INTRODUCTION 

Intel, Santa Clara contacted us to implement People Search and Apache Solr Search on their Intel Education Portal which was developed in Drupal as a POC by internal team.

CHALLENGE  

1. People Search : The current global navigation Browse -> People page leaves a user on the default search page (which has a search people tab). Client wanted it to be like a more visual People page that displays users’ avatars, names, and join date in a grid format that can be paged through and sorted.  Displays global banner image on top (indicating this is a global page)

          a) Displays global banner image on top (indicating this is a global page)

          b) Block displays a list of users and meta in a grid format

          c) Display includes pictures/avatars, names, associated badges and join dates (with a “new!” indicator if    join-date minus current-date is less than a configurable number of days)

          d) Images are resized and scaled to avoid performance issues

          e) Displayed user names hyperlink to the user’s corresponding user profile pages

          f)  Hovering over user names or images displays DHTML with additional details as described in the Navigation requirements.

          g) Administrator can configure the number of users to display in the People Block for each “page’ (to optimize the available UI space)

          h) List of users can be sorted by first name or last name (ascending), status (highest first), or date Joined (most recent first)

          i) Provide a user search text field that searches for users with matching strings across first name and/or last name, and/or user ID.

          j) Filter by Badge – Provide a visual block displaying clickable badge images to filter the list by users with a particular Badge (not depicted in image).

 2. Search UI Refinements :- The current search page provides its results in list format in the left column of the search page. Information about the results returned and actions to further sort and filter are contained in multiple blocks on the right. We would like to consolidate the majority of these sorting and filtering options so that they appear above the search results in fashion similar to what is displayed (though we are open to suggestions that lend to better usability). Note that Tag facet still remains as a block on the right as it is not as likely to work well as a pull down.

    a) Consolidate filters/facets into a single widget (except Tags block)

    b) Simplify sorting to sort by Most Relevant and Most Current

    c) Spaces pull-down (a list of Community and Group names) filter includes only Communities and Groups that are associated with set of content returned in the search result

    d) Types pull-down filter only includes a list of content types that are contained in the search result

    e) If a content type is not included in the configuration, it should not appear in the filter

     f) Provide visual cue in the UI if the tag filter is filtering the search result (and a way to clear this filter)

    g) Display filtering and sorting features only when there are search results returned)

    h) Default sort order of search results is Most Relevant, Most Recent

     i) Default search results have no additional filtering applied and the display options for the filters shall  indicate “Select Type” Select Space.” 

SOLUTION 

1. Team at Ebizon wrote a Custom Module to search people by First name, Last Name or UserId and ability to Filter the results by Badge and sort them by First Name, Last Name or UserId. User's badge is the role user has been given during registration. Images were scaled using imagecache and themed with a popup on hover that show more details related to the individual.
2. We wrote a custom module to refine the Search UI interface which was comign from Apache Solr.