[Meta] Enhancing Navigational Search

[alexfrancoeur]

Search is in Kibana, yay! As we close out https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/57576, we want to make sure we don't lose momentum on search. Below you'll find a prioritized list of features we'd like to introduce to search to optimize navigation for all users of Kibana.

Outside of the priority categorization below, the lists are not in prioritized order. Bugs are not included in this issue.

High priority

• [ ] [GS] Feature results provider #72680
• [x] [GS] Advanced search syntax to fine tune results returned #74290
  • Work is already in flight to support Integrate tags to navigational search results #81846

Medium priority

• [ ] [GS] Register aliases or keywords for navigational search #76778
• [ ] [GS] Entity results provider #74283
• [ ] Kibana Global Navigation/Search Bar Terms #81352
• [ ] [GS] Improve initial results display #75040
• [ ] [GS] Search across Spaces #67977
• [ ] Create a command palette with hotkeys for Kibana #15019

Low priority

• [ ] [GS] Make the keyboard shortcut customizable #77351
• [ ] [GS] Documentation search results provider #75049
• [ ] [GS] Allow for (optional) descriptive meta data text in search results #77810
• [ ] Cross deployment search (needs to be defined)

Future

• [ ] Cross product search - documentation, support cases, etc.
• [ ] Product tour to learn syntax and more
• [ ] Grouped results by type
• [ ] Visual metadata for dashboards, etc.
• [ ] Advanced search page

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-platform (Team:Platform)

[ryankeairns]

@alexfrancoeur this is super helpful. One quick question... does [GS] Feature results provider #72680 refer to the app/feature directory, specifically?

In a similar vein, the links in the Stack Management side nav stand out to me as prime content. Maybe that would be tackled by another team (ES UI)?

[alexfrancoeur]

@ryankeairns it doesn't need to refer to the app / feature directory specifically, but I would view the feature results provider as replacing that legacy view. I agree that stack management stands out as prime content. @joshdover PR seems to cover that, but we'll need to communicate this PR to all Kibana contributors to make sure it's used for streamlined nav

[ryankeairns]

Something I noticed in reviewing stuff in flight is that the solutions themselves do not show up in results. For example, if you search Observability you'll get no results. It's semi-related to keywords as described here https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/76778 , but likely needs to be called out separately.

I would imagine search for Observability returns...

1. ...a result for the top level solution (Observability) that routes you to the related Overview page and/or
2. ...the apps under the solution (Logs, Metrics, APM, Uptime, User Experience)

[pgayvallet]

@ryankeairns I think that's a similar discussion than in https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/81352?

[alexfrancoeur]

I'm having issues pulling down this PR https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/83380, but theoretically, if I were to type in stack management - would I get all underlying applications? I would expect similar behavior for solutions, even if they are high level applications.

[ryankeairns]

I'm having issues pulling down this PR #83380, but theoretically, if I were to type in stack management - would I get all underlying applications? I would expect similar behavior for solutions, even if they are high level applications.

Happened to have the PR running... yes, you do get them all:

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/appex-sharedux (Team:SharedUX)

[petrklapka]

This needs a tidy. Four years old, probably deprecate and close.