Suggest Totara Learn features

Fuzzy Matching for Search

 
Eden Bethell
Fuzzy Matching for Search
by Eden Bethell - Friday, 5 April 2024, 7:03 AM
 

One of our repeated user requests is a search function that gives the user more relevant results. We've had some issues with users searching for courses but not finding what they need as they didn't include the exact word, typoed, or other similar reasons.

As such, I'd like to suggest implementing fuzzy matching, which is described on this page. It won't be perfect of course, but it should increase the success rate of users searching. Depending on the implementation this could be as minor as making sure that 'Microsoft Teams' comes up when someone types in 'Microsoft Teans' or being useful in other ways such as having it check for synonyms of the search terms.

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Craig Eves
Re: Fuzzy Matching for Search
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Sunday, 7 April 2024, 4:57 PM
Group Totara

Hi Eden

Totara uses full text search across supported databases this allows for some flexibility but not for misspelling of words.

Potentially fuzzy text searching could be incorporated into the full text search using the database functions there is a performance cost to this.

There is also a global search engine which allows mor flexibility but there are drawbacks to this

Are you or you Partner able to create a feature request ticket as i can't see an existing one around this idea.

Regards