Dennis - there is a way to filter search results. Next to the sentence that explains how many results your search returned is a link named "filter the results" with a little blue arrow that points down. It opens a drop-down menu that lets you remove and/or select certain types of content. Just an "FYI" to make your life a little easier until improvements can be made.

The consolidated search (magnifying glass) is pretty much useless since it returns so many results (often hundreds of pages) and there is no way to sort or filter the results to find something more specific, Adding more search terms expands the results rather than narrowing them. \

For the site search to be useful, it needs improvements so that it's possible to narrow down the result set rather easily and intuitively.

Other searches have are based on an absurd premise: that someone knows what they are looking for before they start the search. The searcher not only must know the differences between a course, a workshop, a seminar, an event, an instructor opportunity, a field trip, a lecture, etc. and the different ways to search for each, they must have the same mindset of the scheduler.

I propose that all searches lead to the same results screen with the ability to sort and filter the results. Filters could have appropriate defaults, depending on which way the search was entered (for example, "Learn" might default to "courses + workshops + seminars).

Please be sure to include Calendar Events in the search results for Activities.

Might it work by creating the capability to tag activities, courses and events that relate to a particular activity such that they can be shown on multiple search pages, sort of like adding 'Home Page' to a blog post? Leaders won't want this for every activity or course or event but sometimes it is very handy.

I missed the sea kayak summit but was just thinking about this yesterday and here I find it! There should be a way to make this possible. It seems like people are missing the one day clinics that used to fill up quickly...

From the Sea Kayaking Summit on 2/5: This was also voiced by a few different leaders - the desire for some functionality that would allow a person to look at all things taking place on any given date (events, courses/seminars, and activities). A kind of "pulse of the organization" at any specific time that you could look at all at once.

I think there is another suggestion somewhere to this effect. Enhance the activity search to return all kinds of activities that match the criteria: trips, courses, instructor opportunities, and events. I'm not suggesting combining those objects internally, just combining them in a consolidated search results. When looking for activities of interest, why make us do 4 separate searches? (Oops, I mean 3 searches and browsing the calendar month-by-month).