The UX team tackles the search functionality challenge in Digital Experience Manager

At Crownpeak we take customer feedback very seriously. We regularly meet with customers about their user experience, we're plugged into the Crownpeak Community, and we survey users on a regular basis.

The feature request we're focusing on in this blog post is how to improve the way you find assets within Crownpeak Digital Experience Manager (DXM). This feedback came from the Crownpeak Community Ideas Exchange as well as from our conversations with customers.

The UX team took up the search functionality challenge and spoke with a variety of users to develop a better understanding of the issues they experienced. Below are the problems and solutions we found.

Improving search: In progress

Issue 1: Folders can have hundreds of assets and finding a specific asset using the pagination feature of the File View panel was slow and frustrating.

Solution: We're excited to announce that an infinite scroll version of the File View is already in Beta and being tested by a few customers. As you scroll, additional assets load below lightning fast. We are also working on more updates to help users jump through long lists of assets more quickly. This also means you will be able to select multiple (or all) assets in a folder that used to live on separate pages.

Issue 2: The platform's File View asset search returns too many results that are not listed in any particular order.

Solution: The UX team finished designs in December for a redesigned search experience that the DXM development team has just started looking at. The updates will:

• Default sort the results to surface the most relevant results

• Allow users to search by URL, Asset ID, Path, and Label
  
  

Issue 3: Many assets have the same or similar names. Branched assets are a great example of this. When looking for an asset, it can be difficult to tell what is what.

Solution: We are taking a multi-pronged approach to solve this asset names issue.

• We will add tooltips with metadata about the asset including the asset's status, path, template, asset id, etc.
• We are improving the sort and filter functionality by adding it to every column of the expanded File View along with adding a few other filters like asset type. (Asset Type = code, media, folder, template, etc.)

Asset Tooltip




Enhanced sorting and filtering of the File View

DXM search features on the horizon

While our engineering team begins work on these updates, the UX team will be working on what we are calling Project Nav2.0. This project will focus on additional time savers to help you find an asset as well as better understand your context when you are working on an asset.

When these are developed, we will roll them out in Beta for validation and then to our general audience.

Are you a DXM power user who's interested in being part of our Beta Tester program? Please let us know – send me a message by selecting the mail icon next to your avatar within the DXM dashboard to send a private message to @AriWeissman.

Thanks to our customers who've shared their feedback to help point us in this direction. If you have feature ideas or other feedback, we want to hear from you! Post your thoughts to the Crownpeak Community's Ideas Exchange.