release

Now available: Search in the embeddable widget (+ redesign)

Now available: Search in the embeddable widget (+ redesign)
We made some great improvements to our embeddable widgets. We added search functionality to the conversational widget so that the user can always look up the information they need and we gave our embeddables a facelift to make it look even better.





What are the embeddable widgets?

Our embeddable widgets are a set of easy-to-install, plug-and-play components that you can embed in pages of your website.. They enable you to extend the reach of your community content and enhance your webpages. The in-page widget enables you to display community content directly on any website where your users are. The conversational widget floats above the page, providing help to your customers, right where they need it.





Learn more about the embeddable widgets in the release notes or read the frequently asked questions.





Why are we doing this?

We believe that the embeddable widgets are a great set of tools that allows your users to access help content wherever they want, whenever they want. To date we provided two ways of ‘pushing’ helpful content in the embeddable: by default there is a list of topic suggestions which are suggested by running a search query on the page title and matching the most relevant content. Next to that we allow you to 'pin' specific topics to specific pages.





The list of automated topic suggestions doesn’t always show the most relevant results and pinning topics manually requires some effort. By introducing search functionality we provide another way to get the right content right where you need it.





We also improved the look and feel of both the embeddables to make the browsing and reading experience more pleasant.





What’s new

We added, updated and improved the following functionalities in this rollout:





Conversational widget




  • We added a search bar which searches all available content

  • We added a link to visit the community in the start screen

  • We show the most recent reply directly below the topic. You can load more replies with a single click

Conversational widget & in-page widget




  • We improved the design of topic lists

  • We replaced the avatar in the topic list, which was often a default one, with more meaningful metadata

What’s next

We have tons of ideas on the future of the embeddables; adding personalization to provide better contextual help, pushing relevant content in the embeddable based on a set of query rules, adding (parent) categories so users can browse around. The exact next steps will be revealed later, keep an eye on the roadmap updates for more information.





As always, if you have feedback, suggestions or great ideas for the embeddable let us know via the comments below.
Looks good.


Can I put this widget on just one page of my website?
Yes, it is possible to put the widget on just one page of your website, here are some guides that may help you






LIKE!
Hey @Yoeri , awesome work on the embeddable, it looks great and is very useful. We are using it to link with our software documentation website, which makes A LOT of sense.





However, in this perspective, it would be awesome to have a bit more control over the search priorities.





Typically, the date when a post was published may be not that relevant if you are browsing a software documentation. We would maybe like to prioritize word matching first.





Are you using the same search features than the community search itself ?
Hi, thanks for the kind words.





In this how-to you'll find more information on how the automated search suggestions work and how you can influence it by excluding certain words from the query: https://community.insided.com/how-to-s-37/how-to-optimise-the-automatic-topic-suggestions-in-the-embeddable-widgets-635





As for the search bar inside the embeddable the same search strategy is applied as it is on your community. Word matching on the topic title is the leading indicator, next to that other factors influence the results that are being shown e.g. is a topic answered, is a topic an article, how many views it has, how recently active it was etc. In this post you'll find more information on the search algorithm: https://community.insided.com/news-platform-updates-16/live-search-now-previewing-on-inspired-927





Hope this helps 🙂