Galaxy Global Search Custom Scoring for Content Relevance
Customers on Galaxy Single Architecture can now customize keyword search scoring for Galaxy Global Search content. Administrators can choose between Learning Management, Galaxy, or Custom relevance scoring, fine-tune weighting across title, description, and keyword fields, and boost preferred providers. This gives organizations direct control over search relevance without restructuring their catalog.
What's New
- Choose between Learning Management, Galaxy, or Custom relevance scoring for Galaxy Global Search content
- Customize weighting across title, description, and keyword fields
- Boost specific providers so their content ranks higher when relevance is similar
- Pre-configured Galaxy option for customers upgrading from Learning Experience or earlier Galaxy versions
- Revert to default scoring at any time from the search settings page
Details
Description
Galaxy Global Search Custom Scoring gives administrators direct control over how keyword searches are scored within Galaxy Global Search content. Instead of relying on a fixed search ranking, administrators can choose between three relevance scoring models — Learning Management, Galaxy, or Custom — and fine-tune the weighting applied to the title, description, and keyword fields so that the most relevant content surfaces first.
Administrators can also boost specific providers, giving content from preferred publishers or internal sources a relevance increase of 10% when results are similar. Relevancy scores are relative to one another, so assigning a high value to Title ensures a title match outranks matches found only in the description or keywords. The feature improves findability without requiring any change to how the catalog is structured or any edits to learning object metadata.
Business Need
As customers upgrade to Galaxy Single Architecture, those migrating from Learning Experience or earlier Galaxy versions would otherwise see their search results change by default, potentially requiring them to update metadata across thousands of learning objects to preserve familiar behavior. This created significant administrative overhead and a barrier to upgrading.
This release addresses that pain by letting administrators manage search scoring on their own, without special assistance. A pre-configured Galaxy option preserves scoring similar to previous Galaxy versions, while custom scoring gives organizations the flexibility to align search outcomes with their content strategy. The result is faster, more relevant search for learners and direct control for administrators — without a costly catalog-wide metadata effort.
Key Features
- Administrators can choose between Learning Management, Galaxy, or Custom relevance scoring for Galaxy Global Search content.
- Administrators can customize the weighting applied across the title, description, and keyword fields so the most relevant content appears first.
- Administrators can boost specific providers by 10%, ensuring preferred publishers or internal sources rank higher when relevance is similar, without drowning out other results.
- A pre-configured Galaxy option is available for customers upgrading from Learning Experience or earlier Galaxy versions, avoiding the need to update the entire catalog before upgrading.
- Administrators can revert to the default scoring at any time by returning to the search settings page and adjusting as needed.
Deployment & Considerations
These features become available with the start of UAT and with the production release. They are on by default with no configuration changes required and are available to customers using Galaxy Single Architecture. No new permissions are required.
The traditional LMS scoring (Title 1000, Description 2, Keywords 1) is enabled by default; customers upgrading from Cornerstone will see no change in their search results, while customers upgrading from Learning Experience or earlier Galaxy versions will notice a difference and can apply the pre-configured Galaxy option. Configuration is applied at the portal level only — scoring cannot be set per Organizational Unit (OU) or per learning object type. Only a single weighting system can be active at a time. Changing relevance scoring may affect features such as exact title match and language boosting, which are only guaranteed when traditional LMS is selected, and will also influence intelligent search and hybrid result calculations. Cornerstone recommends testing any changes in Stage or Pilot environments before applying them in production.