Prioritizing Result Modifications

Scope:

This article details in which order Fredhopper processes configured Result Modifications so that the user will know how to best configure their Modifications to suit their requirements.

Customers who are not aware of the Results Modification functionality can review our knowledge base article on the subject. Customers who are using Fredhopper 7.5.0.x should review the FAS 7.5.0 release notes and customers who are using Fredhopper 7.5.1.x and above should review the FAS 7.5.1 release notes for the latest updates to the Result Modifications functionality for their instances

Context:

Result Modifications provide various options for altering the result sets that are returned to the customer depending on what they search for or where they navigate to within the store. As you can see in the screenshot below, the user has various configuration options for Result Modifications. They can leave it to rank naturally, (which is the default setting), they can move items within the results set or they can block items from being displayed entirely.

Result Modification Priorities

Blocking items:

Blocking a given item supersedes any other action. If it is removed from the results set then no other alterations that are placed on that item's ranking will be applied and the item will not be displayed.

Moving items in the result set:

Users can rank items as they choose but two or more items cannot logically occupy the same position in a set of results. Therefore, if two or more items are assigned the same position, the first one selected will take precedence. Subsequently selected items will be assigned the next slot in line (i.e. if three items are assigned the #1 position, the first item chosen to be moved to that position will claim it, then the second selection will move to #2, and the third to #3 etc). This is illustrated in the screenshot below were five selected items have all been moved to position 1, but as only one item can be stored in each ranking location Fredhopper ranks the items in the order they were selected.

In the screenshot below you can see the above Result Modification illustrated in the Fredhopper preview pages. By cross-referencing the secondid attribute of each item it is easy to see that they are ordered just as they are configured in the Business Manager view above.

As the item with secondid 081010121560 (Black footless tights) is the second item selected to move to position #1, it is placed into the second ranking slot, behind 081010117305 (Raspberry 60 denier opaque tights), which has been selected first. These items can be reordered by clicking on the up and down arrows within the Modification's configuration in the Business Manager.

What happens when multiple Result Modifications conflict?

If you have two or more Result Modifications that directly conflict with each other, only the one given the higher priority level in Business Manager is enacted. This behaviour is demonstrated below where two active Result Modifications affect the same item (secondid 311010148799), and use the same trigger. The one given Priority 1 says to move the item to the #2 position. The next one says to move the same item to the #1 position:

When the user arrives at the above selected trigger, (user location equals "New items this week"), the item is moved to the #2 position, because as noted above, the Modification that moves the item to the #2 position has a higher Priority in the Business Manager so the lower ranked Modification is ignored. The Priority order can be altered within the overview of Result Modifications in Business Manager. However, if any of the Result Modifications block an item, regardless of it's relatively priority, the block will be applied and that item will not be displayed in the result set.