The City's search tools are the first public facing product produced by its software development initiative. We have developed a single search experience on the SandySpringsGA.gov website that incorporates two search tools:
Instant Search
Experience the power of instantaneous results with our lightning-fast search tool! Our Instant Search is the default setting for this website. Despite its incredible speed, it includes a powerful set of filters that allow you to pare down your search results and find the information you need.
Best for: Casual users that need fast results.
How it Works: You might be wondering how our search is able to function instantaneously? When you visit the Sandy Springs website, every word written on the entire site gets pre-loaded into your browser's cache ready to be queried. This means that when you type a search term, your computer has the information ready for you without having make a request to our servers. It's a modern, incredibly efficient approach to constructing medium sized websites.
Current Build: 1.0 (released August 14, 2023)
Deep Search
For those who want to dive deeper into City information, Deep Search has two main functions: 1) The ability to search within documents hosted on this website, and 2) The ability to search within external datasets located in other repositories on the internet. As you can imagine, it is that second function that makes this tool extraordinarily powerful. Deep Search currently indexes and returns agenda items and associated documents from the City's third-party public meeting repository. But the goal is to expand the number of external datasets available to make Deep Search a single search experience for all the City's public information.
Best for: Power users and researchers looking to dive deep into City records.
How it Works: The City's Unified Platform is a custom developed data repository for City information. It enables the City to aggregate information from multiple sources and distribute it to websites, digital signage and in this case, a search tool. Every hour, the Unified Platform reaches out to external databases and scrapes the available information to build a table of meta-data. In order to deliver a comprehensive Deep Search experience, we have to blend the data sources into a single reference table. When you perform a search using Deep Search, this is the information that is being queried and then we link back to the original source of the information.
What's Next: The next major update to Deep Search will be the integration of Instant Search data into the Deep Search database. This will allow Deep Search to be a one-stop search tool for all currently available data. It will not be mind-bogglingly fast like Instant Search, but for those that need to go deep, it will be extremely useful.
Once we have all the currently accessible data available in Deep Search, we'll begin working on a user experience that integrates deeper with public meeting data and consider new data sources for inclusion.
Current Build: 0.3 beta (released November 15, 2023) | Release Notes
Accessing the Search Tools
To start using these tools, simply click on the search icon (magnifying glass) at the top of your screen.
Search Tool User Feedback
If you have any questions about the search tools or would like to share ideas to be considered for future development, please email Jason Green.