Default Search Areas

[former_member184657]

Dear SCN/Jive Gurus,

I just noticed that when I search in a particular forum, the default search is performed on All Categories.

That is to say, if Im in ABAP General and in the Search Forum if I put search term (eg. BADI), then instead of searching in ABAP General it searches under All Categories. And then to narrow down my search I scroll down to ABAP Development and then finally ABAP General. Which I feel is not the right thing to do.

AFAIK, this was not the case untill sometime back. So why has it been changed? Any particular reason/benefit?

Another interesting wierd thing Ive noticed is that when Im viewing a thread I find these options on the screen:

Reply to this Thread     and   Search Forum      and  Stop Watching Thread   and     Back to Thread List 

So while im viewing the thread and I click on Search Forum, then it correctly searches the right forum. Why oh why, is it that way?

pk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I noticed that as well but decided that trying to understand everything in the world is not good for mental health so I should rather just shut up and move on...

In the security area there are often related threads in the functional area which the discussion topic belongs to (like security for purchase orders for example) so I have actually used the new "all categories" default option first and then restricted afterwards.

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member46 · Accepted solution]

I will look into this.

[GauthamV · Accepted solution]

>

> I noticed that as well but decided that trying to understand everything in the world is not good for mental health so I should rather just shut up and move on... 
> Cheers,
> Julius

Can't stop laughing. ( no offense )

Cheers

[David · Accepted solution]

It's been this way for a while. I found it annoying as well since I have to get the results back from the first search before I can drill in to a more precise search.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

What I meant is that there are benefits in doing this before someone tells you that you have to do it.

I have a bit of an "R/2" mentality actually. When the search doesn't work for me (I use it a lot) then I logoff and logon again to clear the url parameters...

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member184657 · Accepted solution]

Hahaha. As always in your elements

Thank you Gali.

DB, I always preferred searching in a particular forum first, failing which I start broadening my search area. Which is why Im a little concerned with the reverse approach.

Talking of which, Im just curious about other people's search habbits. Which approach do your prefer in searching. What's the first place you go for SAP information?

Google? SAP Help? SCN? All Categories to specific forum or vice versa? Advanced SCN search covering all areas (Articles, Wikis, Weblogs, Forum categories, Forums) in SCN?

pk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

> Talking of which, Im just curious about other people's search habits. Which approach do your prefer in searching. What's the first place you go for SAP information?

I'm old fashioned and in most cases try [OSS|https://service.sap.com/notes] first (sure winner for bugs, but even for general documentation often good). Any other search in almost all cases starts with Google by limiting it to certain sites (e.g. start for example with sap.com and refine it from there if necessary). In general my approach is to first target any "official" documentation (and though verbose I must admit that the online documentation at [help.sap.com|http://help.sap.com] is actually quite often pretty useful)...

In general my own defined Firefox Quick Searches (see also [smart keywords|http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart+keywords]) are often my starting point for specific investigations (ABAP online help, NW 7.0EHP2, etc.).

Searches in the forums I also do via Google, but most often for identifying messages/threads I've read before. As a general source of information I find the forums usually worthless due to noise level and number of postings with questionable content (often easy to identify in areas I know well, but not always obvious in more unfamiliar areas).

I hardly ever use the search functionality provided by SCN (sometimes useful though when you want to check the number of results in the different categories like blog, forum, wiki, etc.). From my perspective the offered functionality is not good enough to cause me violating the [uniform access principle|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_access_principle], which I realized by limiting myself to one search engine most of the time...

Cheers, harald

p.s.: Living in an English speaking country I always access OSS in English. But for some of the more cryptic messages I try the German version for comparison, but it usually seems to be caused by me being out of tune with the person who wrote the OSS note regardless of language...

[former_member184657 · Accepted solution]

I'm old fashioned and in most cases try OSS first (sure winner for bugs, but even for general documentation often good). 

Interesting. I've always looked at OSS as a last resort. Even if I dont get any resolution there, then I click "Report Product Error". I've not really looked at OSS as a source of general documentation, though I should I've got some useful information through certain notes. I will try to adopt a change in my approach from now on, thanks to your suggestion

pk

[Sandra_Rossi · Accepted solution]

> Searches in the forums I also do via Google, but most often for identifying messages/threads I've read before

I also use Google for the following:

1) SDN does not allow to search something in our own messages. With Google, one's can search our name + the terms.

2) SDN global search (forums, blogs, etc.) doesn't allow to search on exact sentence (for example "raise exception type"). Google does

[former_member184657]

Issue seems to be resolved.

Thanks to all those behind this.

pk

[rb]

Good question!

I´am really missing the "search this forum" functionality. I really like to give you big p´s for good question like stackoverflow.com.

Bye