Search Engine Optimisation - More intuitive
I would appreciate the Search engine to be reverted back to how it was. The new "upgraded" search is close to useless. When I search for clients, I expect all relevant clients to come up. I don't want to type in the whole client name, just to get their details to show up. Previously I could type in a few letters and the search would come up with an amazing list of relevance....
1. Contact listed first
2. Invoices listed next
3. Bills listed thereafter
4. then lastly bank transactions
These searches used to come up with appropriate information and not outdated information from 8 years ago.....the tax office don't even require us to keep data for that long!
I am having issues with different clients. Support says, they need to "re-index", that did nothing, I have some clients I search for contacts, some for amounts, some for invoice number, some by tracking. This is my go to tool. I don't want to go to the contacts to search for the contact and then search for what I need. I don't want to go to the invoices to look for the invoice that I am looking for. I don't want to go to the bank and search for the amounts. I want to be able to do it all in the one place, like before.
I might not have all these details at hand, sometimes we use the search as a bit of hit or miss, sometimes we know the name of something similar and type it in and maybe we haven't quite got it so nothing shows up and we try again, until we get what we are looking for.
As it is Xero is extremely slow, and this tool was highly useful to search all aspects of xero. It was so much easier to search for documents through xero than my email at times! It made having everything at our finger tips a dream come true. We could answer queries efficiently, we could easily supply the information, simply with a search. Since the downgrade, this has all been messed up and it has become an incredibly frustrating and unproductive journey.
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Yazz Bhatti commented
OMG I thought I was going crazy, because it takes so much more time to find a contact now.
Honestly, it seems haphazard.
Whomever is the head of app development needs to speak directly with end users - not their shareholders with respect to what features work and how they are used by customers. -
Jessica Kirkett commented
This is much more important than the silly changes you guys have been making. If possible it would be awesome if you could concentrate on things like this that make a difference. Cheers
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Sharon Davis commented
I am not sure how the search is working as expected....please see my search results and NO I don't want to have to go and Search in contacts, we never had to do that previously, when the search was in fact working as expected! Two different companies two different searches..... I thought upgrades were supposed to help with efficiency....having to search in different places, is in no way efficient and it is more time consuming.
The one searching for Stratco is searching within the same company file, yet I type in Stratco and one contact comes up, I then need to type in Stratco ( for the other Stratco to come up....how in anyones right mind do they think this search is working as intended? It is clearly NOT working, I would expect if I typed in even Strat......those TWO contacts should come up....similarly like if I type in S.....I would have thousands of results, with everything that starts with S and has S....then I type ST.....I would reduce the search further but I would still have both Stratco contacts, and any other names starting with st, or possibly with st in the name or description, then I type STR and again the search should reduce, as you are being more specific, however the two contacts would still remain within the search, and so the process of elimination goes, which in this process there is a process of randomly pick what you feel like.....there is certainly no common factor in the search....if your contact has the EXACT same name.....with extra characters after, the shorter version is displayed....I can prove this with another search, check when I search Mei, only one contact comes up, I have to type in Meizhou in order for both to come up! Why?? Mei is in BOTH contacts, so BOTH contacts should appear.
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Justine Speer commented
Hi Sarah, I raised a case with Xero about this issue. They claim the functionality is "working as intended".
They responded with the following:
"Looking through the screenshots and details you provided, I tested the Global Search function in your organisation, as well as in my testing file and I can see that the search results are providing unexpected results.Looking into this further, I can see that this has been raised with our Product team, and they have confirmed that this feature has recently changed. The new interface and AI that is being used in this feature is trying to pick up the most likely transaction you are looking for, however we have found that the search results don't always look as expected.
We apologies for the inconvenience, however they are reporting that this feature is working as intended.
Understanding that feedback around this functionality is key to gain deeper insight into how customers expect the search bar to work, we can see that this has already been raised with us in our Xero Product Ideas. Xero Product Ideas is a Xero website where our customers can share and support ideas for change.
We recommend leaving your additional feedback about the search function on the Xero Product Idea link I’ve included below."
I sent them the below response this morning:
"I don't understand how the results can be "as intended". You yourself said the results are unexpected. Is the intention to show the oldest results? Why would I want to see transactions from 2016, or an invoice from 2019? I cannot imagine anyone wants this. Users want to see the latest invoice, transaction or bill, not something from 7 years ago. I cannot even see the Customer from the result - surely this is one of the most common reasons for a search? Your AI clearly is not working properly. The "Product Idea" that you are pushing me towards in from 2022, and has only 12 votes. This will never happen. How about you fix the search rather than suggesting this should be a *new* idea. Here's an idea - provide a search function that works properly."
I'm not expecting anything will come of this, but I am so annoyed at their attitude towards their customers - they really don't seem to care that they have broken something that was working fine.
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Sarah Jacobs commented
Another example of the search screen not behaving in a logical way:
1. When I type in 'bar' I would expect the contacts that begin with 'bar' to show first, then contacts with 'bar' in their name.
2. Why does Barista Buddy appear before Bargain car rentals?
3. Why does a bill from MM electrical from 2015 with 'bar' in it's tracking code appear before bills from Barista Buddy from 2024? Who decided that tracking codes have higher priority in the search over the most recent bills?I just don't get the logic and now find the search function very frustrating as it returns irrelevant and illogical results
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Sarah Jacobs commented
The search function is still not behaving in a logical way - ie contact name first. As you can see in my screenshot, if I search for 'pm', the contact group that matches this search is returned first, then the contact email address, then with the letters contained in the contact name, then back to email address, and finally letters at the beginning of the contact name.
Similarly, the search is not showing the transactions in a logical way - ie most recent first. As you can see in my screenshot a transaction from 2021 is first on the list before the transaction from 2024.When we search contacts for 'water', the first result is a contact with water in it, but the 4th contact BEGINS with 'water'. Why wouldn't the contact beginning with 'water' be the first result? Or at least in alphabetical order. Also Pittwater Engineering hasn't had any transactions since 2018 and are not the highest value, so not the highest relevance.
When I search for ATO the contact 'ATO' doesn't appear at all as a search result. It only appears in the search if I limit the search to 'contacts' only. The first result is a tracking code with ato contained in the text. This means that the search function has made some wild assumptions about relevancy, isn't reliable and can't be trusted.
When I search for Telstra the first transactions listed are for 2013 even though the client has entered a bill or bank transaction from Telstra every month from 2013 to 2024. How can Xero possibly assume that bills from 2013 are more relevant than bills from 2024?