Introducing a new and improved Experience Preview! Experience Preview, previously known as Test Search, is a platform tool we offer administrators so they can test queries and identify opportunities for improvement in their search experiences, without needing to leave the platform to go to their frontend experience or live preview. With Experience Preview, you’ll be able to preview changes to your config in real-time, including activating featured snippets, applying NLP filters, and more. In this Summer ‘21 Release we’re making the following updates:
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Shifting to a full screen interface. Now, you will automatically land on a full screen Experience Preview when clicking into any Answers Experience page, making testing and viewing changes to your Answers config in real-time easier to navigate.
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Using customizable entity previews from Knowledge Graph. The same entity previews that you can use and configure in Knowledge Graph are also visible in Experience Preview. This allows you to customize each entity type’s preview content settings (such as a photo or particular field). You can customize entity previews in the Configuration tab. This example turns on the “Photo Gallery” field for the restaurant entity type. Once the preview is saved, you can see that photos are included in restaurant entities in Experience Preview results.
- Displaying direct answers and featured snippets in results. You can view featured snippet direct answers in the Experience Preview, making it easier to test and debug queries that should yield direct answers. You can also see the linked result entity, just like you would in your frontend.
- Showing additional data like NLP filters applied. Experience Preview displays which NLP filters have been applied to applicable queries. You can hover over the tooltip to see more information on NLP filter details.
- Allowing administrators to view and copy raw API responses. Administrators will be able to view API responses directly from any query, streamlining debugging processes. Just toggle the “Show API Request” option in the top right of your Experience Preview results to view the API Request and Response information. You can click “View More” to expand details.
- Including test searches in the search log. You can now run a test search and see it immediately in the search logs, so that it’s easier to debug queries over time. Clicking “Debug in search log” will take you directly to that particular query’s search log page, where you can see search factors, search and session IDs, and more.
All of these new Experience Preview features will improve the user experience of test search and encourage administrators to take advantage of this query optimization tool. Most notably, we hope the raw API response functionality will save time when it comes to debugging and sharing searches!
Turn on both the Summer '21: Answers UI Updates and the Summer ‘21: Full Screen Test Search features to see these new components.