Documentation indexing and search improvements

TYPO3 Association Community Budget Ideas 2024 Q2
1

by Łukasz Uznański

What is your idea about?

We are aiming to improve documentation indexing and search as well as improve the user interface. We would like to have a final UI similar to GitHub one, with additional, more detailed filtering options. We proposed those changes to the Documentation team and we are willing to collaborate with them to work out final solutions. Discussion about those changes taken place here: add automatic filter to search results with documentation you have currently open · Issue #47 · TYPO3-Documentation/t3docs-search-indexer · GitHub

We want to prepare API and indexing for this kind of solution: add automatic filter to search results with documentation you have currently open · Issue #47 · TYPO3-Documentation/t3docs-search-indexer · GitHub

What do you want to achieve by the end of Q2 2024?

We want to prepare a technical draft of how the whole search process should look, what filters we will offer, how they will work, etc. - this should be the result of collaboration with the Documentation team.
Extend/modify how and what data we are indexing, as we will need more detailed information to be indexed to support extended suggestions. We would like to cooperate with elastic search experts on preparing schema/structure for indexing.
Implement on the backend side advanced suggestions handling (endpoints to handle requests from the frontend), where we receive filters from the frontend, parse them, and build an ES query to fetch suggestions, then return them to the frontend.

What is the potential impact of your idea for the overall goal?

End-users would benefit from this initiative because it would be easier to find information in TYPO3 documentation. You would be able to use filtering, so you will receive more tailored results and it would be easier to receive more precise search results.

Which budget do you need for your idea?
10.000 Euro

10 Likes
2

I like the idea but the outlined result is not completely clear to me.

3

IMO the linked ticket is a good outline (with screenshots :face_holding_back_tears:) to better describe what kind of filtering could be helpful.

TYPO3 Documentation has a huuuge amount of intersecting docs and especially for newcomers it’s very hard to get to the right sections. Improved search filters could create a more focussed search.

I’m very eager to see if this can be tackled! :crossed_fingers:t2:

3 Likes
4

We - the Documentation Team - support this idea. Part of the idea originally came from our team, Łukasz and Marcin gave it a more official form.

Have a look at the ticket, there are screenshots and all

1 Like
5

What I think a lot of “end users” of the documentation are finding difficult is to understand the different “Books” we have.

A filter section that would reveal this structure would be very helpful to make people get to the information they are searching for faster, and not get overwhelmed by a large result list. An initial overlay to the search would be a great “landing zone” for them. Restriction the search to a version number directly would also be very helpful.

Documentation accessibility and search functionality is vital to introducing new users to TYPO3 and transfer knowledge and best practice, and to reduce time-intensive individual support to people.

4 Likes
6

I’m sure this could help people, especially beginners, to find the right things inside the Documentation itself. The first draft also looks pretty good to me.

1 Like
7

I also like the idea.
The Github search syntax page might be a good resource for inspiration too.