guardian
[EPIC] SURFACE DOCUMENT LOCATIONS
This is my second most favourite Giant feature request (after #314).
(Now broken into sub issues - see below)
DISCUSSION I believe that ElasticSearch is provided information about what workspaces a "file" lives in. So I'm hoping that when executing a search, our results list can display that information.
If a user is searching everywhere; or in multiple datasets; or in multiple workspaces, it would be nice to surface the dataset and/or workspace in which each result is found, underneath the name (in both compact and normal results views). Obviously, since search is restricted to datasets and workspaces that a user has access to, the information shown should be similarly restricted.
One complication is a search that includes both workspaces and datasets. What to show? (Permissions are also an issue here.) However such searches are already confusing so maybe this isn't a reason not to do this.
PROPOSAL FOR SEARCH RESULTS Normal view looks like this:
I'd like it the result title box to provide more info about context, e.g.
In compact view the 'locations' could go all on one line (replacing the bit the file size is currently displayed)
I imagine Dataset would be easier than workspaces but it’d be a nice start
PROPOSAL FOR DOCUMENT VIEW SIDEBAR
Where we currently show dataset location, make it a bit friendly (e.g. hover text to show the pertinent details rather than generic upload strings), and, most importantly, show the location (all the way down to the folder) in any and all workspaces that the active user has access to.
I’d really like it if, when a user clicked on a workspace/dataset in such a result, they are taken to that workspace/dataset with that search result document selected (as opposed to clicking elsewhere on the result which would open the document but without context). This pertains also to breadcrumb trails for documents - it’d be good to know where something is in any dataset or workspace that I can access; not just the upload path.
[note made several years later] the impossibility of getting from a document to the location in the workspace it belongs to made Giant almost unusable for the Sovereign project because it contained videos split into segments. But someone watching such a video could not get to the next or previous bit because they had no idea where they were)
FURTHER ISSUES
This pertains to the stuff about search in context that we've discussed variously. (In short, we want users to be able to perform searches while they are in a workspace or collection rather than having to move to a search page to do this. The search would be limited to the current context)
Even if you're searching "in context" within some part of a dataset or workspace, it would often be useful to see where a result is, if for example the current "context" has subfolders.
So, if a search has been executed within the context of a workspace or dataset, I would, ideally, like to see each results display up to two or three "levels" below the the context in which the search is made. For example, if I'm searching all or some workspaces, show the workspace name and up to two subfolders (if they exist) alongside each result. Or if I'm searching just one workspace, show the parent folder and up two more subfolders within the workspace. If I'm searching datasets, similarly.
See also the card https://trello.com/c/qX0N3Jgt/190-change-info-displayed-in-search-results-for-emails
https://trello.com/c/qX0N3Jgt/190-change-info-displayed-in-search-results-for-email-file-format
Comment from Michael Barton in 2020(!):
Sorry @lukehoyland we'd managed to miss this card. It's great! I agree with all the suggestions
Merging this card with Add workspaces to the location bar when viewing a document Ready
Feedback from Caelainn using Giant: "its also quite tricky to get back to a workspace from a document".
We should at least show the workspaces the document is present in (that the user can see). Arguably we should also hide the "XX Documents" breadcrumbs since they just confuse matters.
Even better would be a full breadcrumb link to the correct folder, which is auto-expanded when you click the link.
Comment from Luke 3 years later (2023)"
I’ve pulled this one out of the opportunities backlog for consideration because the new securedrop workflow has raised an issue where giant falls short a little. Imagine this scenario (likely it seems to be extremely common):
We put some securedrop message into the “unallocated submissions” workspace
Paul or Rachel allocate it to reporter X
We move it into that reporter’s workspace.
Much later, Paul wants to find it again, perhaps because it’s relevant to some other thing his team are working on.
Paul’s unlikely to remember the source name or the submission reference. So in Giant he searches for a name that the submission was about.
Hurrah! His search finds the submission. But it;'s just named “transcript.txt” so he doesn’t know where it lives, to whom it was allocated, or what the accompanying documents might have been.
So he opens it to see if that’ll show him. But it doesn’t: all it tells him is that it is in the dataset “SecureDrop uploads”.
i.e. there’s no way to ascertain what workspace the file is in, which give Paul the source name, who has it, and the accompanying documents. So if we could show a user what workspaces (if they have access to them) a document is in, both in search results and in the document metadata, these problems would be eliminated.