Proposal ‐ Search Functionality - saayam-for-all/docs GitHub Wiki
- Version: 1.0
- Author: Varshini
- Stakeholders: Product, Engineering (Backend, Frontend, Data/Geospatial), QA, UX
- Status: Proposal / Initial Specification
The purpose of this document is to define the functional requirements for a universal search capability within the application dashboard. The search feature will enable logged-in users to enter a single free-text query and quickly find or navigate to relevant entities across the application.
The initial implementation will focus on a simple, fast, and cost-effective keyword-based search aligned with the 1.0 MVP scope, while being architected to support future enhancements such as intent-aware and intelligent search.
- Universal search bar available on the application dashboard
- Single free-text input without requiring users to select entity types
- Keyword-based interpretation of user input
- Search across multiple internal entity types
- Ranked search results based on relevance
- Role-based access control applied to search results
- Direct navigation to relevant detail or context pages
- Automatic navigation when only one confident match is found
- Advanced autocomplete or predictive suggestions
- Natural language question answering
- Semantic or vector-based search
- Personalized or recommendation-based ranking
- External data or internet search
- Voice-based search
The system supports the following user roles:
- Beneficiary
- Volunteer
- Organization
- Donor
- Admin
- Super Admin
Search results and accessible entities must be filtered based on the user’s role and permissions. Users must only see entities they are authorized to access.
- A single search input field displayed prominently in the dashboard header
- The search field is visible only to authenticated users
The search field must accept:
- Numeric input (e.g., IDs)
- Text input (partial or full)
- Mixed alphanumeric input
Example inputs:
0005Varshinidry cleaningsocial connection
The search functionality must support the following internal entity types in Phase 1:
| Entity Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Help Requests | Request ID, title, description, category |
| Users | User ID, name, username |
| Organizations | Organization name |
| Categories / Tags | Help categories, labels |
| Companies | Company names (if applicable) |
If only one confident match exists, the system should navigate directly to the relevant page without showing intermediate results.
- Results must be ranked based on keyword relevance
- Title and identifier matches should be weighted higher than description matches
- Results across different entity types should be presented in a unified ranked list
- Result count should be limited to ensure fast response times
- Each search result must support direct navigation to the relevant detail page
- Where possible, navigation should include contextual hints (e.g., anchors or highlights)
- The search experience should resemble familiar “search and jump” patterns seen in common applications
- All search results must respect role-based permissions
- Users must not see:
- Entities they are not authorized to access
- Data belonging to restricted roles or organizations
- Super Admins may search across all entities
-
The universal search functionality must strictly enforce authorization at query time.
- Search must be performed only on the subset of data the user is authorized to access
- The system must not search across the entire database and filter results afterward
- Authorization constraints must be applied before executing any search query
For every search request, the backend must determine the user’s authorization context (role, organization, ownership, assignments, visibility rules) and scope the searchable dataset accordingly.
-
When searching Help Requests, results must be restricted based on the user’s role and access permissions:
- Beneficiaries may search only their own help requests
- Volunteers may search help requests assigned to them or marked as publicly visible
- Organizations may search help requests created by or associated with their organization
- Admin users may search help requests within their administrative scope
- Super Admin users may search all help requests At no point should a user be able to view, infer, or discover help requests they are not authorized to access.
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The search system must ensure that:
- Unauthorized entities are never included in search queries
- Unauthorized entities are never returned in search results
- Search responses do not leak restricted data through IDs, titles, counts, or metadata
- Search service implemented in Python (Flask)
- Centralized search API endpoint
- Keyword-based query processing
- Retrieval from internal data sources only
- Database-native search capabilities preferred for performance and cost efficiency
- Authorization filters must be enforced at the database query level, not via post-processing in application logic
- Intent-aware or Gen-AI–assisted search
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Vector-based semantic search
- Learning from historical search behavior
- Autocomplete and intelligent suggestions
- Search results must be returned within ≤ 500 ms for standard queries
- The system must efficiently support partial keyword matches
- If no results are found:
- Display a clear “No results found” message
- If input is invalid or too short:
- Provide guidance or example searches
The search feature will be considered successful if:
- Users can locate entities without knowing exact IDs
- Navigation to target pages requires a single search action
- Search behavior feels intuitive and familiar
- The system scales as data volume grows
- Functional specification (this document)
- High-level architecture diagram
- Backend API contract definitions
- UX wireframes