Michelle's Musings

MindBody and search

Oh, my.  Here is a classic case of software developers not testing properly.  Or, in our very specialized world, perhaps it is quality control staff testing software they do not understand and thereby cannot  test vigorously.

There is a quick search box in the admin view of MindBody, where you can type in someone’s name and quickly go to that client’s data.  Most of the time it works.  There is also an advanced search with lots of filters to allow you to really home in on a select group.  I haven’t had to use it much, but it has worked for me as well.

Now, last week I was on the phone with a client whose last name is O’Connor.  I typed in the last name and got no results.  I knew that we had at least one O’Connor, so I changed the search to just “connor” and got the matches you would expect, plus three O’Connors.  However, the O’Connor I knew was not in the list.  (At this point in my phone conversation, I had to answer the client’s question about her enrollment in a class and didn’t have time to puzzle over the search not working.  I went to the class roster and there she was!  I could click on her name and proceed from there.)  Later I went back and tried the advanced search, left all the filters alone, and put in O’Connor in the search box.  Presto, 10 clients were listed, all with the last name O’Connor.

So why would a quick search not use the same search algorithm as the advanced search with no filters?  I understand they perhaps were trying to optimize the search, but at the very heart of the code, the name search should be the same.

Next, it’s obvious that no one tried “difficult” names in testing the search.  Any 101: Intro to Programming student could write a routine to search on a single word.  It’s the spaces, dashes, and apostrophes that throw you off.  Yet somehow, MindBody, which is a large company that provides online scheduling, registration, sales, management, and other services geared towards yoga studios and health clubs, hasn’t tested non-standard names in their system.  Apparently they are happy to let their customers find the errors for them.  And we’re supposed to trust them to process all our client’s payments and keep their data secure.