An upgrade to ArcGIS Hub's search experience is coming in January!
Updated December 5th, 2023
Effective search and discovery tools help users browse, discover, and explore relevant catalog content. Over the past year, the ArcGIS Hub team has worked hard to develop an upgraded search experience. Changes are designed to offer a simplified user experience (UX), feature enhancements, bug fixes, and removal of low usage features.
This article highlights enhancements and steps you can take today to try out the new experience. You can find additional information in the "What's New on ArcGIS Hub Search" blog.
We would love to hear from you, so please leave us feedback on the experience or let us know what you'd like to see next for ArcGIS Hub search.
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Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- What's going to change and how do I prepare?
- What's new on search?
- Your thumbnails: front and center
- Enhanced filters
- Keeping layers together
- What's coming next?
What's going to change and how do I prepare?
On January 9th, 2024, Hub’s improved search experience, which has been in beta during 2023, will become the default search experience for all users. Any visitors to your ArcGIS Hub site's search page on `{siteURL}/search` will automatically see the upgraded search experience.
We encourage all site managers and collaborators to try the upgraded search view today. If you want to get a head start, you can enable the beta view for all users before the general availability release. At first glance, the search experience will feel familiar but with a few important enhancements. We've also rebuilt the search technology's foundation, making it easier and faster to add enhancements in the future.
Prefer the classic search experience? For a limited time after the general availability release, individual users can select the "Switch to classic view" link to revert to the classic search view. You may find this useful to compare the features between the classic and upgraded search experience, such as how search only return items, not all of an item's layers.
Figure 1. Switch between the upgraded and classic search experiences or enable the experience for all users before the general availability release.
What's new on search?
Your thumbnails: front and center
Love the look of your gallery but wish that users could search it? With the gallery or "grid" layout on search, your users will see smaller cards, thumbnails, and a summary of your content. In the future, we plan to offer actions directly from search results so that users can download, share, and leverage API tools for content.
Figure 2. The "grid" layout switcher lets your users scan and browse in a more graphical way.
Enhanced filters
While ensuring parity of popular features and filters, the new experience supports the following:
- Location filter lets users search and navigate to a place or address, and then filter results that intersect the map.
- Category filter now allows users to filter content by organization categories based on their hierarchy.
- Value counts show the popularity of filter values.
- and more including a sort direction, exporting a CSV of public content, removal of owner username metadata, and simplified auto-suggest.
Keeping layers together
Before ArcGIS Open Data transitioned to ArcGIS Hub, the product focused on feature layers, not items. We made the decision to split layers into individual search results. However, as the ArcGIS Online ecosystem grew and users needed a better way to manage and showcase content, ArcGIS Hub began to focus on building support for item types. This makes layers search results difficult to understand for content managers and collaborators who are used to managing items, not layers. In some cases, one item may have dozens of layers.
Based on substantial user feedback, the upgraded search experience only returns items. If you'd prefer to keep each layer as its own search result , we recommend publishing new items for each of your layers. Depending on your workflow, this may include 1. selecting each individual layer in ArcGIS Pro and publishing individually to your ArcGIS Server instance (see ArcGIS Server web help) or 2. publish individual layers directly from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online as a hosted web feature layer (see ArcGIS Pro web help).
Looking foward, in Q2/Q3 of 2024, the ArcGIS Hub team is considering how to best match user searches against layer metadata, layer statistics, field names, and more. The team will work on showing matching layer(s) directly below the parent item search result.
Figure 3. A comparison of search results and counts between the classic search and upgraded search experience. Users will only see items in search results.
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What's coming next?
We know how much effort you put into curating a catalog, which is why we're using this upgraded search experience as a launch pad for easier, more powerful search configuration. Starting in Q1 2024, ArcGIS Hub will expand search to other features and focus on giving you more control. Here is what we're considering:
- Map search will bring geospatial data exploration to life.
- Global search bar will show content relevant to the current view but still let users navigate or expand their search from any page.
- Configurable collections will let you organize your content based on your needs. For example, define a "Healthcare" collection using a combination of type, tag, category, and other filters.
- Configurable search will let you hide, show, and rearrange filters, change the default layout, and more.
- Enriched search will let users search against more metadata and find relevant data faster.
Excited for more? We welcome your input, so please leave us feedback or let us know what you'd like to see next for ArcGIS Hub search.
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