Matches in all translations of a field are counted when performing a text search - Known Error

Matches in all translations of a field are counted when performing a text search Description When searching Catalog items, matches in all translations of a field are counted. This means that search relevance can be impacted by how many translations of a record you have.

The document score appears to be determined by how many matches for that term are in the XML of the record (excluding matches in fields that start with "sys_"). For example, if you searched for "ABCDEF," then an item with 3 matches for that term in the description field would be given a document score of 3, and an item with 2 matches in the description field would be given a document score of 2.

If you have the 'I18N: Internationalization' plugin installed, this allows you to translate fields on the record, such as the name, short description, and description fields. If a term appears in multiple translations of a field (which is common as names like Microsoft, Apple, iPhone, Galaxy are the same in all languages), then each occurrence of the term in each translation is counted. So if you had 4 translations for a particular item, each with the term "Apple" in the name field once, that record would appear higher in the English search results for that term than a record which had no translations but had the term "Apple" in the name field 3 times.

This behavior is counterintuitive, as one would expect that only translations for the current session language would be counted, and if there is not a translation for the current session language then the base value of that field would be searched. Steps to Reproduce

Prerequisites

Activate the I18N: Internationalization plugin (com.glide.i18n) Activate the I18N: German Translations plugin (com.snc.i18n.german) Activate the I18N: Spanish Translations plugin (com.snc.i18n.spanish) Activate the I18N: Dutch Translations plugin (com.snc.i18n.dutch) Demo data installed Steps

Log on to the instance as a user with the admin role. Open the link below, which should show 3 records. /nav_to.do?uri=sc_cat_item_list.do?sysparm_query=sys_idIN060f3afa3731300054b6a3549dbe5d3e%2C10ed012dc61122760128899a100f6ae9%2C10ec16b3c61122760021a44ec7746bb3 Change the session language to German from the System Settings dialog. Set the Kurzbeschreibung field (short description) of the 'Apple iPad 3' item to 'ABCDEF'. Change the session language to Spanish from the System Settings dialog. Set the Short description field of the 'Apple iPad 3' item to 'ABCDEF'. Change the session language to Dutch from the System Settings dialog. Set the Short description field of the 'Apple iPad 3' item to 'ABCDEF'. Change the session language to English from the System Settings dialog. Set the Short description field of the 'Apple iPad 3' to 'ABCDEF'. Set the Short description field of the 'Office Desktop' to 'ABCDEF ABCDEF'. Set the Short description field of the 'Office Printer' to 'ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF'. Navigate to the below URL. If it isn't empty, keep refreshing the page until it is. This will ensure all text indexing events have been processed before continuing. /nav_to.do?uri=sysevent_list.do?sysparm_query=processedISEMPTY%5Ename%3Dtext_index Navigate to Self-Service > Service Catalog . In the Search catalog text box, type in 'ABCDEF' and click Enter . Expected behavior As the current session language is English, only occurrences of 'ABCDEF' in the English translation of the 'Short description' field should be counted. Therefore, the order of the items and their document score should be: 1 - Office Printer (document score: 3) 2 - Office Desktop (document score: 2) 3 - Apple iPad 3 (document score: 1)

Actual behavior ALL translations are counted to determine the score of the item. This means that a record with 'ABCDEF' only occurring once in its short description (but with 3 alternate translations of that field) is placed above one which has the term in the short description field 3 times. This is the actual order of items and their document scores: 1 - Apple iPad 3 (document score: 4) 2 - Office Printer (document score: 3) 3 - Office Desktop (document score: 2)

Workaround There is currently no known workaround for this issue. You can subscribe to this known error article (click Subscribe button at the top of the article) to receive notifications when more information is available.