Surprising first feedback on new search functionality

Posted on 08. May, 2009 by Edgar Wieringa in Exact Synergy

Crafting out our new solutions is always an exciting process. It starts with the first idea – whether it is based on market input, a concrete customer case or new technology – goes into customer validation, involves design, building and finally it is there. Although we always try to keep the customer focus – we can only build good software if it really meets your needs – a certain part of it is happening ‘behind closed doors’. About two months before we release a new product update to the market we get people in from different parts of the Exact Software organization and its ecosystem and we ask them what they think of the new product update. We brief them on the highlights, supply them with all release notes and focus areas and then they have a go at the software. Product managers desperately looking at their eyes to see what makes them tick.

Colleagues and customers involved come from all parts of the organization and from all over the globe. Customer Support in China, pre-sales from the US and consultant from The Netherlands. Viewing it from these different angles is important and sometimes leads to surprises. For example: we have adjusted our search functionality for Exact Synergy Enterprise so that it now can find <Jiří> just by typing <Jiri>. So, the search now also excludes the diacritics. We used the word ‘transliteration’ for this in our release documentation. We realized that it had a broader meaning, but we thought we scoped it clearly in the other parts of the documentation. The question from China however was: can I now find <收件人> just by typing <shoujianren>? Indeed Google does have this functionality, but this is a step we have not yet made. ‘Searching=Finding’ will however keep on having our focus.

Photo credit: Desirée Delgado

Tags: customer feedback, product management, search

7 Responses to “Surprising first feedback on new search functionality”

André

08. May, 2009

Nice functionality, in which release will this come commercial available?
Martin Ortgiess

08. May, 2009

The functionality described is general available in June 2009. This is release 241 of Exact Synergy Enterprise.
KeHoeff

28. May, 2009

hey this is a very interesting article!
Menno

14. Jul, 2009

This is indeed a great improvement. The diacritics symbols where driving us crazy
eric speaking

14. Jul, 2009

we have just installed version 241 at the largest site of synergy enterprise in poland (some 750 users in 6 countries in east europe) and i can tell eveyone that this search by different characters in different languages is a huge plus. Everybody love sit becuase now you can search for polish, russian , chech etc colleaques finally!
Eric van Keimpema

14. Jul, 2009

I realise that the previous post is now anonymous (not on purpose
Eric speaking
Andre Speek

16. Jul, 2009

Since almost all of our customers are in the Netherlands, as is our own company, I don’t expect too much reactions on this. But for companies that have users in many different countries I certainly see this as a huge step forward in ‘Searching=Finding’.

Well done guys & girls !