionality is now production on support.sas.com. It is available at support.sas.com/search. You can also access it by selecting the search button when the search field is empty. Links to advanced search will start to appear on the site over the next few days. The first link is now available as shown below.

Thanks for your comments. Based on your feedback, the Search and Reset buttons have switched locations on the page. If you have additional comments, please send them to us or post them here.
--- end of update ---

I have written about the search functionality on support.sas.com before and you have provided feedback about what you need from the search tool. If you missed those conversations, you may want to take a minute to review other posts about searching.

Based on your comments and site usage evaluations, there is no mistaking the importance of searching. Given that, we have a team of dedicated people looking at reported issues and potential search improvements. The team is proud to announce our first major update to search: Advanced Search. Below is a screen shot of the new search page.

The Advanced Search is available today on support.sas.com. However, we have not made it a production feature yet because we are still testing and gathering feedback. Today, I am offering you early access to the search features. All I ask in return is that you let us know what you like and what you don't like.

Give it a try
While we are polishing the last few rough edges, I invite you to visit support.sas.com/search/advanced.html and kick the tires on these features.

The search box is pretty standard, so I don't think you will find many surprises. Just in case, here are a few pointers:

You can still limit your search to a selected section of the site. to do this, select the drop list at the top of the Advanced Search pane and scroll down to the content area in which you are interested.

all these words performs the usual AND search. Entering terms in this field requires that all of the words are present in the document that is returned.

this exact working or phrase submits your words as a phrase and is the same as wrapping the words in double quotes in the main site search box.

one or more of these words conducts an OR search, which means that the document does not have to contain all of the words entered, but can contain any combination of those words.

Don't show information containing... produces a not operator. This field is extremely helpful when narrowing your search because it helps you to eliminate documents focused on terms that you know you don't want.

When you enter text in more than one of these fields, the search engine performs an AND.

That all sounds good, but wait until you see it in action
Follow these steps to get started:

Open Advanced Search in a new window.

Type axis labels in the field for "all these words" and type PROC GPLOT in the field for "this exact wording or phrase"

Submit and review the results. Notice that this search returns 271 results.

Select the back button to return to Advanced Search.

Enter the same search as described in Step 2, but this time add GRADAR GCHART GMAP in the field under "Don't show information containing".

Submit and review the results. We now have 175 results. These results are more tightly focused on content about manipulated the axis and labels in the GPLOT procedure.

I have found that people who are performing searches like those described below, they are often in search of sample code that will show them the graph results before they code it. If this sounds like you, try one more thing. Select Samples & SAS Notes from the selection list at the top. Your Advanced Search pane should look like the following:

Notice that we now have only 43 results. If you really are interested in only SAS Sample code, select the down arrow next to Type in the filter bar on the results page then select Sample. You have 32 samples about PROC GPLOT and they all mention axis and label.

Try a search of your own, then leave a comment
We want to know what you think. Is this an improvement? Share your search result successes and failures with us.

Posted by Renee Harper in Search, site usage at 10:12 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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In the “Select a section to search” field, please allow me to select multiple sections to search (for example: ‘Product Documentation’ and ‘Training’).

Thanks!!

#1 Derek C. on 2009-10-06 13:13 (Reply)

Finally, SAS has re-introduced a search capability for users not seen since the days of FSBrowse and the distributed SAS Usage Notes. Literal string searches (compound string searches too !) ; implied boolean AND; and explict boolean OR, are all possible now with this google-like search utility. What's more, it's now possible to actually find something useful.

Here's an example: Search for the literal strings "parameter manager" and "prompt for value". Exclude sas/connect from the results
all these words: "parameter manager" "prompt for value"
exclude these words: sas/connect

Great job SAS-Support !

#2 20YrSasUser on 2009-10-07 09:22 (Reply)

The reset button is on the wrong side. It should be on the right, submit on the left.
I actually hit the CANCEL button the first time I tried the form, I was not expecting it to be on the left.

I do like being able to specify what to search for and what to omit along with the number of entries to display at once all in one place.

#3 Jan Squillace on 2009-10-07 09:41 (Reply)

I am so-oooo glad to see that you are fixing the search feature on the SAS web site!!! The old search feature found nothing for the majority of my searches and I was getting pretty frustrated. Today I was able to find these items that the search had previously failed to find:
TS-688
Susan Slaughter
Coming to SAS from SPSS

The Advanced Search failed to find SGF 2010. It did find SAS Global Forum 2010, but that wouldn't help anyone who doesn't remember what SGF stands for .

I agree with the comment about the Search button needing to be on the left. I have a wide screen, and the Search button was way out by itself on the far, far right. I had to search for it. Ironic, don't you think?

This search feature will really make a difference.

#4 Susan Slaughter (Homepage) on 2009-10-08 13:05 (Reply)

Thanks for this useful new feature. It works well. I will share this advanced search feature with my associates and students.

Thanks for taking the time to develop and test this.

Sunil Gupta
Gupta Programming

#5 Sunil Gupta on 2009-10-24 10:44 (Reply)

I miss the option to limit my search to

between dates
SAS versions (product versions)

#6 Gert on 2009-11-02 11:15 (Reply)

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

Welcome to the blog about SAS online support. Renee Harper (that's me) will keep you up-to-date about new and updated content on support.sas.com, as well as support services and software releases. I'll try to include relevant examples you can use -- sample programs and information about how others use SAS. I’ll be able to do this better if you join me – this is a place to share your ideas, successes, and frustrations.