Knowledge Base article not found using search

Question asked by Steven Chenery - 10/18/2018 at 3:57 PM

Answered

We have a KBA with the word “Pronto” in the Title, Summary, Body and file attachment name. This is mixed with CAPITALS and also in Proper Case. When searching for the KBA using the word Pronto or PRONTO or pronto the article is not found. We can search for other words like “Integration” which do find the article.

We have also run the re indexing process https://portal.smartertools.com/kb/a2590/reindex-smartertrack-search-tables.aspx which has not resulted in any changes.

Does anyone have any ideas why would this not work as it is pretty obvious the word is there and should be found and how would one fix it?

Using: SmarterTrack Enterprise Version 14.1.6795.15690

10 Replies

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Andrew Barker Replied

10/18/2018 at 4:23 PM

Employee Post

The process described in the KB article you linked doesn't actually perform the re indexing, it only clears the flags that indicate each item has been indexed. By following the steps in the KB article, you are effectively telling the background indexing process to reindex every item.

How long did you wait between running the provided SQL queries and testing the search again? It is possible that the indexing thread was still processing items when you performed your last search.

You should also keep in mind that while performing a reindex, the background thread will ignore any words that occur in at least 50% of items being indexed. This means that if the word "pronto" occurs in at least half of your KB articles - regardless of case - that word will not be indexed.

Andrew Barker
Lead Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
www.smartertools.com

Steven Chenery Replied

10/18/2018 at 8:05 PM

Hi Andrew, Yes we were aware that the reindexing process should trigger after following the KBA and that it would take some time to run through the process. We ran the process about 1 and a half days ago but nothing has changed in the search for that word. This is the only KBA with the word Pronto in it.

Just for an experiment... I created another KBA and used the wording "wherefore art thou Pronto". Searching for the word Pronto shows nothing. Searching for the word "thou" or "wherefore" returns the KBA.

What can be wrong with the word pronto?

Thanks

Steven

Steven Chenery Replied

10/28/2018 at 9:44 PM

Does anyone have any ideas to make the magic happen in KBA search results. It is like the Search algorithm in smartertrack is ignoring this key word but performing correctly on others so we know it is running and the KBA has been indexed by smartertrack. From the looks of it there is no way to allocate Key words against a article so we are stuck with the product not performing as documented for the search capabilities.

Steven Chenery Replied

11/12/2018 at 5:00 PM

Are there any further suggestions on this Andrew?
This is continuing to impact us and prevent users from finding relevant articles. These keywords are not occurring in more than half of the articles, so I do not see why they would be filtered. Is there a way to set keywords for an article manually?

Andrew Barker Replied

11/13/2018 at 7:03 AM

Employee Post

Steven -

Unfortunately, we have been unable to recreate your issue in internal testing. At this point, the only suggestion I have remaining is to try submitting a ticket so that we can collect some additional information from your installation.

Andrew Barker
Lead Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
www.smartertools.com

Steven Chenery Replied

11/18/2018 at 8:41 PM

We have opened up a support ticket and working through the process with the team.

Steven Chenery Replied

5/16/2019 at 9:13 PM

Marked As Answer

Just so others that have the same issue with their ability to search in KBA on key words and stumble on this thread. Here is the outcome of the support ticket.

Within SmarterTrack there is a "NOISE LIST" any words in this list are ignored when performing searches. The list is hard coded and is unable to be updated or changed. "Words in the Noise list are excluded from being indexed. That is why they return no results in the search"

So unfortunately until this is exposed so that you can control the "Noise List" in SmarterTrack users will not be able to find key articles if they are searching on words that someone at some point thought would be good to exclude from the indexing process and hard code them in the back end where you can not get to them.

Hopefully a future release? will expose this list so you can adjust it to make the search function in the KBA area effective when searching for words that are relevant to your organisation.

Hopefully if you have the same problem your search will find this thread and is not lost in the hard coded noise list and save you some frustration and time wondering why.

Steven

Kyle Kerst Replied

5/22/2019 at 11:27 AM

Employee Post

Steven, the ability to edit/adjust the noise list has been added to our feature list for consideration in the future. Keep an eye out for release notes dealing with this area for updates.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

Steven Chenery Replied

5/22/2019 at 4:28 PM

Hi Kyle

Thanks. I would prefer that it was not on a "consideration list" as the search function just does not work adequately for us and other customers due to an undocumented feature call the Noise List that is hard coded. This is more of a bug against the product documentation for the search feature in ST and the search is not working from a cust/user perspective as per the documented feature of search. It needs to be exposed via the front end or at least accessible in the DB or flat file so customers can impact the searches that are not working for them. Unless you are suggesting to keep an eye on the release notes because you know the dev team is actually fixing the problem?? In that case i would be very happy to hear that we will get some movement on this long running search issue.

Thanks

Steven

Kyle Kerst Replied

5/22/2019 at 4:36 PM

Employee Post

Steven, I definitely understand your thoughts on this and I will ping our dev team during our next review meeting to see if they would be open to reconsidering the type of request this is entered as. Either way though I'll see if I can put some priority on this for you.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

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