CAn anything be done to make the (lithium based) Community site truly searchable?

[RJLedger]

We have over 1000 users now and a TON of postings. However, being able to tag and/or search for useful information is virtually impossible. In fact, it's difficult to locate information that was posted only a few minutes ago.

What we have is a huge repository of knowledge that is almost totally useless. There's no doubt that the Partner's NNTP based newsgroup is head and shoulders above this type of forum/community when it comes to searchable (both on and off-line). I can go back into 10 years of SalesLogix history and locate anything I need in seconds. It can take hours to find things in the Community Forums.

Suggestion.. Sage make it a TOP priority to take a look at replacing this useless technology (lithium) with something we can really use... and quickly.

Anyone else feel the way I do? 

[kjosephs]

RJ, As always, thanks for asking.  I have some challenge with this as well.  It might help if we take a look at organization/breakout of the product forums.  So the content in the boards are more topical.  This presents other challenges, as the boards should have enough activity to be Lively...but we have all of you to ensure that will happen!

What would your recommendations be?  Something more like the newsgroups?  If so, how would people determine when to use the community vs. newsgroups?

Other ideas...we can work with Lithium, but I any major changes would required a pretty big upgrade to the platform.  It is possible, and we can look at the value in doing so.  At this time, I am not sure what there most current offers in search enhancements.

Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.

Kim

[RJLedger]

Hi Kim,

  My intention was not to shoot the messenger of course.. (just the forum software ;-) 

What the real problem is that the lithium product seems to lack having good solid search engine technology...  It needs to do things like "DT Search" does.. which is the search engine that is part of the SalesLogix product. Every word in every posting needs to get captured by the search engine technology. Of course "noise words" like a, the.... and so forth would get thrown out. lithium's Search and Advanced search is really completely  useless.

There's no doubt that the "newsgroup" technology is superior. It saves everything in plain text, and we can "cache" the entire contents to our own hard drives. From there we are able to use whatever search engine technology we choose. For me (and others) MS desktop search does a fantastic job. It's all about being able to get ALL the info back on our own systems and not working with it on the server. 

[tagersea]

I second the request for ensuring all of the hard work that is put into this community can pay dividends later. If we cant find the information we might as well stop entering it.

[kjosephs]

Understood. No worries about sharing the challenge--I use it too!  And, I totally understand the need for powerful search tools.  I have asked Lithium for assistance with this and will let you know we learn.

That said, let me just tell you that the forum is extremely helpful and useful because of your contributions.  So, hang in there and we will work through it together!  Thanks a million!

[RyanFarley]

I don't care at all for Lithium and consider it to be "behind the times" technology-wise. However, I've not had many problems with the site.

One thing I would ask, is to please NOT go back to the NNTP-based newsgroups. Those suck even more IMO.

[tagersea]

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@RyanFarley wrote:

One thing I would ask, is to please NOT go back to the NNTP-based newsgroups. Those suck even more IMO.

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I don't agree at all that they suck worse than Lithium but that is unimportant.  I don't think the newsgroups are a good solution for a customer facing community.

The important features from the newsgroups, IMO, are: 

1. Conversation threading - having to quote the post I am replying to is annoying - yet it is the only way to ensure folks know what I am replying to.
2. Ability to find information without relying on 200 different "sub forums" and manual browsing methods
3. No more worthless realestate consumption. "Additional Resources", "Join our Social Media sites", and "Request Access" are unnecessary.
4. A feature I will miss but have resigned to give up is the local caching of the data.  Having the newsgroups on my local computer and using a desktop search engine was invaluable.  However, since we are typically connected I would be ok if the web solution had powerful searching ability.

[RyanFarley]

Can't disagree with any of your points, all completely valid. However, for me, I personally like web-based things - especially a forum. I love that I can sit down anywhere and get to them if I need to without adding and loading them in some external reader. NNTP is so 1990's

[RyanFarley]

Also, I agree with all the unneeded stuff taking up space as well, like the join our social media sites, etc. I'm not opposed to having that sort of thing on the site, it is just that they are poorly placed and the layout of the site leaves some to be desired (like the fact I have to scroll past all that stuff on the recent posts page, etc.

[RJLedger]

Having a optional NNTP "feed" that we could use for caching off-line and be able to use our own search engine(s) would certainly help.

If not NNTP... what else could we use to capture ALL the posting info?